1st Edition

Contemporary Art and Capitalist Modernization A Transregional Perspective

Edited By Octavian Esanu Copyright 2021
304 Pages 62 B/W Illustrations
by Routledge

304 Pages 62 B/W Illustrations
by Routledge

304 Pages 62 B/W Illustrations
by Routledge

This book addresses the art historical category of "contemporary art" from a transregional perspective, but unlike other volumes of its kind, it focuses in on non-Western instantiations of "the contemporary."  The book concerns itself with the historical conditions in which a radically new mode of artistic production, distribution, and consumption – called "contemporary art" – emerged in some... Read more

Introduction (Octavian Esanu)

Part I

1. Towards a Historical Understanding of Post-Soviet Presentism (Angela Harutyunyan)

2. The Long-Lasting Present: Art, Duration, and Contemporaneity (Pedro Erber)

3. Periodizing Latin American Art Since the 1960s (Karen Benezra)

4. Neue Östeuropäische Kunst: The Global Contemporary and the Eastern European Retrocontemporary (Ivana Bago)

5. Art Form and Nation Form: Contemporary Art and the Postnational Condition (Octavian Esanu)

6. Three Questions for Terry Smith: Peripherality, Postmodernity, Multiplicity – Reconceiving the Origins of Contemporary Art (Interview with Terry Smith, with Octavian Esanu)

Part II

Case Study 1: Nove Tendencije 2 [New Tendencies 2], Gallery of Contemporary Art Zagreb, 1963 (Ivana Bago)

Case Study 2: Rabinec Studio: The Commodification of Art in Late Socialist Hungary, 1982–83 (Kristóf Nagy)

Case Study 3: The 3rd Floor Cultural Movement, Yerevan 1987–1994 (Angela Haratyunyan)

Case Study 4: The First Sanayeh Plastic Arts Meeting, Ashkal Alwan Beirut 1995 (Natasha Gasparian)

Case Study 5: CarbonART 96 and The 6th Kilometer, SCCA Chișinău 1996 (Octavian Esanu)

Case Study 6: Meeting Point, SCCA Sarajevo 1997 (Amila Puzicì)

Case Study 7: Khoj International Artists’ Workshop, Khoj International Artists’ Association, Modinagar 1997 (Sabih Ahmed and Nida Ghouse)

Case Study 8: Janja Žvegelj: Squash, Škuc Gallery Ljubljana 1998 (Tevž Logar and Vladimir Vidmar)

Case Study 9: Al-Nitaq Festival of Art, Cairo 2000 and 2001 (Dina A. Mohamed)

Biography

Octavian Esanu is an assistant professor of Art History at the American University of Beirut (AUB) and Curator of AUB Art Galleries.