Wow! eBook
The Utopian Globalists: Artists of Worldwide Revolution, 1919–2009
Author(s): Jonathan Harris (Author)
- Publisher: Wiley–Blackwell
- Publication Date: 28 Jun. 2019
- Language: English
- Print length: 224 pages
- ISBN-10: 140519300X
- ISBN-13: 9781405193009
Book Description
An innovative history and critical account mapping the ways artists and their works have engaged with, and offered commentary on, modern spectacle in both capitalist and socialist modernism over the past ninety years.
- Focuses on artists whose work expresses the concept of revolutionary social transformation
- Provides a strong historical narrative that adds structure and clarity
- Features a cogent and innovative critique of contemporary art and institutions
- Covers 100 years of art from Vladimir Tatlin s constructivist Monument to the Third International , to Picasso s late 1940s commitment to Communism, to the Unilever Series sponsored Large Artworks installed at London s Tate Modern since 2000.
- Includes the only substantial account in print of John Lennon and Yoko Ono s 1969 Montreal Bed–in
- Offers an accessible description and interpretation of Debord s society of the spectacle theory
Editorial Reviews
From the Back Cover
This innovative and revealing history examines artists whose work embodies notions of revolution and human social transformation. The clearly structured historical narrative takes the reader on a cultural odyssey that begins with Vladimir Tatlin s constructivist Monument to the Third International (1919), a statement of utopian globalist intent, via Picasso s 1940s commitment to Soviet Communism and John and Yoko s Montreal Bed–in , to what the author calls the late globalism of the Unilever Series at London s Tate Modern.
The book maps the ways artists and their work engaged with, and offered commentary on, modern spectacle in both capitalist and socialist modernism, throughout the eras of the Russian revolution, the Cold War and the increasingly globalized world of the last 20 years. In doing so, Harris explores the idea that the utopian–globalist lineage in art remains torn between its yearning for freedom and a deepening identification with spectacle as a media commodity to be traded and consumed.
About the Author
Jonathan Harris is Professor in Global Art and Design Studies at Winchester School of Art, University of Southampton, UK. Prof. Harris s work has consistently explored questions of state power, culture, art, ideology and social order, particularly in Europe and America over the last century. His The New Art History: A Critical Introduction (2001) remains a classic text, and he has published 17 books as editor, author and co–author, including Globalization and Contemporary Art (Wiley–Blackwell, 2011).
