Fashionable art

Nominated for the 2016 Art in Literature: Mary Lynn Kotz Award, Library of Virginia Owing to digitization, globalization and mass culture, what is deemed 'desirable' and 'of the moment' in art has increasingly followed the patterns of fashion. While in the past artistic styles were always inflected with signs of their modernity, today biennales and art markets are defined by the next big thing, the next sensation, the next new idea. But how do opinions of what is 'good', 'progressive' and 'cutting edge' guide styles? What is it that makes works of art fashionable and commercial? Fashionable Art critically explores the relationships between art, commerce, taste and cultural value. Each chapter covers a major style or movement, from Chinese and Aboriginal art, Cubism and Pop Art to alternative identity and outsider art, exploring how contemporary art has been shaped since the 1970s. Drawing upon a variety of theoretical frameworks, from Adorno and Bourdieu to Simmel and Zizek, expert visual cultural scholars Geczy and Millner engage with both historical and contemporary debates on this lively topic. Taking a complex view of the meaning of fashion as it relates to art, while also offering critiques of 'art as fashion', Fashionable Art is an original, key text that will be essential reading for students and scholars of art history, fashion studies and material culture. Owing to digitization, globalization and mass culture, what is deemed 'desirable' and 'of the moment' in art has increasingly followed the patterns of fashion. While in the past artistic styles were always inflected with signs of their modernity, today biennales and art markets are defined by the next big thing, the next sensation, the next new idea. But how do opinions of what is 'good', 'progressive' and 'cutting edge' guide styles? What is it that makes works of art fashionable and commercial? Fashionable Art critically explores the relationships between art, commerce, taste and cultural value. Each chapter covers a major style or movement, from Chinese and Aboriginal art, Cubism and Pop Art to alternative identity and outsider art, exploring how contemporary art has been shaped since the 1970s. Drawing upon a variety of theoretical frameworks, from Adorno and Bourdieu to Simmel and Zizek, expert visual cultural scholars Geczy and Millner engage with both historical and contemporary debates on this lively topic.0Taking a complex view of the meaning of fashion as it relates to art, while also offering critiques of 'art as fashion', Fashionable Art is an original, key text that will be essential reading for students and scholars of art history, fashion studies and material culture. Machine generated contents note: -- Introduction1. Impressionism: The Avant-Garde Imperative 2. Cubism: The Avant-Garde Made Academic 3. Expressionism and Abstraction: The Guarantee of Feeling4. The Popularity of Pop and the Apotheosis of Kitsch5. Povera and Grunge: Power to the Poor 6. Photography Becomes Photomedia 7. Identity Art8. Chinese, 'Asian' and Aboriginal Art: Neo-Exoticism and Neo-Primitivism 9. YBA: Marketing the New10. Interactivity, Inclusion and Immersion11. The Art Market and Marketing ArtConclusion: Art and the Eternal ReturnBibliographyIndex. Adam Geczy and Jacqueline Millner. Includes bibliographical references and index. Cover 1 CONTENTS 8 List of Illustrations 10 Acknowledgements 12 Introduction 14 1 WHAT IS FASHIONABLE ART? 28 2 THE ARTIST AS IMPRESARIO, THE ARTIST AS BRAND: FROM BAUDELAIRE TO BARNEY 34 Pre-modernism 35 Dandies and the artist as the embodied work of art 38 The artist-hero 40 Artist as brand and go-between 41 The end of the critic, the rise of the agent-dealer 46 The artist as pure image: Matthew Barney 47 3 ‘LOOK AT ME I’M DIFFERENT!’: IDENTITY ART AND THE EXPECTATIONS OF RACE 52 Transorientalism 56 Basquiat: Martyr of the exotic 58 Global curating 60 4 EXOTICISM AT THE BRINK: CONTEMPORARY CHINESE AND ABORIGINAL ART 72 Aboriginal art and the dot 73 Contemporary Chinese art 79 5 LESS IS LESS: FORMLESSNESS 88 L’informe 90 Postmodern anti-aesthetics 91 The critical value of formlessness 94 6 COME FLY WITH ME: PARTICIPATORY ART, INTERACTIVITY AND AUDIENCE INVOLVEMENT 104 Relational aesthetics 106 Critiques of relational aesthetics 111 Broadening out participatory practices: Community 116 New community arts? 120 7 VIDEO ART AND VIDEOPHILIA 126 Activism and self: The 1970s and its fashion legacy 128 The language of video, the found image and appropriation: The fashion legacy of the 1980s 133 Installation and alternative spatial experiences: The 1990s and their fashion legacy 135 Video and the return of narrative 137 The postmedium condition: Aesthetics and participation 138 8 MINIMALISM: DONALD JUDD OR IKEA? 142 Classic Minimalism and its early critiques 145 From Minimalism to anti-aesthetics 149 Contemporary Minimalism as IKEA art 155 Contemporary Minimalism as experience design 157 Not so fashionable? Feminizing Minimalism, formlessness and embodied immediacy 159 9 INSIDE-OUT: OUTSIDER ARTISTS GO INSIDE 162 The fraud of Outsider Art 164 True nature, but packaged 168 Say nothing, say everything 171 Conclusion: Fashionable Art 176 Bibliography 179 Index 187