Idiosyncratic Identities
Artists at the End of the Avant-Garde
- Author: Donald Burton Kuspit, State University of New York, Stony Brook
- Date Published: December 1996
- availability: Unavailable - out of print June 1999
- format: Paperback
- isbn: 9780521556521
Paperback
Other available formats:
Hardback
Looking for an inspection copy?
This title is not currently available on inspection
-
Postmodernism has been described as a decadent and pluralistic period, where avant-garde art has been institutionalised, stereotyped and effectively neutralised; and where models of art seem to stand in ironical, nihilistic relationship to every other. In this study, Donald Kuspit argues that only the idiosyncratic artist remains credible and convincing in the postmodern era. He pursues a sense of artistic and human identity in a situation where there are no guidelines, art historically or socially. Idiosyncratic art, Kuspit posits, is a radically personal art that establishes unconscious communication between individuals in doubt of their identity. Functioning as a medium of self-identification, it affords a sense of authentic selfhood and communicative intimacy in a postmodern society where authenticity and intimacy seem irrelevant and absurd.
Read more- Analysis of the postmodern situation of visual art
- Examination of major American and European contemporary artists
- Discussion of the issue of identity as it arises in their art
Customer reviews
Not yet reviewed
Be the first to review
Review was not posted due to profanity
×Product details
- Date Published: December 1996
- format: Paperback
- isbn: 9780521556521
- length: 384 pages
- dimensions: 252 x 177 x 22 mm
- weight: 0.793kg
- contains: 32 b/w illus.
- availability: Unavailable - out of print June 1999
Table of Contents
Introduction: idiosyncracy: the final frontier
Part I. Zeitgeist:
1. The opera is over: a critique of eighties sensibility
2. The appropriation of marginal art in the 1980s
3. The magic kingdom of the museum
4. Sizing art up (and down): the issue of quality
5. The short, happy life of the work of art: from artifact to art to arty fact
6. The end of creative imagination
7. Marcel Duchamp: imposter artist
8. Act out, turn off
Part II. Artists:
9. The horse in the industrial age: Deborah Butterfield's sculptures
10. Improbable portraits: George Condo's drolleries
11. Paradox perfected: Agnes Denes's pyramids
12. The cunning of unreason: Charles Hinman's absurdist constructions
13. Alfred Jensen: systems mystagogue
14. Wolfgang Laib's mystical revolution
15. Carlo Maria Mariani: the re-enactment of beauty
16. Robert Mapplethorpe: aestheticising the perverse. 17
Jackson Pollock: late works, 1952–1955
18. Voluptuous technology: Keith Sonnier's painterly sculpture
19. Jorge Tacla's irreality
20. The Psychopolitical Automatism of Antoni Tapies
21. William Tucker: the fated return of the body
22. Bill Viola: the mystical defense against the feeling of being mad
23. Cooling excitement: eros and self in Paul Waldman's art
Part III. Speculations:
24. The great divide
25. Art: sublimated expression of transitional experience? The examples of Van Gogh and Mondrian
26. The expressive gaze
27. Philosophy and art: elective affinities in an arranged marriage
28. In search of the visionary image
29. Envy and gratitude: the ambivalence of psychoanalysis to art
30. The avant-garde complex and the postmodern perplex
31. Mystic and maid.
Related Books
Sorry, this resource is locked
Please register or sign in to request access. If you are having problems accessing these resources please email lecturers@cambridge.org
Register Sign in» Proceed
You are now leaving the Cambridge University Press website. Your eBook purchase and download will be completed by our partner www.ebooks.com. Please see the permission section of the www.ebooks.com catalogue page for details of the print & copy limits on our eBooks.
Continue ×Are you sure you want to delete your account?
This cannot be undone.
Thank you for your feedback which will help us improve our service.
If you requested a response, we will make sure to get back to you shortly.
×