Minglu Gao: Total Modernity and the Avant-Garde in Twentieth-Century Chinese Art (2011)

“To the extent that Chinese contemporary art has become a global phenomenon, it is largely through the groundbreaking exhibitions curated by Gao Minglu: ‘China/Avant-Garde’ (Beijing, 1989), ‘Inside Out: New Chinese Art’ (Asia Society, New York, 1998), and ‘The Wall: Reshaping Contemporary Chinese Art’ (Albright-Knox Art Gallery, 2005) among them. As the first Chinese writer to articulate a distinctively Chinese avant-gardism and modernity—one not defined by Western chronology or formalism—Gao Minglu is largely responsible for the visibility of Chinese art in the global art scene today.

Contemporary Chinese artists tend to navigate between extremes, either embracing or rejecting a rich classical tradition. Indeed, for Chinese artists, the term “modernity” refers not to a new epoch or aesthetic but to a new nation—modernity inextricably connects politics to art. It is this notion of “total modernity” that forms the foundation of the Chinese avant-garde aesthetic, and of this book.

Gao examines the many ways Chinese artists engaged with this intrinsic total modernity, including the ’85 Movement, political pop, cynical realism, apartment art, maximalism, and the museum age, encompassing the emergence of local art museums and organizations as well as such major events as the Shanghai Biennial. He describes the inner logic of the Chinese context while locating the art within the framework of a worldwide avant-garde. He vividly describes the Chinese avant-garde’s embrace of a modernity that unifies politics, aesthetics, and social life, blurring the boundaries between abstraction, conception, and representation. Lavishly illustrated with color images throughout, this book will be a touchstone for all considerations of Chinese contemporary art.”

Publisher MIT Press, 2011
ISBN 0262014947, 9780262014946
409 pages

Reviews: Craig Clunas (Artforum, 2011), David Carrier (artCritical, 2011).

Publisher

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Willem Schinkel, Liesbeth Noordegraaf-Eelens (eds.): In Medias Res: Peter Sloterdijk’s Spherological Poetics of Being (2011)

“In recent years, Peter Sloterdijk has become one of Germany’s most influential thinkers. His diverse body of work includes a Heideggerian project to think “space and time,” a Diogenes-inspired affirmation of the body, and a Deleuzian ontology of network-spheres. This highly accessible collection of essays brings together a team of internationally renowned scholars, including Sjoerd van Tuinen, Rudi Laermans, Peter Weibel, and Bruno Latour, to provide a series of critical reflections on Sloterdijk’s oeuvre.”

Publisher Amsterdam University Press, Amsterdam, 2011
Creative Commons Licence BY-NC 3.0 License
ISBN 908964329X, 9789089643292
204 pages

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Éric Alliez, Andrew Goffey (eds.): Guattari Effect (2011)

“The Guattari Effect brings together internationally renowned experts on the work of the French psychoanalyst, philosopher and political activist Félix Guattari with philosophers, psychoanalysts, sociologists, anthropologists and artists who have been influenced by Guattari’s thought.

Best known for his collaborative work with Gilles Deleuze, Guattari’s own writings are still a relatively unmined resource in continental philosophy. Many of his books have not yet been translated into English. Yet his influence has been considerable and far-reaching. This book explores the full spectrum of Guattari’s work, reassessing its contemporary significance and giving due weight to his highly innovative contributions to a variety of fields, including linguistics, economics, pragmatics, ecology, aesthetics and media theory. Readers grappling with the ideas of contemporary continental philosophers such as Badiou, Žižek and Rancière will at last be able to see Guattari as the ‘extraordinary philosopher’ Deleuze claimed him to be, with his distinctive radical ideas about the epoch of global ‘deterritorialization’ we live in today, forged within the practical contexts of revolutionary politics and the materialist critique of psychoanalysis.”

Publisher Continuum, 2011
ISBN 1441121978, 9781441121974
224 pages

Publisher

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