Popular Modernisms examines a process that has occurred throughout the history of art; one that accelerated with the social effects of the industrial revolution, the development of capitalism and the inception of modern social relations. It argues that the shocks of modernist art encouraged the production of visual satires, parodies, ironies and pastiches; and that, in the company of other forms of text or performance-based criticism, these were the means by which those in marginal, or subordinate social positions could exercise their displeasure and opposition to the ruling ideas and dominant classes of the day. Expressing feelings ranging from mild discomfort to pure rage, this criticism enabled social subordinates to contest or resist the dominance of high culture over low; in terms eloquently described by Antonio Gramsci, as the hegemony of the dominant centre culture over its margins. The focus upon graphic satires (cartoons and comics) of modern art attempts to provide some practical explication of the symbolic contest of power as this process represents the struggle to achieve and maintain, cultural hegemony. A further aim in this book is to investigate the symbolic contestation of cultural meanings in social terms and thereby enrich our understanding of classed society. There are, I believe, many social and political confluences that intersect within the symbolic construction and interpretation of culture. This contest of power can be read as ideological conflict between various dominant, and subordinate groups, classes and class.

Popular Modernisms: Art, Cartoons, Comics and Cultural In/subordination

Barber, Bruce

Arts & Photography

Common Ground Research Networks

Trans/actions: Art, Film and Death explore the representation of art, artists and art history in film through two primary questions. The first: why are there so many representations of stereotypical mad artists, particularly psychopathic killers and suicidal artists in film when there are so few clearly documented cases of such artists within the history of art? And the second question, with two components: is there a political meaning that is able to be assigned to the proliferation of such films in contemporary society, and what does this say about the producers of such material and the consuming interest in art, death, and crime, of the cinema going public? Employing Jacques Derrida's "four times around" deconstructive process, the author takes the philosophical injunction to explore the surrounds and approaches to his chosen subjects -- the films of Alfred Hitchcock, Fritz Lang, Roger Corman, Tim Burton, Peter Greenaway, among others -- paying specific attention to "the work, frame, passé partout (key), title, signature, museum, archive, discourse, marketplace -- in short, wherever there is legislation by marking of the limit" (Derrida, 1987). Each of the chapters move beyond the two original questions and their related components, across and through - trans/acting - various theoretical, historical and critical fields into specific domains of philosophical and political enquiry; for example, the question of the other in the construction of social stereotypes, and the political and libidinal economy of various types of humour: parody, irony and satire. Employing the post-Freudian phantasmatic models developed by Giorgio Agamben, the author discusses the historical construction of various stereotypes for artists, particularly the manner in which these have been ideologically inscribed into the cultural dominant, and thereby become available for reproduction, both in terms of artist's presentation of self in everyday life, and also in terms of cultural representations within the domains of mass and popular culture, specifically cinema. Bruce Barber is an interdisciplinary artist based in Halifax, Nova Scotia where he directs the MFA Program at NSCAD University. He is the research coordinator at the European Graduate School, EGS and the editor of Essays on Performance and Cultural Politicization; Conceptual Art: the NSCAD Connection 1967-1973. Co-editor, with Guilbaut, S., and O'Brian J., Voices of Fire: Art Rage, Power and the State. Editor, Condé + Beveridge: Class Works (2008); author of Performance [Performance] and Performers: Essays and Conversations edited by Marc Léger (2008).

Trans/Actions: Art, Film and Death

Humor & Entertainment

Movies

Atropos Press

Actor-turned-writer Jean-Claude Keyes boards a train bound for Stratford, Ontario, Canada and the world-famous Stratford Shakespeare Festival. His intent is to finish writing his insider's biography of leading actor Seamus O'Reilly, see old friends, and perhaps re-kindle his affair with actress Alessandra Edel. But, as Keyes says to himself, things are never the same when you go back to a place you have known, no matter how well. The fire of deadly emotion beneath the glamour and glitter of the world of the stage emerges when Keyes discovers the body of Alan Wales, a young, arrogant actor, murdered outside the theatre during a performance of MACBETH. A cast of directors, designers, and theatrical stars become suspects, and Keyes becomes a reluctant sleuth.

The Bloody Man: A Jean-Claude Keyes Mystery

Mystery, Thriller & Suspense

Burnett, Virgil

Mystery

Blue Shadow Press

The Running Girl: A Jean-Claude Keyes Mystery

AMBERHILL, Bevan

Downstage Dead: A Jean-Claude Keyes Mystery

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