In this book 'John Roberts develops a labor theory of culture as a model for explaining the dynamics of avant-garde art and the expansion of artistic authority in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries.
From Duchamp to Warhol, conceptual art, and the “post-visual” practices of the moment, Roberts explores the relationship between artistic labor and productive labor, and the limits and possibilities of authorship. In doing so, he confronts a recurring theme of both conservative and radical detractors of modern art in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries: how is skill, and the seeming absence of skill in modern art, to be theorized and evaluated? Drawing on cognitive psychology, labor process theory, social anthropology, and debates in contemporary political philosophy, Roberts‘ book establishes a new critical topography for examining the cultural form of art today.' - from back cover.
Access level

Onsite

author
Location code
REF.ROJ
Language

English

Publication/Creation date

2007

No of pages

249

ISBN / ISSN

9781844781670

No of copies

1

Content type

monograph

Chapter headings

Introduction: Replicants and Cartesians

1 The Commodity, the Readymade and the Value-Form

2 Modernism, Repetition and the Redadymade

3 Deskilling, Reskilling and Artistic Labour

4 The Post-Cartesian Artist

5 Surrogates, Prosthetes and Amateurs

6 Situational Authorship, Diffuse Aesthetics and Network Theory

7 Art, Immaterial Labour and the Critique of Value

Afterword: Reproducibility and the Hand

The Intangibilities of Form: Skill and Deskilling in Art After the Readymade
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The Intangibilities of Form: Skill and Deskilling in Art After the Readymade