Kazimir Malevich: Bog ne skinut. Iskusstvo, tserkov’, fabrika (1922) [Russian]
Filed under pamphlet | Tags: · art, avant-garde
“Through transforming the world I move towards my own transformation and, perhaps, in the last day of my conversion I will transform into a new form leaving my current image in the fading green animal kingdom… And the most economical is a square..”
God Is Not Cast Down: Art, Church, Factory [Бог не скинут: искусство, церковь, фабрика], a pamphlet written in 1920 during Malevich’s days as director of the Vitebsk Academy. The artist attempts to summarize his philosophy of art. For Malevich, this is an exercise just as important, or even more important, than painting. The resulting collection of theses provides for difficult but thought-provoking reading. Published in 2000 copies.
Publisher Unovis, Vitebsk, 1922
43 pages
Malevich on Monoskop wiki
google books
PDF (updated on 2012-11-19)
Comment (0)New Literary History 41(4): What Is an Avant-Garde? (2010)
Filed under journal | Tags: · art, art history, art theory, avant-garde
“What is an avant-garde? In posing such a question, this issue of New Literary History seeks to reexamine a category that often seems all too self-evident. Our aim is not to draw up a fresh list of definitions, specifications, and prescriptions but to explore the conditions and repercussions of the question itself. In the spirit of analogously titled queries—from Kant’s “What is Enlightenment?” to Foucault’s “What is an Author?”—we hope to spur reflection not only on a particular object of study but also on the frameworks and critical faculties that we bring to bear on it. As Paul Mann notes, every critical text on the avant-garde, whether tacitly or overtly, “has a stake in the avant-garde, in its force or destruction, in its survival or death (or both).” A reassessment of these stakes is one of the priorities of this special issue.” (from the Introduction)
With contributions by Jonathan P. Eburne and Rita Felski, Peter Bürger, John Roberts, Elizabeth Harney, Mike Sell, Benjamin Lee, Griselda Pollock, Amy J. Elias, Philippe Sers, Walter L. Adamson, Bob Perelman, Richard Schechner, Martin Puchner
Editor Rita Felski
Publisher The Johns Hopkins University Press
PDF (updated on 2012-7-18)
Comment (0)Stephan Fuchs: Against Essentialism: A Theory of Culture and Society (2001)
Filed under book | Tags: · avant-garde, communication, constructivism, culture, essentialism, ethnomethodology, hermeneutics, networks, social theory, society, sociology, systems theory, theory
Against Essentialism presents a sociological theory of culture. This interdisciplinary and foundational work deals with basic issues common to current debates in social theory, including society, culture, meaning, truth, and communication. Stephan Fuchs argues that many mysteries about these concepts lose their mysteriousness when dynamic variations are introduced.
Fuchs proposes a theory of culture and society that merges two core traditions–American network theory and European (Luhmannian) systems theory. His book distinguishes four major types of social “observers”–encounters, groups, organizations, and networks. Society takes place in these four modes of association. Each generates levels of observation linked with each other into a “culture”–the unity of these observations.
Against Essentialism presents a groundbreaking new approach to the construction of society, culture, and personhood. The book invites both social scientists and philosophers to see what happens when essentialism is abandoned.
Publisher Harvard University Press, 2001
ISBN 0674006100, 9780674006102
380 pages