Renew Marxist Art History

'From the beginning of the twentieth century until the 1980s, Marxist art history was at the forefront of radical approaches to the discipline. Some of the most influential names in the field were active proponents of Marxist thought: Frederick Antal, Max Raphael, Arnold Hauser, Meyer Schapiro, T.J. Clark, to name just a few. But in the last two decades of the century and into the next, Marxist art historians found themselves marginalized from the vanguard by the rise of postmodernism and identity politics, which began to dominate the subject. This came at a time when Marxism in general was itself increasingly perceived as outdated after the collapse of communism. But in the wake of the recent global crisis there has been a resurgence in interest in Marx, especially among younger generations. Today many progressive art historians are once again recognizing the relevance of his ideas to their own practice and drawing upon Marxists perspectives of the past.

This collection of essays brings together twenty-seven academics who are reshaping art history along Marxist lines. Coming from the United States, Britain Europe and Asia, they apply Marx’s theories and those of his followers to a wide range of art-historical subjects. American landscape art of the nineteenth century; popular prints in pre-revolutionary Mexico; modernism in Weimar Germany and 1930s New York; postwar abstract and realist printing; Situationism in 1960s Paris; and documentary photography and contemporary art – these are just some of the many areas considered through the lens of Marxism as it is understood today, And in the spirit of Marxism’s long tradition of self-critique, the contributor also examine the shifting agendas and limitations of Marxist art history itself, acutely aware of the specific historical and political circumstances in which it is produced.' - excerpted from front flap.

Includes an index.

Access level

Onsite

publisher

Art Books (London, United Kingdom)

editor

Warren CARTER,

Barnaby HARAN,

Frederic J. SCHWARTZ

Location code

REF.CAW

Language

English

Keyword

art history, cultural studies, sociology, Marxism, capitalism

Publication/Creation date

2013

No of pages

520

ISBN / ISSN

9781908970121

No of copies

Content type

anthology

Chapter headings

Introduction: Towards a History of the Marxist History of Art - Warren CARTER

Marxist Theory in Practice

Art History's Furies - John ROBERTS

The Political Logic of Radical Art History: Meyer Schpiro and German Aesthetic Debates in the 1930s and 1940s - Stephen F. EISENMAN

The Dialectical Legacies of Radical Art History: Meyer Schapiro and German Aesthetic Debates in the 1930s and 1940s - Warren CARTER

Approaching Marx's Aesthetic: Or, What is Sensuous Practice? - Stewart MARTIN

A Communion of Just Men Made Perfect: Walter Pater, Romanic Anti-Capitalism and the Paris Commune - Matthew BEAUMONT

What Remains of Adorno's Critique of Culture? - Norbert SCHNEIDER

Aby Warburg and the Spirit of Calitalism - Frederic J. SCHWARTZ

Landscape, Class and Ideology

A Note on Aestheticizing Tendencies in American Landscape Painting 1840-80 - Alan WALLACH

Meaning, Change and Ambiguity in Canadian Landscape Imagery: Homer Watson and The Pioneer Mill - Brian FOSS

'One Spectator is a Better Witness Than Ten Listeners': Roger North, Making the Past Public - Charles FORD

'Ever-Recurring Controversy': John Thompson, William James Stillman and the Bootblacks - Steve EDWARDS

Calaveras and Commodity Fetishism: The Unhallowed Supernatural in the Work of José Guadalupe Posada - Tom GRETTON

Reading Ahab: Rockwell Kent, Herman Melville and C. L. R. James - Angela MILLER

William Morris, Ornament and the Coordinates of the Body - Caroline ARSCHOTT

Marxism And the Shaping of Modernism

Red Hashar: Louis Lozowick's Lithographs of Soviet Tajikstan - Barnaby HARAN

Lu Märten and the Question of a Marxist Aesthetic in 1920s Germany - Martin I. GAUGHAN

Experiment and Propaganda: Art in the Monthly New Masses - Rachel SANDERS

Stuart Davis and Left Modernism on the New York Waterfront in the 1930s - Jody PATTERSON

Action, Revolution and Painting: Resumed - Fred ORTON

Erasure and Jewishness in Otto Dix's Portrait of the Lawyer Hugo Simons - James A. VAN DYKE

The Nazi Party's Strategic Use of the Bauhaus: Marxist Art History and the Political Conditions of Artistic Production - Paul B. JASKOT

Marxism in a New World Order

Realism and Materialism in Postwar European Art - Alex POTTS

The Situation of Women - Francis STARCEY

Photography, Language and the Pictorial Turn - Peter SMITH

Scars on the Landscape: Doris Salcedo Between Two Worlds - WU Chintao, 吳金桃

Realism, Totality and the Militant Citoyen: or, What Does Lukacs Have to Do with Contemporary Art? - Gail DAY

Deartification This Side of Art: Ideology Critique, Autonomy and Reproduction - Kerstin STAKEMEIER

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