David Joselit
After Art
Art as we know it is dramatically changing, but popular and critical responses lag behind. In this trenchant illustrated essay, David Joselit describes how art and architecture are being transformed in the age of Google. Under the dual pressures of digital technology, which allows images to be reformatted and disseminated effortlessly, and the exponential acceleration of cultural exchange enabled by globalization, artists and architects are emphasizing networks as never before. Some of the most interesting contemporary work in both fields is now based on visualizing patterns of dissemination after objects and structures are produced, and after they enter into, and even establish, diverse networks. Behaving like human search engines, artists and architects sort, capture, and reformat existing content. Works of art crystallize out of populations of images, and buildings emerge out of the dynamics of the circulation patterns they will house.
Examining the work of architectural firms such as OMA, Reiser + Umemoto, and Foreign Office, as well as the art of Matthew Barney, Ai Weiwei, Sherrie Levine, and many others, After Art provides a compelling and original theory of art and architecture in the age of global networks.
“Pertinent and intelligent, After Art will be of great interest to art historians and readers of contemporary art and media theory.”—Sylvia Lavin, author of Kissing Architecture
“Standing at the intersection of media studies, architectural criticism, and art history, David Joselit’s After Art confronts the question of contemporary art in an age of proliferating networks. Joselit tracks the literal and epistemic ‘states of form’ of recent visual culture and offers a powerful new model for thinking about art’s circulation and currency.”—Pamela M. Lee, Stanford University
A volume in the series, POINT: Essays on Architecture
Sarah Whiting, Series Editor
Cloth 19.95 USD 978-0-691-15044-4
Read more here.
