'In the contemporary world, where technology, spectacle, and excess seem to eclipse former concepts of nature, the individual and society, what might be the characteristics of a contemporary sublime? If there is any consensus, it is in the notion that the sublime represents a taking to the limits, to the point at which fixities begin to fragment. This anthology examines how ideas of the sublime are explored in the work of contemporary artists and theorists, in relation to the unpresentable, transcendence, terror, nature, technology, the uncanny, and altered states.

'Artists surveyed include: Marina Abramovic, Joseph Beuys, Tacita Dean, Walter De Maria, A K Dolven, Olafur Eliasson, Andreas Gursky, Jitka Hanzlová, Gary Hill, Susan Hiller, Shirazeh Houshiary, Anish Kapoor, Mike Kelley, Anselm Kiefer, Yves Klein, Richard Long, Barnett Newman, Tony Oursler, Cornelia Parker, Gerhard Richter, Doris Salcedo, Lorna Simpson, Hiroshi Sugimoto, Fred Tomaselli, James Turrell, Luc Tuymans, Bill Viola, Zhang Huan.' (Back cover)

The Sublime is one of the Documents of Contemporary Art series, co-published by Whitechapel Gallery and The MIT Press which document major themes and ideas in contemporary art. Other sourcebooks of the same series are also available in the Archive. For more details, please go to this page.
Alternative title

Documents of Contemporary Art

Access level

Onsite

editor
Location code
REF.WHC
Language

English

Publication/Creation date

2010

No of pages

237

ISBN / ISSN

9780262513913

No of copies

1

Content type

anthology

Chapter headings

Introduction: The Contemporary Sublime - Simon MORLEY

The Unpresentable

To Draw the Flow of Time, 1957 - Henri MICHAUX

The Sublime is Now, 1948 - Barnett NEWMAN

The Sublime and the Avant-Garde, 1988 - Jean-Francois LYOTARD

Parergon, 1978 - Jacques DERRIDA

The Sublime Offering, 1988 - Jean-Luc NANCY

Lacan: Sublimity and Sublimation, 2007 - Philip Shaw

The Sublime Object of Ideology, 2009 - Slavoj ZIZEK

The Feminine Sublime, 1995 - Barbara Claire FREEMAN

The Aesthetic Revolution and Its Outcomes, 2007 - Jacques RANCIERE

Transcendence

Truth Becomes Reality, 1961 - Yves KLEIN

Creating Heaven, 1999 - Doreet LEVITTE-HARTEN

Belief Itself, 2002 - Luce IRIGARAY

Secret Wisdom and Self-Effacement: The Spiritual in the Modern Age, 1996 - David Morgan

The Echoes of Enchantment, 1996 - Jean FISHER

Interview with Marjorie Allthorpe-Guyton, 1990 - Anish Kapoor

Interview with Stella Santacatterina, 1994 - Shirazeh Houshiary

The Crossing, 1996 - Bill VIOLA

Spirit and Light and Immensity Within, 1998 - Lynn M. Herbert

Void: Mapping the Invisible in Korean Art, 2007 - LEE Joon, 이준

Nature

Heave and Earth, 2001 - Richard LONG

The Abstract Sublime, 1961 - Robert ROSENBLUM

Statement, 1973 - Gerhard Richter

Frederick Law Olmsted and the Dialectical Landscape, 1973 - Robert SMITHSON

Some Facts, Notes, Data, Information, Statistics and Statements, 1980 - Walter DE MARIA

Bas Jan Ader, 1997 - Tacita DEAN

The Weather Forecast and Now, 2001 - Olafur ELIASSON

Into the Woods: On Jitka Hanzlova's Forest, 2006 - John BERGER

Technology

Presenting the Unpresentable: The Sublime, 1982 - Jean-Francois LYOTARD

Beauty and the Contemporary Sublime, 1999 - Jeremy GILBERT-ROLFE

Postmodernism, or, the Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism, 1991 - Fredric JAMESON

Is There Love in the Telematic Embrace?, 1990 - Roy ASCOTT

Terror

Manifesto: Auto-Destructive Art, 1960 - Gustav METZGER

The Gothic Sublime, 1994 - Vijay Mishra

The Logic of Terror, 1979 - Thomas Weiskel

Approaching Abjection, 1980 - Julia KRISTEVA

Turned Upside Down and Torn Apart, 2001 - Thomas MCEVILLEY

Joseph Beuys and the After-Auschwitz Sublime, 2001 - Gene Ray

Memory of Oblivion, 2006 - Marco Belpoliti

Tuymans' Terror, 1997 - Lawrence R. RINDER

Interview with Charles Merewether, 1998 - Doris Salcedo

The American Sublime and the Racial Self, 2006 - Okwui ENWEZOR

The Uncanny

Formula for a New Urbanism, 1958 - Gilles Ivain

In Conversation with Thomas McEvilley, 1992 - Mike KELLEY

Noh Such Thing as Time, 2002 - Hiroshi SUGIMOTO, 杉本博司

A Found Page, 2004 - A K DOLVEN

Altered States

Statements, 1992 - Marina ABRAMOVIC

Beyond the Body, 1988 - Stelarc

HanD HearD/ Liminal Objects, 2000 - George QUASHA

'Ourself behind Ourself, Concealed...': Ethereal Whispers from the Dark Side, 2000 - Marina WARNER

Interview with Siri Hustvedt, 2007 - Fred Tomaselli

Zhang Huan: Becoming the Body, 2008 - Eleanor HEARTNEY

The Sublime
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The Sublime