Art Review - March Issue - (Page 150)

Warning : session_start : The session id contains invalid characters, valid characters are only a-z, A-Z and 0-9 in /mnt/data/www.nxtbook.com/fx/config_1.3/global.php on line 9 Warning : session_start : Cannot send session cache limiter - headers already sent output started at /mnt/data/www.nxtbook.com/fx/config_1.3/global.php:9 in /mnt/data/www.nxtbook.com/fx/config_1.3/global.php on line 9 Warning : Cannot modify header information - headers already sent by output started at /mnt/data/www.nxtbook.com/fx/config_1.3/global.php:9 in /mnt/data/www.nxtbook.com/fx/config_1.3/global.php on line 10 Books: Although the title would seem to promise analysis of art that has followed on from and is exegetic to conceptual art of the 1960s and 70s, this collection of essays places more emphasis on re-evaluating historiography. The first two sections, ‘After Conceptual Art’ and ‘Dismantling Binaries’, with essays by Benjamin Buchloh, Isabelle Graw, Helen Molesworth, Gregor Stemmrich and others, establish the overarching methodology of the book – the careful disembowelment of preexisting readings of artworks. Conceptualism as the last bastion of avant-gardism, on the verge of splintering into postmodernism, is an enduring and alluring idea, but the book aims to scotch the generalisations required to demark a movement, reconfiguring polarities – such as expressionistic and conceptual representation, design and art, feminist theory and essentialism, the public and private realm – into a series of overlapping heterodoxies. As a subtext this does not constitute news, but the tight locality within which the writers map their propositions makes for a number of useful metonyms for thinking about contemporary art. Presumptions regarding conceptualism’s negation of commodification, visual opulence, craft-based production values, expressiveness and institutional control come under repeated interrogation. Graw’s essay, for instance, outlines historical points and counterpoints when gesture and concept have operated under apparently contradictory conditions. She suggests their reciprocal residual inflection on one another and traces processes of value formation and relations to the market, drawing a matrix through which to evaluate contemporary fusions. ART AFTER CONCEPTUAL ART Edited by Alexander Alberro & Sabeth Buchmann MIT Press, £17.95/$30.00 paperback In contrast to publications like ArtReview, which emphasise an illustrative relationship between image and text to afford easy visual access, Art After Conceptual Art carries murky black-and white reproductions to little elucidatory effect. Considering the subject matter of the book, this would at first seem tenderly ironic, mirroring the assumed anti-aesthetic stance of the subject in hand. But as the informatic nature of conceptualism is proved to be not without its exceptions, the book’s reproductions become more of a synonym for how academic discourse formulates an artwork’s phenomenology at a different level to journalism. What can be perceived as the opacity of such essays is often down to the employment of less accessible or stable references than imagery. While drawing connective tissue between phenomena with recourse to other artworks, historical positions or formal or methodological tropes, these essays reflect the anxiety of its mutability. It would seem that the myopic view imparted by such a partially hidden field of references is demonstrative of the aim of the book, as stirring up the sediment of art history necessarily negates conclusiveness. Sally O’Reilly p150-153 Books AR Mar07.indd 150 31/1/07 11:25:34  Warning : Unknown : The session id contains invalid characters, valid characters are only a-z, A-Z and 0-9 in Unknown on line 0 Warning : Unknown : Failed to write session data files . Please verify that the current setting of session.save_path is correct /var/lib/php/session in Unknown on line 0

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Art Review - March Issue

Manifesto
Dispatches
Consumed
Tales from the City
David Lynch
Marcel Dzama
Future Greats
Art Pilgrimage: Moscow
Mixed Media: Moving Images
Mixed Media: Photography
Mixed Media: Digital
Reviews
Book Reviews
On the Town
On the Record

Art Review - March Issue

https://www.nxtbookmedia.com