The Accident of Art (Semiotext(e) / Foreign Agents) - Softcover

Sylvere Lotringer

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1584350202 ISBN 13: 9781584350200

Publisher: Semiotext[e], 2005

Synopsis

There is a catastrophe within contemporary art. What I call the "optically correct" is at stake. The vision machine and the motor have triggered it, but the visual arts haven't learned from it. Instead, they've masked this failure with commercial success. This "accident" is provoking a reversal of values. In my view, this is positive: the accident reveals something important we would not otherwise know how to perceive.-Paul Virilio, The Accident of Art Urbanist and technological theorist Paul Virilio trained as a painter, studying under Henri Matisse, Georges Braque, Bazaine and de Stael. In The Accident of Art, his third extended conversation with Sylvere Lotringer, Virilio addresses the situation of art within technological society for the first time. This book completes a collaborative trilogy the two began in 1982 with Pure War and continued with Crepuscular Dawn, their 2002 work on architecture and biotechnology. In The Accident of Art, Virilio and Lotringer argue that a direct relation exists between war trauma and art. Why has art failed to reinvent itself in the face of technology, unlike performing art? Why has art simply retreated into painting, or surrendered to digital technology? Accidents, Virilio claims, can free us from speed's inertia. As technological catastrophes, accidents are inventions in their own right.

About this title

Product Description:

Translated by Michael Taormina . 8vo pp. 118 Brossura (wrappers) Ottimo (Fine)

Review:

"There is a catastrophe within contemporary art. What I call the "optically correct" is at stake. The vision machine and the motor have triggered it, but the visual arts haven't learned from it. Instead, they've masked this failure with commercial success. This "accident" is provoking a reversal of values. In my view, this is positive: the accident reveals something important we would not otherwise know how to perceive. - Paul Virilio, The Accident of Art"

About this edition

• Publisher: Semiotext[e]
• Publication date: 2005
• ISBN 10: 1584350202
• ISBN 13: 9781584350200
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 120