Adorno, Benjamin, Bloch, Brecht, Lukács: Aesthetics and Politics (1977/1980)
Filed under book | Tags: · 1930s, 1940s, 1950s, aesthetics, art, marxism, politics
The most remarkable aesthetic debates in European cultural history, with an afterword by Fredric Jameson.
No other country and no other period has produced a tradition of major aesthetic debate to compare with that which unfolded in German culture from the 1930s to the 1950s. In Aesthetics and Politics the key texts of the great Marxist controversies over literature and art during these years are assembled in a single volume. They do not form a disparate collection but a continuous, interlinked debate between thinkers who have become giants of twentieth-century intellectual history.
by Theodor Adorno, Walter Benjamin, Ernst Bloch, Bertolt Brecht, and Georg Lukács
Afterword by Fredric Jameson
First published in 1977
Publisher Verso, London, 1980
ISBN 860917223, 902308386
221 pages
PDF (updated on 2020-12-10)
Comments (4)Ken Friedman (ed.): The Fluxus Reader (1998)
Filed under book | Tags: · 1950s, 1960s, aesthetics, art, avant-garde, fluxus
“Fluxus began in the 1950s as a loose, international community of artists, architects, composers and designers. By the 1960s, Fluxus has become a laboratory of ideas and an arena for artistic experimentation in Europe, Asia and the United States. Described as ‘the most radical and experimental art movement of the 1960s’, Fluxus challenged conventional thinking on art and culture for over four decades. It had a central role in the birth of such key contemporary art forms as concept art, installation, performance art, intermedia and video. Despite this influence, the scope and scale of this unique phenomenon have made it difficult to explain Fluxus in normative historical and critical terms. The Fluxus Reader offers the first comprehensive overview on this challenging and controversial group. It is written by leading scholars and experts from Europe and the United States.”
Publisher Academy Editions, UK, 1998
Creative Commons Attribution CC-BY 3.0 Unported licence
ISBN 0471978582, 9780471978589
309 pages
The version of the text provided for download here contains updates on the original 1998 edition.
via Joseph Nechvatal
Reviews: Elizabeth Beckman and Jonathan Applefield (Art J, 1999), Beáta Hock (Artpool, n.d.).
PDF (37 MB, updated on 2012-7-30)
PDF chapters
Piotr Piotrowski: In the Shadow of Yalta: Art and the Avant-garde in Eastern Europe, 1945-1989 (2005/2009)
Filed under book | Tags: · 1940s, 1950s, 1960s, 1970s, 1980s, art, art history, art theory, avant-garde, central europe, communism, east-central europe, eastern europe, southeastern europe, soviet union
“In the Shadow of Yalta is a comprehensive study of the artistic culture of the region between the Iron Curtain and the USSR, taking in Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, Germany, Hungary, Poland, Romania and Yugoslavia. Piotr Piotrowski chronicles the relationship between art production and politics in this zone between the end of World War II and the fall of Communism, focusing in particular on the avant-garde.
Beginning with an analysis of Surrealism in Czechoslovakia, Poland and Hungary, Piotrowski then examines the evolution of Modernism against the backdrop of the decline of Stalinism. He follows with an account of the neo-avant-garde experience: the body art and conceptual art made during the volatile political circumstances of the 1970s, the times of ‘real Socialism’. The book concludes with an epilogue describing the end of the Communist system in East-Central Europe, and the art that served witness to that end. Alongside the portrayal of the frequently challenging art that was made in response to such difficult circumstances, the common threads that emerge from the narrative are the erosion of ideology, the rise of consumerism and the emergence of political pragmatism.
Featuring more than 220 images by artists frequently unfamiliar to an English-speaking audience, In the Shadow of Yalta is a fascinating portrait of the art made in an area and during a time of crucial importance to the development of Europe as we know it today. The book will have much to say to art historians, art critics, and students of art history interested in Central and Eastern European art, as well as general historians of the region.”
First published by Rebis, Poznań, Poland, 2005.
Translated by Anna Brzyski
Publisher Reaktion Books, 2009
ISBN 1861894384, 9781861894380
487 pages
Reviews: Katarzyna Murawska-Muthesius (Umění, 2007, repr.), Piotr Bernatowicz (Nordlit, 2007), Dorota Biczel Nelson (2008), Éva Forgács (ARTMargins, 2009, repr.), Magdalena Cześniak-Zielińska (Facta Simonidis, 2009, PL), Henning Küpper (kunsttexte.de Ostblick, 2010, DE), Andrzej Szczerski (Journal of Architecture, 2010), Pál Deréky (Balkon, 2010, HU), David Crowley (J European Studies, 2011).
PDF (updated on 2019-2-2)
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