The Politics of Contemporary Art Biennials
The Politics of Contemporary Art Biennials

Author: Panos Kompatsiaris

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2017-03-31

Total Pages: 206

ISBN-13: 1317290828

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Contemporary art biennials are sites of prestige, innovation and experimentation, where the category of art is meant to be in perpetual motion, rearranged and redefined, opening itself to the world and its contradictions. They are sites of a seemingly peaceful cohabitation between the elitist and the popular, where the likes of Jeff Koons encounter the likes of Guy Debord, where Angela Davis and Frantz Fanon share the same ground with neoliberal cultural policy makers and creative entrepreneurs. Building on the legacy of events that conjoin art, critical theory and counterculture, from Nova Convention to documenta X, the new biennial blends the modalities of protest with a neoliberal politics of creativity. This book examines a strained period for these high art institutions, a period when their politics are brought into question and often boycotted in the context of austerity, crisis and the rise of Occupy cultures. Using the 3rd Athens Biennale and the 7th Berlin Biennale as its main case studies, it looks at how the in-built tensions between the domains of art and politics take shape when spectacular displays attempt to operate as immediate activist sites. Drawing on ethnographic research and contemporary cultural theory, this book argues that biennials both denunciate the aesthetic as bourgeois category and simultaneously replicate and diffuse an exclusive sociability across social landscapes.

Biennials, Triennials, and Documenta
Biennials, Triennials, and Documenta

Author: Anthony Gardner

Publisher: John Wiley & Sons

Published: 2016-05-16

Total Pages: 306

ISBN-13: 1444336657

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

This innovative new history examines in-depth how the growing popularity of large-scale international survey exhibitions, or 'biennials', has influenced global contemporary art since the 1950s. Provides a comprehensive global history of biennialization from the rise of the European star-curator in the 1970s to the emergence of mega-exhibitions in Asia in the 1990s Introduces a global array of case studies to illustrate the trajectory of biennials and their growing influence on artistic expression, from the Biennale de la Méditerranée in Alexandria, Egypt in 1955, the second Havana Biennial of 1986, New York’s Whitney Biennial in 1993, and the 2002 Documenta11 in Kassel, to the Gwangju Biennale of 2014 Explores the evolving curatorial approaches to biennials, including analysis of the roles of sponsors, philanthropists and biennial directors and their re-shaping of the contemporary art scene Uses the history of biennials as a means of illustrating and inciting further discussions of globalization in contemporary art

The Manifesta Decade
The Manifesta Decade

Author: Barbara Vanderlinden

Publisher: MIT Press (MA)

Published: 2005

Total Pages: 348

ISBN-13:

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Reflections from curators, historians, philosophers, anthropologists, architects, and writers on the cultural and political conditions of European exhibition practice since the fall of the Berlin Wall.

Contemporary Art Biennials in Europe
Contemporary Art Biennials in Europe

Author: Nicolas Whybrow

Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing

Published: 2023-02-23

Total Pages: 237

ISBN-13: 1350375209

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

"Contemporary Art Biennials in Europe examines five urban situations in diverse parts of Europe. Roughly tracing a central horizontal strip from the western to the eastern edges of the continent, the events and cities covered are the Folkestone Triennial, UK, Münster Sculpture Projects, Germany, the Venice Biennale, Italy, Belgrade's Mikser Festival, Serbia and the Istanbul Biennial, Turkey. Whybrow establishes how public artworks operate in these contexts as part of a complex prescribed by the format of the biennial event. This means drawing out the extent to which biennial events seek to engage with the complexity of the city in question, in a manner that takes into account local socio-cultural ecologies, while also positioning the event itself within a globalist art world perspective. The book also considers how sited installations - which are very varied in form, as a reflection of a new, eclectic urban aesthetic - tell a particular story of a city, while the regional diversity of these selected cities and events in turn tells a composite story of European difference at a moment of high tension, centring on matters of migration, political populism and uncertainty around the future form of the European Union"--

Contemporary Art Biennials in Europe
Contemporary Art Biennials in Europe

Author: Nicolas Whybrow

Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing

Published: 2020-09-17

Total Pages: 237

ISBN-13: 1350166987

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Through its examination of five quite different art events in cities across Europe, Contemporary Art Biennials in Europe offers a compelling exploration of how public art takes place in the modern city. Roughly tracing a central horizontal trajectory from the western to the eastern edges of the continent, Nicolas Whybrow considers the Folkestone Triennial in the UK, Sculpture Projects Münster in Germany, the Venice Biennale in Italy, Belgrade's Mikser Festival in Serbia and the Istanbul Biennial in Turkey. Writing within the context of a thirty-year international 'biennial boom', Whybrow interrogates the extent to which biennial events and their artworks seek to engage with the socio-cultural and political complexity of cities, in particular the work that is involved in this relationship. With its focus on Europe, he also tells a composite story of continental difference at a moment of high tension, centering on issues of migration, political populism and uncertainty around the future form of the European Union.

The Venice Biennale and the Asia-Pacific in the Global Art World
The Venice Biennale and the Asia-Pacific in the Global Art World

Author: Stephen Naylor

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2020-05-14

Total Pages: 193

ISBN-13: 1351062085

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

This monograph uses the national pavilions of the Venice Biennale as a vehicle to examine the development of international contemporary art trends within the Asia-Pacific region, including Australia, Japan and Korea and 16 additional national entities who have had less continuous participation in this global art event. Analysing both the spatial and visual representation of contemporary art presented at the Venice Biennale and incorporating the politics behind national selections, this monograph provides insights into a range of important elements of the global art industry. Areas analysed include national cultural trends and strategies, the inversion of the peripheral to the centre stage of the Biennale, geopolitics in gaining exhibition space at the Venice Biennale, curatorial practices for contemporary art presentation and artistic trends that seek to deal with major economic, cultural, religious and environmental issues emerging from non-European art centres. This monograph will be of interest to scholars in art history, museum studies and Asia-Pacific cultural history.

Contemporary Art
Contemporary Art

Author: Alexander Dumbadze

Publisher: John Wiley & Sons

Published: 2012-12-04

Total Pages: 512

ISBN-13: 1118298896

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

An engaging account of today’s contemporary art world that features original articles by leading international art historians, critics, curators, and artists, introducing varied perspectives on the most important debates and discussions happening around the world. Features a collection of all-new essays, organized around fourteen specific themes, chosen to reflect the latest debates in contemporary art since 1989 Each topic is prefaced by an introduction on current discussions in the field and investigated by three essays, each shedding light on the subject in new and contrasting ways Topics include: globalization, formalism, technology, participation, agency, biennials, activism, fundamentalism, judgment, markets, art schools, and scholarship International in scope, bringing together over forty of the most important voices in the field, including Sofía Hernández Chong Cuy, David Joselit, Michelle Kuo, Raqs Media Collective, and Jan Verwoert A stimulating guide that will encourage polemical interventions and foster critical dialogue among both students and art aficionados

Biennials: The Exhibitions We Love to Hate
Biennials: The Exhibitions We Love to Hate

Author: Rafal Niemojewski

Publisher: Lund Humphries Publishers Limited

Published: 2020-11-11

Total Pages: 144

ISBN-13: 9781848223882

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Biennials: The Exhibitions we Love to Hate examines one of the most significant recent transitions in the contemporary art world: the proliferation of large-scale international recurrent survey shows of contemporary art, commonly referred to as contemporary biennials. Since the mid-1980s biennials have been instrumental in shaping curating as an autonomous practice. These exhibitions are also said to have provided increased visibility for certain types of new art practices, notably those that are socially and politically committed, research-based and site-specific, and to have undermined some of the more traditional art media, such as painting, drawing or sculpture. They have been responsible for substantially reshaping the contemporary art world and disrupting the existing value chain of the art market, which now relies on biennials as much as it does on major museums' acquisitions and exhibitions. Rafal Niemojewski, Director of the Biennial Foundation, deftly unpicks the critical discussion and controversy surrounding contemporary biennials. Branded by some critics as showcases of neo-liberalism run amok, in which culture has become synonymous with the dollar-generating leisure industry, biennials have also been associated with the production of monumental artworks which are both highly consumable and photogenic (Instagrammable). The exhibitions we love to hate? This engaging publication makes an essential contribution to a fascinating cultural debate.

The Global Work of Art
The Global Work of Art

Author: Caroline A. Jones

Publisher: University of Chicago Press

Published: 2016

Total Pages: 380

ISBN-13: 022629174X

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

The first major history of the glamorous art biennial. Biennials have proliferated across the globe since the end of the Cold War and have now stabilized at about 200 a year. While this quintessentially contemporary form has significant roots in the world expositions of the 19th century, Jones argues that the biennial is also the platform for an important new aesthetic shift. Moving away from a focus on visual looking in the mid 20th century, the art world today embraces experience: art fairs give the feel of closeness and spaciousness, crowds, and they engage all our senses, even taste. Jones argues that the dominance of installation art and the simultaneous rise of biennialsor recurring art fairsneed to be examined as joint phenomenamutually reinforcing and linked to specific geo-political and aesthetic conditions. From the rise of tourism to the flows of art commerce, Jones hatches a new way to track the development of international art fairs in nearly every corner of the globe: from the early world fairs of London, Paris, Chicago, and New York to art fairs proper in Venice, Sao Paulo, Havana, Berlin, Lyon, and Beijing, as well as Kassel s Documenta, Whitney Biennial, and moreall explained through a rapidly evolving aesthetics of experience that has never, until now, been addressed in such a substantial way."