The Utopian Globalists by Jonathan Harris

An innovative history and critical account mapping the ways artists and their works have engaged with, and offered commentary on, modern spectacle in both capitalist and socialist modernism over the past ninety years. Top page

Complete description

An innovative history and critical account mapping the ways artists and their works have engaged with, and offered commentary on, modern spectacle in both capitalist and socialist modernism over the past ninety years. * Focuses on artists whose work expresses the concept of revolutionary social transformation * Provides a strong historical narrative that adds structure and clarity * Features a cogent and innovative critique of contemporary art and institutions * Covers 100 years of art from Vladimir Tatlin's constructivist 'Monument to the Third International', to Picasso's late 1940s commitment to Communism, to the Unilever Series sponsored Large Artworks installed at London's Tate Modern since 2000. * Includes the only substantial account in print of John Lennon and Yoko Ono's 1969 Montreal 'Bed-in' * Offers an accessible description and interpretation of Debord's 'society of the spectacle' theory Top page

General info

Publisher & Imprint: Wiley-Blackwell (an imprint of John Wiley & Sons Ltd)

City: Chicester

Pages: 360

More info: height 236 mm width 162 mm weight 688 gr thickness 20 mm

Top page

Age recommended: Professional and scholarly

Subject Indexing & Classification Dewey:(DC23) 709.04 Library of Congress Subject: Art and globalization - History - 20th century

Departments: The arts: general issues;

Record updated at: 18 June, 2013 time: 14:01

Summary The Utopian Globalists List of Illustrations ix Acknowledgements xi Introduction: The World in a Work of Art 1 Global Order, Social Order, Visual Order 2 'Globalization' and 'Globalism' in Th eory and Practice 10 Capitalism and Communism as (Failed) Utopian Totalities 16 Ideal and Real Collectivities 23 1 Spectacle, Social Transformation and Utopian Globalist Art 34 Spectacular Cold War Communisms and Capitalisms 35 Alienation/Separation and State Power 44 System, Totality, Representation and the 'Utopian Imaginary' 51 The 'Conquest of Space', Spectacular Art and Globalist Vision 57 2 The Line of Liberation: Tatlin's Tower and the Communist Construction of Global Revolution 76 Revolutionary Rupture, Structure and Sense 77 Space and Symbolism 85 Beyond Order 95 Collectivity and Necessity 103 3 Picasso for the Proletariat: 'The Most Famous Communist in the World '118 Commitment to the Cause, Right or Wrong 119 Picasso as Screen 129 Image, Persona, Mediations 139 Picasso ' s Use and Exchange Value 147 4 Some Kind of Druid Dude: Joseph Beuys's Liturgies of Freedom 165 Tatlin for the Television Generation 166 Th e Beuysian Spectacular Persona 171 Th e Spirit of the Earth 179 Process, Performance, Metabolic Transformation 185 Political Actions 191 5 'Bed-in' as Gesamtkunstwerk: A Typical Morning in the Quest for World Peace 211 Sugar, Sugar 212 A Sequestered Zone of Peace 217 Just My Imagination 225 A Man from Liverpool and a Woman from Tokyo 229 6 Mother Nature on the Run: Austerity Globalist Depletions in the 1970s 246 Transmission, Replacement, Negation, Deletion 247 West/East--North/South 253 Banality as Tactic 260 Austerity Globalism's Body-Politic 265 'Development' Exposed 272 7 Nomadic Globalism: Scenographica in Christo and Jeanne-Claude's Wrapped Reichstag 287 Th e Negation Negated 288 Art, Business, Diplomacy 292 The Materials of Spectacle 296 Form as Sedimented Content 299 Seductive Acts of Occlusion 306 Conclusion: From the Spiral to the Turbine: A Global Warning 316 Large Rooms Full of Wonderful Curiosities 317 The Void of Possibilities 320 Disappeared 323 Index 333 Top page

Add your comment

Add a review - Highlight this book to a friend

Please login or register to send your review

Top page