Critical Condition
Critical Condition
Out of Print
In Critical Condition, Eleanor Heartney examines the art world from 1985 to 1994, a tumultuous period that ushered in the art boom and bust, the emergence (and in some cases disappearance) of developments like Appropriation, Neo-Geo, and multiculturalism, and the ongoing attack on art by the religious right and political conservatives. Chronicling events that took place during this decade, with a particular focus on public art, Heartney also examines the mechanisms of the gallery and media system, especially as they relate to the practice of art criticism; as well as the complexities of the debate on art and pornography. Written during a pivotal period of contemporary art, Heartney's essay provides a picture of a culture in a crisis of values which has yet to be resolved.
- Challenges calls for censorship with reasoned understanding of the role of pornography in avant-garde art
- Provides a critical look at multiculturalism as defined within the art world
- Includes a section devoted to public art
Product details
May 1997Paperback
9780521557634
239 pages
228 × 153 × 15 mm
0.455kg
29 b/w illus.
Unavailable - out of print June 2005
Table of Contents
- 1. In praise of uncertainty
- Part I. Movements and Strategies: From Recycled Art to Diversity by Decree:
- 2. Appropriation and the loss of authenticity
- 3. Neo-Geo storms New York
- 4. Rehabilitating abstraction
- 5. Social responsibility and censorship
- 6. Art in the nineties: a mixed prognosis
- 7. Aesthetic quality, artistic control
- Part II. Analysing The System: Commerce and the Critic:
- 8. High priest or media flack: the art critic in the age of hype
- 9. Artists versus the market
- 10. Art impresarios: the conjuring of the critic curator
- Part III. Body Work: Sexuality and Transgression:
- 11. David Salle: impersonal effects
- 12. A necessary transfiguration: pornography and postmodernism
- 13. Pornography, feminist fundamentalism and the transcendence of self
- Part IV. Enter the Other: Multiculturalism and its Discontents:
- 14. The whole earth show
- 15. Against nature/primal spirit: two views of contemporary Japanese art
- 16. The new word order
- 17. Identity politics at the Whitney
- Part V. The Problematics of Public Art:
- 18. The new social sculpture
- 19. What's missing at Battery Park?
- 20. Report from Newcastle: cultivating an engaged public art
- 21. The dematerialization of public art
- Name index.
