Title: The utopian globalists : artists of worldwide revolution, 1919-2009 /
Authors: Harris, Jonathan
Year: 2013
Subjects: Art and globalization History; Art and globalization History; ART History Contemporary (1945- )
Abstract: "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 "--
Contents: Introduction: the world in a work of art -- Spectacle, social transformation and utopian globalist art -- The line of liberation: Tatlin's tower and the communist construction of global revolution -- Picasso for the proletariat: "the most famous communist in the world" -- Some kind of druid dude: Joseph Beuys's liturgies of freedom -- "Bed-in" as Gesamtkunstwerk: a typical morning in the quest for world peace -- Mother nature on the run: austerity globalist depletions in the 1970s -- Nomadic globalism: scenographica in Christo and Jeanne-Claude's Wrapped Reichstag -- Conclusion: from the spiral to the turbine: a global warning.