Overview
It may be time to forget the art worldāor at least to recognize that a certain historical notion of the art world is in eclipse. Today, the art world spins on its axis so quickly that its maps can no longer be read; its borders blur. In Forgetting the Art World, Pamela Lee connects the current state of this world to globalization and its attendant controversies. Contemporary art has responded to globalization with images of movement and migration, borders and multitudes, but Lee looks beyond iconography to view globalization as a world process. Rather than think about the āglobal art worldā as a socioeconomic phenomenon, or in terms of the imagery it stages and sponsors, Lee considers āthe work of art's worldā as a medium through which globalization takes place. She argues that the work of art is itself both object and agent of globalization.
Lee explores the ways that art actualizes, iterates, or enables the processes of globalization, offering close readings of works by artists who have come to prominence in the last two decades. She examines the ājust in timeā managerial ethos of Takahashi Murakami; the production of ethereal spaces in Andreas Gursky's images of contemporary markets and manufacture; the logic of immanent cause dramatized in Thomas Hirschhorn's mixed-media displays; and the āpseudo-collectivismā in the contemporary practice of the Atlas Group, the Raqs Media Collective, and others.
To speak of āthe work of art's world,ā Lee says, is to point to both the work of art's mattering and its materialization, to understand the activity performed by the object as utterly continuous with the world it at once inhabits and creates.
This book title, Forgetting the Art World, ISBN: 9780262534468, by Pamela M. Lee, published by MIT Press (August 11, 2017) is available in paperback. Our minimum order quantity is 25 copies. All standard bulk book orders ship FREE in the continental USA and delivered in 4-10 business days.
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