ReNew Marxist Art History - Hardcover

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1908970111 ISBN 13: 9781908970114

Publisher: Art / Books, 2014

Synopsis

From the early decades of the twentieth century until the 1980s, Marxist art history was at the forefront of radical approaches to the discipline. But in the last two decades of the century and into the next, Marxist art historians found themselves marginalized from the vanguard by the rise of postmodernism and identity politics. In the wake of the recent global crisis there has been a resurgence of interest in Marx. This collection of essays, a festschrift in honor of leading Marxist art historian Andrew Hemingway, brings together 30 academics who are reshaping art history along Marxist lines. The essayists include Matthew Beaumont, Warren Carter, Michael Corris, Gail Day, Paul Jaskot, Stewart Martin, Frederic J. Schwartz, Caroline Arscott, Steve Edwards, Charles Ford, Brian Foss, Tom Gretton, Alan Wallach, Michael Bird, Martin I. Gaughan, Barnaby Haran and Fred Orton, among others.

About this title

Review:

The book s three editors have certainly risen to the title s double mission.... This book is valuable because it disables the stretch of transhistorical categories in favour of the minor textual detail.... [It] is worth reading closely precisely because it forgoes a programmatic rehearsal of Marx s famous 11th thesis on Feuerbach: Philosophers have hitherto only interpreted the world in various ways; the point is to change it. Instead this injunction to the reader that she work to renew a commitment to Marxist Art History is threaded through a complex aggregate of writing that connects lots of ground (some familiar, some untrodden). And the book s three editors have certainly risen to the title s double mission.... ReNew Marxist Art History is an open invitation. --Review 31

The book provides a lucid and important statement about where and how the discipline stands today.... What this volume captures is how contemporary Marxist art historians have sought to re-establish and extend the original vibrant and sophisticated tradition.... It deals with specific cultural subjects with valuable insights about particular artists and cultural developments by writers committed to using a historical materialist method.... What also recommends this volume is that even where you disagree with some of the authors conclusions, their framework generally allows for thought and intellectual stimulation.... The volume is a useful addition to our understanding of Marxist art history and crucially, and because of its nature, extends our understanding to the whole of class society. --Socialist Review

The book provides a lucid and important statement about where and how the discipline stands today.... What this volume captures is how contemporary Marxist art historians have sought to re-establish and extend the original vibrant and sophisticated tradition.... It deals with specific cultural subjects with valuable insights about particular artists and cultural developments by writers committed to using a historical materialist method.... What also recommends this volume is that even where you disagree with some of the authors conclusions, their framework generally allows for thought and intellectual stimulation.... The volume is a useful addition to our understanding of Marxist art history and crucially, and because of its nature, extends our understanding to the whole of class society. --Socialist Review

About the Author:

Frederic J. Schwartz is the head of the history of art department at University College London. He is the author of The Werkbund: Design Theory and Mass Culture Before the First World War and Blind Spots: Critical Theory and the History of Art in Twentieth-Century Germany, both published by Yale University Press.

About this edition

• Publisher: Art / Books
• Publication date: 2014
• ISBN 10: 1908970111
• ISBN 13: 9781908970114
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 520
• Editor: Warren Carter, Barnaby Haran, Frederic J. Schwartz