How Photography Became Contemporary Art

How Photography Became Contemporary Art
Author: Andy Grundberg
Publisher: Yale University Press
Total Pages: 554
Release: 2021-02-23
Genre: Photography
ISBN: 0300259891

A leading critic’s inside story of “the photo boom” during the crucial decades of the 1970s and 80s When Andy Grundberg landed in New York in the early 1970s as a budding writer, photography was at the margins of the contemporary art world. By 1991, when he left his post as critic for the New York Times, photography was at the vital center of artistic debate. Grundberg writes eloquently and authoritatively about photography’s “boom years,” chronicling the medium’s increasing role within the most important art movements of the time, from Earth Art and Conceptual Art to performance and video. He also traces photography’s embrace by museums and galleries, as well as its politicization in the culture wars of the 80s and 90s. Grundberg reflects on the landmark exhibitions that defined the moment and his encounters with the work of leading photographers—many of whom he knew personally—including Gordon Matta-Clark, Cindy Sherman, and Robert Mapplethorpe. He navigates crucial themes such as photography’s relationship to theory as well as feminism and artists of color. Part memoir and part history, this perspective by one of the period’s leading critics ultimately tells a larger story about the crucial decades of the 70s and 80s through the medium of photography.

How Photography Became Contemporary Art

How Photography Became Contemporary Art
Author: Andy Grundberg
Publisher: Yale University Press
Total Pages: 297
Release: 2021-02-23
Genre: Photography
ISBN: 0300234104

A leading critic’s inside story of “the photo boom” during the crucial decades of the 1970s and 80s When Andy Grundberg landed in New York in the early 1970s as a budding writer, photography was at the margins of the contemporary art world. By 1991, when he left his post as critic for the New York Times, photography was at the vital center of artistic debate. Grundberg writes eloquently and authoritatively about photography’s “boom years,” chronicling the medium’s increasing role within the most important art movements of the time, from Earth Art and Conceptual Art to performance and video. He also traces photography’s embrace by museums and galleries, as well as its politicization in the culture wars of the 80s and 90s. Grundberg reflects on the landmark exhibitions that defined the moment and his encounters with the work of leading photographers—many of whom he knew personally—including Gordon Matta-Clark, Cindy Sherman, and Robert Mapplethorpe. He navigates crucial themes such as photography’s relationship to theory as well as feminism and artists of color. Part memoir and part history, this perspective by one of the period’s leading critics ultimately tells a larger story about the crucial decades of the 70s and 80s through the medium of photography.

Contemporary Art, Photography, and the Politics of Citizenship

Contemporary Art, Photography, and the Politics of Citizenship
Author: Vered Maimon
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 161
Release: 2020-07-26
Genre: Photography
ISBN: 1000096769

This book analyzes recent artistic and activist projects in order to conceptualize the new roles and goals of a critical theory and practice of art and photography. Vered Maimon argues that current artistic and activist practices are no longer concerned with the “politics of representation” and the critique of the spectacle, but with a “politics of rights” and the performative formation of shared yet highly contested public domains. The book thus offers a critical framework in which to rethink the artistic, the activist, and the political under globalization. The primary focus is on the ways contemporary artists and activists examine political citizenship as a paradox where subjects are struggling to acquire rights whose formulation rests on attributes they allegedly don't have; while the universal political validity of these rights presupposes precisely the abstraction of every form of difference, rights for all. The book will be of interest to scholars working in art history, contemporary art, photography theory, visual culture, cultural studies, critical theory, political theory, human rights, and activism.

Why Art Photography?

Why Art Photography?
Author: Lucy Soutter
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 197
Release: 2018-01-17
Genre: Art
ISBN: 1351982575

The second edition of Why Art Photography? is an updated, expanded introduction to the ideas behind today’s striking photographic images. Lively, accessible discussions of key issues such as ambiguity, objectivity, fiction, authenticity, and photography’s expanding field are supplemented with new material around timely topics such as globalization, selfie culture, and photographers’ use of advanced digital technologies, including CGI and virtual reality. The new edition includes: an expanded introduction extended chapters featuring emerging trends a larger selection of images, including new color images an improved and expanded bibliography This new edition is essential for students looking to enrich their understanding of photography as a complex and multi-faceted art form.

The Photograph as Contemporary Art (Fourth) (World of Art)

The Photograph as Contemporary Art (Fourth) (World of Art)
Author: Charlotte Cotton
Publisher: Thames & Hudson
Total Pages: 448
Release: 2020-09-08
Genre: Photography
ISBN: 050077594X

A new edition of the definitive title in the field of contemporary art photography by one of the world’s leading experts on the subject, Charlotte Cotton. In the twenty-first century, photography has come of age as a contemporary art form. Almost two centuries after photographic technology was first invented, the art world has fully embraced it as a legitimate medium, equal in status to painting and sculpture. The Photograph as Contemporary Art introduces the extraordinary range of contemporary art photography, from portraits of intimate life to highly staged directorial spectacles. Arranged thematically, the book reproduces work from a vast span of photographers, including Andreas Gursky, Barbara Kasten, Catherine Opie, Cindy Sherman, Deana Lawson, Diana Markosian, Elle Pérez, Gregory Halpern, Lieko Shiga, Nan Goldin, Paul Mpagi Sepuya, Pixy Liao, Susan Meiselas, and Zanele Muholi. This fully revised and updated new edition revitalizes previous discussion of works from the 2000s through dialogue with more recent practice. Alongside previously featured work, Charlotte Cotton celebrates a new generation of artists who are shaping photography as a culturally significant medium for our current sociopolitical climate. A superb resource, The Photograph as Contemporary Art is a uniquely broad and diverse reflection of the field.

Found Sculpture and Photography from Surrealism to Contemporary Art

Found Sculpture and Photography from Surrealism to Contemporary Art
Author: Julia Kelly
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 217
Release: 2017-07-05
Genre: Art
ISBN: 1351566830

Taking its departure point from the 1933 surrealist photographs of ?involuntary sculptures? by Brassa?nd Dal?Found Sculpture and Photography from Surrealism to Contemporary Art offers fresh perspectives on the sculptural object by relating it to both surrealist concerns with chance and the crucial role of photography in framing the everyday. This collection of essays questions the nature of sculptural practice, looking to forms of production and reproduction that blur the boundaries between things that are made and things that are found. One of the book?s central themes is the interplay of presence and absence in sculpture, as it is highlighted, disrupted, or multiplied through photography?s indexical nature. The essays examine the surrealist three-dimensional object, its relation to and transformation through photographs, as well as the enduring legacies of such concerns for the artwork?s materiality and temporality in performance and conceptual practices from the 1960s through the present. Found Sculpture and Photography sheds new light on the shifts in status of the art object, challenging the specificity of visual practices, pursuing a radical interrogation of agency in modern and contemporary practices, and exploring the boundaries between art and everyday life.

Shared Intelligence

Shared Intelligence
Author: Barbara Buhler Lynes
Publisher: Univ of California Press
Total Pages: 239
Release: 2011-03-09
Genre: Art
ISBN: 0520269063

Catalog of an exhibition opening at the Georgia O'Keeffe Museum on Feb. 4, 2011 and traveling to the Columbus Museum of Art and the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts.

The Art of Looking

The Art of Looking
Author: Lance Esplund
Publisher: Basic Books
Total Pages: 288
Release: 2018-11-27
Genre: Art
ISBN: 0465094678

A veteran art critic helps us make sense of modern and contemporary art The landscape of contemporary art has changed dramatically during the last hundred years: from Malevich's 1915 painting of a single black square and Duchamp's 1917 signed porcelain urinal to Jackson Pollock's midcentury "drip" paintings; Chris Burden's "Shoot" (1971), in which the artist was voluntarily shot in the arm with a rifle; Urs Fischer's "You" (2007), a giant hole dug in the floor of a New York gallery; and the conceptual and performance art of today's Ai Weiwei and Marina Abramovic. The shifts have left the art-viewing public (understandably) perplexed. In The Art of Looking, renowned art critic Lance Esplund demonstrates that works of modern and contemporary art are not as indecipherable as they might seem. With patience, insight, and wit, Esplund guides us through the last century of art and empowers us to approach and appreciate it with new eyes. Eager to democratize genres that can feel inaccessible, Esplund encourages viewers to trust their own taste, guts, and common sense. The Art of Looking will open the eyes of viewers who think that recent art is obtuse, nonsensical, and irrelevant, as well as the eyes of those who believe that the art of the past has nothing to say to our present.

Photography

Photography
Author: David Bate
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 321
Release: 2020-09-25
Genre: Art
ISBN: 1000211118

Providing a thorough and comprehensive introduction to the study of photography, this second edition of Photography: The Key Concepts has been expanded and updated to cover more fully contemporary changes to photography. Photography is a part of everyday life; from news and advertisements, to data collection and surveillance, to the shaping of personal and social identity, we are constantly surrounded by the photographic image. Outlining an overview of photographic genres, David Bate explores how these varied practices can be coded and interpreted using key theoretical models. Building upon the genres included in the first edition – documentary, portraiture, landscape, still life, art and global photography – this second edition includes two new chapters on snapshots and the act of looking. The revised and expanded chapters are supported by over three times as many photographs as in the first edition, examining contemporary practices in more detail and equipping students with the analytical skills they need, both in their academic studies and in their own practical work.An indispensable guide to the field, Photography: The Key Concepts is core reading for all courses that consider the place of photography in society, within photographic practice, visual culture, art, media and cultural studies.