Dialectical Conversions


Book Description

Few art critics in Western art history have ever had the broad-ranging impact over several decades of Donald Kuspit, a philosopher and psychoanalyst who from 1970 until the present has been a commanding figure on the international stage. A student of German thinker Theodor Adorno under whom he earned the first of his three doctorates, Kuspit introduced a new type of philosophical art criticism into the art world. He drew on both phenomenology and Critical Theory before he then increasingly adopted psychoanalysis. Since Kuspit himself has always measured his own place in the history of art criticism by how rigorously he engages with competing approaches, this book is a searching survey of Kuspit's role in triggering several historic shifts within art criticism, beginning with his now legendary 1974 article in Artforum, "A Phenomenological Approach to Artistic Intention." Dense and demanding, yet deft and incisive, Kuspit's multi-faceted art criticism has become world famous for reasons that artists, critics, art historians, and philosophers from at least ten different nations explain from various points of view. Divided into three parts and introduced by a lengthy introduction, the book features comments by recognized artists like Rudolf Baranik, Anselm Kiefer, and April Gornik, as well as critical commentaries by many scholars and critics from around the world on the richness of Kuspit's insights into art.




Head Cases


Book Description

While philosophy and psychoanalysis privilege language and conceptual distinctions and mistrust the image, the philosopher and psychoanalyst Julia Kristeva recognizes the power of art and the imagination to unblock important sources of meaning. She also appreciates the process through which creative acts counteract and transform feelings of violence and depression. Reviewing KristevaÕs corpus, Elaine P. Miller considers the intellectualÕs Òaesthetic ideaÓ and Òthought specularÓ in their capacity to reshape depressive thought on both the individual and cultural level. She revisits KristevaÕs reading of Walter Benjamin with reference to melancholic art and the imaginationÕs allegorical structure; her analysis of Byzantine iconoclasm in relation to FreudÕs psychoanalytic theory of negation and HegelÕs dialectical negativity; her understanding of Proust as an exemplary practitioner of sublimation; her rereading of Kant and Arendt in terms of art as an intentional lingering with foreignness; and her argument that forgiveness is both a philosophical and psychoanalytic method of transcending a ÒstuckÓ existence. Focusing on specific artworks that illustrate KristevaÕs ideas, from ancient Greek tragedy to early photography, contemporary installation art, and film, Miller positions creative acts as a form of Òspiritual inoculationÓ against the violence of our society and its discouragement of thought and reflection.




Modernism and Masculinity


Book Description

Modernism and Masculinity argues that a crisis of masculinity among European writers and artists played a key role in the modernist revolution. Gerald Izenberg revises the notion that the feminine provided a premodern refuge for artists critical of individualism and materialism. Industrialization and the growing power of the market inspired novelist Thomas Mann, playwright Frank Wedelind, and painter Wassily Kandinsky to feel the problematic character of their own masculinity. As a result, these artists each came to identify creativity, transcendence, and freedom with the feminine. But their critique of masculinity created enormous challenges: How could they appropriate a feminine aesthetic while retaining their own masculine idenitites? How did appropiating the feminine affect their personal relationships or their political views? Modernism and Masculinity seeks to answer these questions. In this absorbing combination of biography and formal critique, Izenberg reconsiders the works of Mann, Wedekind, Kandinsky and semonstrates how the cirses of masculinity they endure are found not just within the images and forms of their art, but in the distinct and very personal impulses that inspired it.




Permission to Laugh


Book Description

Permission to Laugh explores the work of three generations of German artists who, beginning in the 1960s, turned to jokes and wit in an effort to confront complex questions regarding German politics and history. Gregory H. Williams highlights six of them—Martin Kippenberger, Isa Genzken, Rosemarie Trockel, Albert Oehlen, Georg Herold, and Werner Büttner—who came of age in the mid-1970s in the art scenes of West Berlin, Cologne, and Hamburg. Williams argues that each employed a distinctive brand of humor that responded to the period of political apathy that followed a decade of intense political ferment in West Germany. Situating these artists between the politically motivated art of 1960s West Germany and the trends that followed German unification in 1990, Williams describes how they no longer heeded calls for a brighter future, turning to jokes, anecdotes, and linguistic play in their work instead of overt political messages. He reveals that behind these practices is a profound loss of faith in the belief that art has the force to promulgate political change, and humor enabled artists to register this changed perspective while still supporting isolated instances of critical social commentary. Providing a much-needed examination of the development of postmodernism in Germany, Permission to Laugh will appeal to scholars, curators, and critics invested in modern and contemporary German art, as well as fans of these internationally renowned artists.




Contemporary Painting in Context


Book Description

These essays examine the transformation and expansion of the field of painting in relation to the more general lines of development in culture and visuality. The book is divided into five parts, with each of them pursuing a distinct line of inquiry.




Postmodernism: A Bibliography, 1926-1994


Book Description

This is the first bibliography of Postmodernism to take account of work published in all subject areas and in all languages. Deborah Madsen has identified a new first occurrence of the term in 1926, preceding by more than twenty years the first occurence documented by the Oxford English Dictionary. In a chronological listing, books, articles, notes, letters and working papers on Postmodernism are described with full bibliographical details. Reviews of major books are documented and full contents listings are given for special issues of journals devoted to Postmodernism. An appendix includes books on Postmodernism announced for publication in 1995. This bibliography brings together in one place all secondary material published on Postmodernism. All disciplines are included, from anthropology to zoology: architecture, cultural studies, dance, drama, feminism, fiction, geography, history, legal studies, literary theory, mathematics, medicine, music, pedagogical theory, philosophy, photography and film, poetry, politics, religion, sociology, the visual and plastic arts, and others. The bibliography also documents items in a range of languages other than English: Chinese, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Russian, Slovanian, Spanish, and the Scandinavian languages. Access to the information contained in the bibliography is made easy with a comprehensive index providing guidance according to author, subject, language, and key words. Postmodernism: A Bibliography, 1926-1994 is an essential reference text for anyone working in the area of contemporary culture studies.




Sincerity: How a moral ideal born five hundred years ago inspired religious wars, modern art, hipster chic, and the curious notion that we all have something to say (no matter how dull)


Book Description

“A serious and engaging cultural history painted on an admirably large canvas.”—Laura Kipnis, New York Times Book Review What do John Calvin, Sarah Palin, Jean-Jacques Rosseau, and Bon Iver have in common? A preoccupation with sincerity. With deep historical perspective and a brilliant contemporary spin, R. Jay Magill Jr. tells the beguiling tale of sincerity’s theological past, its current emotional resonance, and the deep impact it has had on the Western soul. At a time when politicians are scrutinized less for the truth of what they say than for how much they really mean it, Sincerity provides a wide-ranging examination of a moral ideal that remains a strange magnetic north in our secular moral compass.




Sincerity: How a Moral Ideal Born Five Hundred Years Ago Inspired Religious Wars, Modern Art, Hipster Chic, and the Curious Notion that We All Have Something to Say (no Matter how Dull)


Book Description

Explores the history, religion, art, and politics behind the history of sincerity, spanning a timeline dotted with Protestant theology, paintings by the insane, French satire, and the anti-hipster movement.




Jung’s Reception of Picasso and Abstract Art


Book Description

This book explores the nature of Jung’s understanding of modern art, in particular his reception to the work of Picasso and his striking prejudice shown in his controversial essay of 1932. Offering an important contribution towards understanding Jung’s attitudes towards Picasso and modern art, the book addresses the impact that Jung’s unwillingness to engage in a deeper exploration of modern artforms had on the development of his psychological ideas. It explores and uncovers the reasons for Jung’s derogatory view of Picasso and abstract art more generally, revealing how Jung was unable to remain objective due to his own complex and equally fascinating relationship with art and the psychology of image making. The book argues that modern art parallels Jung’s interests by embracing the spirit of experimentation and using new imagery to challenge creative conceptions, which makes Jung’s attitudes towards modern art all the more surprising. Jung’s Reception of Picasso and Abstract Art will be of great interest to researchers, academics and those interested in analytical psychology, Jungian studies, art history and modernism, aesthetics and psychoanalysis.