Sven Lütticken

Secret Publicity~ISBN 90-5662-467-9 U.S. $32.50 / Paperback, 5.25 x 7.75 in. / 208 pgs / 38 b&w. ~Item / March / Art

Essays on Contemporary Art

Secret Publicity

Philip Monk

Joslyn Art Museum

Stan Douglas

Morris and Helen Belkin Art Gallery

Picture a six-minute conversation filmed by 20 cameras, then sliced, diced and reshuffled by computer into a film that's 157-hours long. (Yes, that's more than a week, but you don't have to watch the whole thing at once.) It's the essence of Stan Douglas, who "witholds the artificial neatness of conclusion and gives us instead a sense of the interminable," as one admiring critic wrote. In Inconsolable Memories, Douglas uses photos he took in Cuba as the base for his unique approach to narrative, putting together a look at exile and identity against the backdrop of the 1980 Mariel Boatlift. Includes essays by Svon Luttiken and Phillip Monk, the lavishly illustrated screenplay, and 40 color plates of recent photographs.

Inconsolable Memories

In this is a book-length essay, art critic and historian Sven Lutticken takes philosopher Theodor Adorno's critique of popular arts and culture a step further. Adorno criticized the manipulation of taste in official cultures and the pretense of individualism; Lutticken looks at the tension between fundamentalism and individualism in the context of the current religious-political image wars. This book examines both the afterlife of religious elements in modern culture and possible responses to the current religious re-appropriation of Adorno's critique of modern capitalist culture by both Christian fundamentalists and radical Islamists...

Modern Iconoclasm and the Fundamentalist Spectacle

Idols of the Market

Martin Herberts timely new collection of essays considers various artists who have withdrawn from the art world or adopted an antagonistic position toward its mechanisms. Today, a large part of the artists role in our massively professionalized art world is being present. Herbert provides a counterargument for this proactive concept of self-marketing, examining the consequential nature of retreat, whether in protest, as a deliberate conceptual act or out of necessity. By illuminating the motives of artists including Stanley Brouwn, Charlotte Posenenske, David Hammons, Lutz Bacher and Agnes Martin among others, this book offers a unique perspective on where and how the needs of the artist and the needs of the art world diverge. Martin Herbert is a writer and critic living in Berlin. He is associate editor of ArtReview and writes for international art journals. Previous books include The Uncertainty Principle (2014) by Sternberg Press and Mark Wallinger (2011).

Aesthetic Practice After Autonomy

Cultural Revolution

Maria Hlavajova

Jill Winder

Series and the final part of a three-fold project organized by BAK under same title, in which the popular assumption of the return of religion to the field of artistic practice and its discourses, the public sphere, contemporary politics, and media in the West is interrogated as a constitutive "myth" of our current condition. Through a wide-ranging selection of texts, a group of artists, art historians and theorists, scholars of religion, and sociologists unpack the historical underpinnings of religion's so-called "return", art's long-standing relationship with iconoclasm and connection to religious representation, the manipulation of certain religious imagery in the mass media, and contemporary art's potential to complicate and problematize commonly-held beliefs about the role and potential of the image in today's world.

A Critical Reader in Contemporary Art

The Return of Religion and Other Myths

Bas Heijne

Krijn de Koning

The site-specific installations of Krijn de Koning, sometimes compared to the work of Daniel Buren and Michael Asher, are collected in this richly illustrated, chunky catalogue of recent and historical work. According to essayist Sven Lütticken, de Koning is like an archaeologist who peels away old layers of time and adds new ones.

Sven Lütticken

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