"The art world is bound to the economy," writes Julian Stallabrass, "as tightly as Ahab to the white whale." In Art Incorporated, Stallabrass offers a provocative look at contemporary art and the dramatic changes that have taken place in the last twenty years, illuminating the connections between money, politics, and art. Stallabrass notes that the spectacular crash of 1989 profoundly changed the character of contemporary art, shattering the art-world's self-importance and producing a reaction against art that engaged with theory and politics, in favor of art that set out to awe, entertain, and be sold. He describes the growth of biennials and other art events across the globe in the 1990s, the construction of new museums of contemporary art, and the expansion of many museums already in existence. These activities, Stallabrass writes, have become steadily more commercial, as museums establish alliances with corporations, bring their products closer to commercial culture, and move from modeling themselves on libraries to becoming more like theme parks. In connection with this, he offers an insightful look at installation art, which is often seen as an art that firmly resists buying and selling, pointing out that installations appeal to museums precisely because a work of art that can only be seen on a particular site ensures that viewers have to go there. Shedding light on everything from the greatly increased visibility for women artists, to the intense competition between art and television, to the conservative backlash against notorious works, Art Incorporated provides a frank and penetrating view of the contemporary art world.

Art Incorporated: The Story of Contemporary Art

Arts & Photography

Stallabrass, Julian

History & Criticism

Oxford University Press

Contemporary art has never been so popular, but what is its role today and who is controlling its future? Contemporary art is supposed 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. But away from shock tactics in the gallery, there are many unanswered questions. Who is really running the art world? What effect has America's growing political and cultural dominance had on art? Here Julian Stallabrass takes us inside the international art world to answer these and other controversial questions, and to argue that behind contemporary art's variety and apparent unpredictability lies a grim uniformity. Its mysteries are all too easily explained, its depths much shallower than they seem. Contemporary art seeks to bamboozle its viewers while being the willing slave of business and government. This book is your antidote and will change the way you see contemporary art. About the Series: Combining authority with wit, accessibility, and style, Very Short Introductions offer an introduction to some of life's most interesting topics. Written by experts for the newcomer, they demonstrate the finest contemporary thinking about the central problems and issues in hundreds of key topics, from philosophy to Freud, quantum theory to Islam.

Contemporary Art: A Very Short Introduction

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 (Very Short Introductions)

This series acts as an introduction to key artists and movements in art history. Each title contains 48 full-page colour plates, accompanied by extensive notes, and numerous comparative illustrations in colour or black and white, a concise introduction, select bibliography and detailed source information for the images. Monographs on individual artists also feature a brief chronology.

Ernst: Colour Library

Turpin, Ian

Individual Artists

Phaidon Press

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.

Paris Pictured

Photography & Video

Royal Academy Books

The revival of documentary in art, considered in historical, theoretical, and contemporary contexts.After a long period in eclipse, documentary has undergone a marked revival in recent art. This has been spurred by two phenomena: the exhibition of photographic and video work on political issues at Documenta and numerous biennials; and increasing attention to issues of injustice, violence, and trauma in the war zones of the endemically conflict-ridden twenty-first century. The renewed attention to photography and video in the gallery and museum world has helped make documentary one of the most prominent modes of art-making today. Unsurprisingly, this development has been accompanied by a rich strain of theoretical and historical writing on documentary.This anthology provides a much-needed contextual grounding for documentary art. It explores the roots of documentary in modernism and its critique under postmodernism; surveys current theoretical thinking about documentary; and examines a wide range of work by artists within, around, or against documentary through their own writings and interviews.Artists surveyed include:Kutlug Ataman, Ursula Biemann, Hasan Elahi, Harun Farocki, Omer Fast, Joan Fontcuberta, Regina José Galindo, David Goldblatt, Craigie Horsfield, Alfredo Jaar, Emily Jacir, Lisa F. Jackson, Philip Jones Griffiths, An-My Le, Renzo Martens, Boris Mikhailov, Daido Moriyama, Walid Raad, Michael Schmidt, Sean SnyderWriters include:James Agee, Ariella Azoulay, Walter Benjamin, Adam Broomberg, Judith Butler, Oliver Chanarin, Georges Didi-Huberman, John Grierson, David Levi Strauss, Elizabeth McCausland, Carl Plantinga, Jacques Rancière, Martha Rosler, Jean-Paul Sartre, Allan Sekula, W. Eugene Smith, Susan Sontag, Hito Steyerl, Trinh T. Minh-ha

DOCUMENTARY /ANGLAIS (DOCUMENTS OF CO)

WHITECHAPEL GAL

Ground Control covers the work of a wide variety of writers and artists, including Susan Buck-Morss, Fiona Banner, and Scanner, all of whom reflect on the broad divisions and links in culture between Eastern and Western Europe. In particular, the nature of nationalism is examined with regard to the role of contemporary art following the demise of communism.

Ground Control: Technology and Utopia

Jablonskiene, Lolita

McCorquodale, Duncan

Trolly

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

Killing for Show: Photography, War, and the Media in Vietnam and Iraq

Rowman & Littlefield Publishers

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.

High Art Lite: The Rise and Fall of Young British Art

Verso

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.

Internet Art: The Online Clash of Culture and Commerce

Tate

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