Aesthetic Revolutions and Twentieth-Century Avant-Garde Movements

Aesthetic Revolutions and Twentieth-Century Avant-Garde Movements

  • Author: Erjavec, Aleš
  • Publisher: Duke University Press
  • ISBN: 9780822358619
  • eISBN Pdf: 9780822375661
  • Place of publication:  Durham , United States
  • Year of digital publication: 2015
  • Month: May
  • Pages: 344
  • Language: English
This collection examines key aesthetic avant-garde art movements of the twentieth century and their relationships with revolutionary politics. The contributors distinguish aesthetic avant-gardes —whose artists aim to transform society and the ways of sensing the world through political means—from the artistic avant-gardes, which focus on transforming representation. Following the work of philosophers such as Friedrich Schiller and Jacques Rancière, the contributors argue that the aesthetic is inherently political and that aesthetic avant-garde art is essential for political revolution. In addition to analyzing Russian constructivsm, surrealism, and Situationist International, the contributors examine Italian futurism's model of integrating art with politics and life, the murals of revolutionary Mexico and Nicaragua, 1960s American art, and the Slovenian art collective NSK's construction of a fictional political state in the 1990s. Aesthetic Revolutions and Twentieth-Century Avant-Garde Movements traces the common foundations and goals shared by these disparate arts communities and shows how their art worked towards effecting political and social change.

Contributors. John E. Bowlt, Sascha Bru, David Craven, Aleš Erjavec, Tyrus Miller, Raymond Spiteri, Miško Šuvakovic
 
  • Contents
  • List of Illustrations
  • Acknowledgments
  • Introduction / Aleš Erjavec
  • 1. Politics as the Art of the Impossible: The Heteronomy of Italian Futurist Art-Action / Sascha Bru
  • 2. 5 × 5 = 25? The Science of Constructivism / John E. Bowlt
  • 3. Convulsive Beauty: Surrealism as Aesthetic Revolution / Raymond Spiteri
  • 4. Aesthetic Avant-Gardes and Revolutionary Movements from Modern Latin America / David Craven
  • 5. All along the Watchtower: Aesthetic Revolution in the United States during the 1960s / Tyrus Miller
  • 6. From Unitary Urbanism to the Society of the Spectacle: The Situationist Aesthetic Revolution / Raymond Spiteri
  • 7. NSK: Critical Phenomenology of the State / Miško Šuvaković
  • Conclusion. Avant-Gardes, Revolutions, and Aesthetics / Aleš Erjavec
  • Bibliography
  • Contributors
  • Index

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