Reluctant Modernity - The Institution of Art and Its Historical Forms

In this book, Aleš Debeljak offers a refreshing alternative to postmodernists such as Baudrillard, who declare the death of art was conceived as yet another source of rootless, circulating fictions. The deterioration of bourgeois liberal individualism into the narcissism of mass society accompanied the decomposition of art into simplified mass art and commercialized kitsch. Maintaining its formal autonomy (museums, galleries, etc.), its content became the universal object of indirect corporate exploitation. Today postmodern art, argues Debeljak, is subjected to infinite reproducibility, total integration into mass society, and political resignation-no longer representing an alternative reality. The postmodern institution of art thus cannot be simply cured of modern structures and assumptions, but is, instead, fated to a continuous and painful relationship with modernity.

List of contents

Chapter 1 Foreword
Chapter 2 Preface
Chapter 3 Acknowledgements
Chapter 4 Introduction
Chapter 5 Framing the Logic of Modernity
Chapter 6 The Bourgeois Public Sphere in Modernity
Chapter 7 The Institution of Art in Modernity
Chapter 8 The Dissolution of the Bourgeois Public Sphere
Chapter 9 The Institution of Art in Postmodernity
Chapter 10 References
Chapter 11 Index

About the author

Aleš Debeljak

Product details

• Authors: Ale Debeljak, Ale¿ Debeljak, Ales Debeljak, Aleš Debeljak
• Assisted by: Stjepan G. Mestrovic (Editor)
• Publisher: Rowman and Littlefield
• Languages: English
• Product format: Paperback / Softback
• Released: 02.07.1998
• EAN: 9780847685837
• ISBN: 978-0-8476-8583-7
• No. of pages: 240
• Series: Postmodern Social Futures; Postmodern Social Futures (Pap; Postmodern Social Futures
• Subjects: Humanities, art, music > Art > Plastic arts; Social sciences, law, business > Sociology > Sociological theories; ART / History / General, History of art / art & design styles, History of Art, Painting & paintings, Paintings and painting