Stewart Home: The Assault on Culture: Utopian Currents from Lettrisme to Class War (1988–) [EN, IT, ES]
Filed under book | Tags: · aesthetics, art, art history, avant-garde, fluxus, lettrism, mail art, neoism, pataphysics, punk, situationists
In The Assault on Culture, Stewart Home outlines the subterranean history of mid-to-late 20th century avant-gardes in which artistic and political vanguardism emerge as indissociable. In a comprehensive overview of relatively marginal movements—such as lettrism, situationism, and punk—Home analyzes these radical practices and experiences, which, due to their involvement in alternative forms of sociability as well as their relational, process-oriented, and political character, have remained at the margins of dominant art historiography. Home thereby establishes a critical rewriting of the neo avant-garde from a perspective that shares little with the paradigm of modernist formalism. (from MACBA)
First published by Aporia Press and Unpopular Books, London, 1988
Second UK edition, by AK Press, 1991
Review: Libero Andreotti (J Architectural Education, 1996).
Commentary: Not Bored! (1996, Home’s response)
The Assault on Culture (PDF), EPUB, HTML (from the author)
Assalto alla cultura (Italian, trans. Luther Blissett, 1996, unpaginated)
El asalto a la cultura (Spanish, trans. Jesus Carrillo and Jordi Claramonte, 2002)
See also Home’s Neoism, Plagiarism & Praxis, 1995.
Comment (0)Will Bradley, Charles Esche (eds.): Art and Social Change: A Critical Reader (2007)
Filed under book | Tags: · aesthetics, art, art history, art theory, avant-garde, bauhaus, constructivism, dada, politics, revolution, situationists, social movements, subversion, zapatistas
“The desire to change the world has often led artists to align themselves with wider social movements and to break with established institutions of art. This reader gathers together an international selection of artists’ proposals, manifestos, theoretical texts and public declarations that focus on the question of political engagement and the possibility of social change. The approaches represented are many and diverse, from Gustave Courbet’s involvement in the Paris Commune and the socialist art theory of William Morris to the hybrid activist practice associated with the twenty-first century ‘movement of movements’; from the political commitments of the Modernist avant-gardes to the rejections of Modernism in favour of protest, critique, utopian social experiment or revolutionary propaganda. Six specially commissioned essays – by Geeta Kapur, Lucy Lippard, John Milner, Gerald Raunig, Marina Vishmidt and Tirdad Zolghadr – further explore both the historical context and the contemporary situation.”
Publisher Tate Publishing, in association with Afterall, London, 2007
ISBN 9781854376268
479 pages
Commentary: Marco Deseriis and Brian Holmes (Mute).
Comments (3)Tomáš Štraus: Umenie dnes: pokus o kritickú esej (1968) [Slovak]
Filed under book | Tags: · 1960s, abstract art, aesthetics, art, art criticism, art history, art theory, avant-garde, constructivism, intermedia art, modernism, op art, science, suprematism, surrealism, tachisme
A critical review of the arts of the 1960s by the Slovak art theorist and historian Thomas Strauss (1931–2013).
“Je ťažké, ba priam nemožné rozlíšiť, kde končí sféra dejín prekračujúcich prah čerstvej až najčerstvejšej súčasnosti. Nejde tu len o nový, ustavične sa rozmnožujúci a neohraničený materiál, ktorý ešte nestačil vykryštalizovať a primerane spevnieť, aby sa mohol stať predmetom chladnej analytickej vedeckej pozornosti. Ide predovšetkým o stanovisko a metódu. Predkladaná práca sa hlási k dedičstvu — ako sa u nás doposiaľ hnevlivo hovorí — ‘neobjektívnych’ a ‘nehistorických’, to znamená horúcou ihlou bezprostredného zážitku zošívaných prieskumov novej tvorby. Od Herberta Reada po povedzme Jindřicha Chalupeckého (ktorému som navyše zaviazený i za konkrétne pripomienky k rukopisu) je veľký rozptyl autorov, ktorí v posledných desaťročiach uvažujú o umení — dnes. Priznávam sa k tejto tradícii programovo už i vlastným titulom práce.” (from the Foreword)
With Russian and English summaries (pp 159-162 & 163-165)
Publisher Vydavateľstvo politickej literatúry, Bratislava, February 1968
Volume 2 of Monoskop Unlimited Edition series
185 pages
Interview with the author (Daniel Grúň, Kritika & Kontext, 2005, in Slovak)
PDF (70 MB, no OCR)
Comment (1)