Julian Stallabrass

"First published in hardback as Art incorporated 2004"--T.p. verso.

Contemporary Art: A Very Short Introduction

Gordon MacDonald

Adam Broomberg

Oliver Chanarin

Foreword by Gordon McDonald. Text by Julian Stallabrass.

Documentary has undergone a marked revival in recent art, following a long period in which it was a denigrated and unfashionable practice. This has in part been led by the exhibition of photographic and video work on political issues at Documenta and numerous biennials and, since the turn of the century, issues of injustice, violence and trauma in increasing zones of conflict. Aesthetically, documentary is now one of the most prominent modes of art-making, in part assisted by the linked transformation and recuperation of photography and video by the gallery and museum world. Unsurprisingly, this development, along with the close attention paid to photojournalism and mainstream documentary-making in a time of crisis, has been accompanied by a rich strain of theoretical and historical writing on documentary. This anthology provides a definitive historical context for documentary, exploring its roots in modernism and its critique under postmodernism; it surveys current theoretical thinking about documentary; and it examines a wide range of work by artists within, around or against documentary through their own writings and interviews.

Documentary

Pauline Van Mourik Broekman

Niru Ratnam

Locus Solus: Site, Identity and Technology in Contemporary Art borrows its title from a book by Raymond Roussel, first published in 1914. The literal meaning of the phrase "Locus Solus" is unique or solitary place. In Roussel's book, a brilliant but perhaps deranged scientist pursues fantastical technological pursuits, including the re-animation of the dead and various projects which automate the making of works of art. Locus+, whose curatorial practice provides the content of Locus Solus are considered here through sub-headings dealing respectively with the power within boundaries and the subsequent specificity of site; identity and its demarcation; the crossing of borders by technology and its mutation. 60 b/w illustrations

Site, Identity, Technology in Contemporary Art

Locus Solus

Cagdas Sanat - Bir Tarihce

High Art Lite takes a cool and critical look at a much-hyped subject-British art of the 1990s. With artists like Damien Hirst, Sarah Lucas, Dake & Dinos Chapman, and Tracey Emin acquiring a media profile similar to pop stars, British art has reinvented itself and successfully courted a wider popularity than it has ever enjoyed before. On the face of it, much of their art has looked like simple bad behavior-using chopped up animals, pornography and sexually explicit dolls as its material, or building up the features of a child murderer using tiny hand-prints. Yet their art has been both accessible and sophisticated, appealing to the mass media and to the elite art world alike. But has it done so at the price of dumbing art down, reducing it to the level of any other consumer enterprise, and losing what is distinctive about it? Other than as publicity-fodder, how seriously does it take the new audience that it has so effectively courted? In this accessible and generously illustrated book, Julian Stallabrass provides a sustained analysis of the British art scene, exploring the reasons for its popularity and examining in detail the work of the leading figures.

British Art in the 1990s

High Art Lite

The development of Internet art has been short and rapid and dates from the introduction of web browsers in the mid-1990s. Artists realized the potential of a medium and system of delivery that side-stepped the mainstream art institutions and allowed them to make direct contact with an audience. Their interventions have ranged from works that deconstruct the browser itself, to works that shade into political activism. Internet art has been international, with distinct contributions emerging from the US, the Far East, Europe, the countries of the former Eastern Bloc, and the Third World.

The Online Clash of Culture and Commerce

Internet Art

This searing book has become the authoritative account of the new British art of the 1990s, its legacy in the 21st century, and what it tells us about the fate of high art in contemporary society. High Art Lite provides a sustained analysis of the phenomenal success of YBA, young British artists obsessed with commerce, mass media and the cult of personality – Damien Hirst, Tracey Emin, Jake and Dinos Chapman, Marcus Harvey, Sarah Lucas, among others. In this fully revised and expanded edition, Julian Stallabrass explores how YBA lost its critical immunity in the new millennium, and looks at the ways in which figures such as Hirst, Emin, Wearing and Landy have altered their work in recent years.

The Rise and Fall of Young British Art

"This selection of images examines the growth and development of photography through the changing character of Paris in the remarkable period of 1900-1968. During these years, photography became a mass medium, with cheap reproductions appearing in the press. Technical advances made it possible to capture rapid movement and street photography flourished; some of the finest images in documentary photography were made on the streets of Paris by Atget, Brassai, Cartier-Bresson, Doisneau and Ronis, among many others. The transience of city life and the histories of Paris are brilliantly evoked in these images: from the elegiac photographs of the early twentieth century which recorded those quartiers later condemned by modernisation projects, through the Occupation, to the upheaval of the May 1968 demonstrations. With over 130 photographs and Julian Stallabrass's authoritative text, this book is an essential purchase for anyone interested in the art of photography and the city of Paris"--Jacket.

Paris Pictured

Contemporary art has never been so popular - but the art world is changing. In a landscape of increasing globalization there is growing interest in questions over the nature of contemporary art today, and the identity of who is controlling its future. In the midst of this, contemporary art continues to be a realm of freedom where artists shock, break taboos, flout generally received ideas, and switch between confronting viewers with works of great emotional profundity and jaw-dropping triviality. In this Very Short Introduction Julian Stallabrass gives a clear view on the diverse and rapidly moving scene of contemporary art. Exploring art's striking globalisation from the 1990s onwards, he analyses how new regions and nations, such as China, have leapt into astonishing prominence, over-turning the old Euro-American dominance on aesthetics. Showing how contemporary art has drawn closer to fashion and the luxury goods market as artists have become accomplished marketers of their work, Stallabrass discusses the reinvention of artists as brands. This new edition also considers how once powerful art criticism has mutated into a critical and performative writing at which many artists excel. Above all, behind the insistent rhetoric of freedom and ambiguity in art, Stallabrass explores how big business and the super-rich have replaced the state as the primary movers of the contemporary art scene, especially since the financial crisis, and become a powerful new influence over the art world. ABOUT THE SERIES: The Very Short Introductions series from Oxford University Press contains hundreds of titles in almost every subject area. These pocket-sized books are the perfect way to get ahead in a new subject quickly. Our expert authors combine facts, analysis, perspective, new ideas, and enthusiasm to make interesting and challenging topics highly readable.

Contemporary Art: a Very Short Introduction

Tunnels and sculptures made from human hair; photos of rats running through drains, sharks in formaldehyde - is this what art is about today? This is a controversial and fascinating attempt to define what is 'contemporary' about contemporary art, and the dramatic changes that have taken place in the last twenty years. Stallabrass reveals the growing inclusiveness of the contemporary art world, pointing to the greatly increased visibility for women and non-western artists, and the blurringof boundaries between art and other areas of culture. Does this modernization threaten to undermine the world of art as we know it, or is this just another example of a global market demanding a certain product? And where are the artists in all this?

The Story of Contemporary Art

Art Incorporated

Rabelais's tale the giant prince Gargantua is a vast and inescapable cluster of qualities and activities; his violence, greed and incontinence are incomparable. In the old giant's size, ubiquity, gluttony, vast knowledge and warlike nature, we can recognize qualities of our contemporary culture. In this brilliant polemic on our visual mass culture, Stallabrass argues that culture's status as a commodity is the most important thing about it, affecting its form, its relation to the viewer and its ideology. The great diversity of choice masks the extent to which this choice is managed by an ever-shrinking number of powerful owners. Stallabrass shows how the consistent and unifying capitalist ideology of mass culture leads to an increasingly homogeneous identity among its consumers. Even in marginal and radical cultural activities, like graffiti writing, can be found the tyranny of the brand name and the reduction of the individual to a cipher. Starting with an analysis of subjects which concern specific groups—amateur photography, computer games and cyberspace—Stallabrass works out to wider aspects of the culture which affect everybody, including cars, shopping and television. Gargantua raises profound questions about the nature and direction of mass culture. It also raises a challenge to the postmodern theorists' adherence to subjectivity, indeterminacy and political indifference. If manufactured subjectivities are always shot through with the objective, then their plurality may not be merely a colourful but meaningless postmodern smorgasbord, but rather the accurate reflection of our current cultural situation, and a map showing paths beyond it.

Manufactured Mass Culture

Gargantua

Leonidas Donskis

Susan Buck-Morss

This text documents and expands upon an exhibition programme of the same name; a project organized by the London based arts initiative Beaconsfield and Jutempus - a similar artists-led space in Vilnius, Lithuania.

Technology and Utopia

Ground Control

Michael Archer

Jon Thomson

Thomson & Craighead

See firsthand how war photography is used to sway public opinion. In the autumn of 2014, the Royal Air Force released blurry video of a missile blowing up a pick-up truck which may have had a weapon attached to its flatbed. This was a lethal form of gesture politics: to send a £9-million bomber from Cyprus to Iraq and back, burning £35,000 an hour in fuel, to launch a smart missile costing £100,000 to destroy a truck or, rather, to create a video that shows it being destroyed. Some lives are ended—it is impossible to tell whose—so that the government can pretend that it taking effective action by creating a high-budget snuff movie. This is killing for show. Since the Vietnam War the way we see conflict—through film, photographs, and pixels—has had a powerful impact on the political fortunes of the campaign, and the way that war has been conducted. In this fully illustrated and passionately argued account of war imagery, Julian Stallabrass tells the story of post-war conflict, how it was recorded and remembered through its iconic photography. The relationship between war and photograph is constantly in transition, forming new perspectives, provoking new challenges: what is allowed to be seen? Does an image have the power to change political opinion? How are images used to wage war? Stallabrass shows how photographs have become a vital weapon in the modern war: as propaganda—from close-quarters fighting to the drone’s electronic vision—as well as a witness to the barbarity of events such as the My Lai massacre, the violent suppression of insurgent Fallujah or the atrocities in Abu Ghraib. Through these accounts Stallabrass maps a comprehensive theoretical re-evaluation of the relationship between war, politics and visual culture. Killing for Show offers: 190 photographs encompassing photojournalism, artists’ images, photographs by soldiers and amateurs and drones A comprehensive comparison of the role of photography in the Vietnam and Iraq Wars An explanation of the waning power of iconic images in collective memory An analysis of the failure of military PR and the public display of killing A focus on what can and cannot be seen, photographed and published An exploration of the power and limits of amateur photography Arguments about how violent images act on democracy This full-color book is an essential volume in the history of warfare and photography

Photography, War, and the Media in Vietnam and Iraq

Killing for Show

High Art Lite takes a cool and critical look at the way in which British art in the 1990s has reinvented itself, successfully appealing both to the mass media and to the elite art world. In this extensively illustrated polemic, Julian Stallabrass asks whether it has done so at the price of dumbing down and selling out. 18 color and 53 b/w photographs.

Julian Stallabrass

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