Read more
Re-envisioning the Contemporary Art Canon: Perspectives in a Global World seeks to dissect and interrogate the nature of the present-day art field, which has experienced dramatic shifts in the past 50 years.
In discussions of the canon of art history, the notion of 'inclusiveness', both at the level of rhetoric and as a desired practice is on the rise and gradually replacing talk of 'exclusion', which dominated critiques of the canon up until two decades ago. The art field has dramatically, if insufficiently, changed in the half-century since the first protests and critiques of the exclusion of 'others' from the art canon.
With increased globalization and shifting geopolitics, the art field is expanding beyond its Euro-American focus, as is particularly evident in the large-scale international biennales now held all over the globe. Are canons and counter-canons still relevant? Can they be re-envisioned rather than merely revised? Following an introduction that discusses these issues, thirteen newly commissioned essays present case studies of consecration in the contemporary art field, and three commissioned discussions present diverse positions on issues of the canon and consecration processes today.
This volume will be of interest to instructors and students of contemporary art, art history, and museum and curatorial studies.
List of contents
Introduction
Re-envisioning the Canon: Are Pluriversal Canons Possible?
Ruth E. Iskin
Part I: Artists
Introduction
Chapter 1
Claude Cahun and Marcel Moore: Casualties of a Backfiring Canon?
Tirza True Latimer
Chapter 2
Jean-Michel Basquiat and the American Art Canon
Jordana Moore Saggese
Chapter 3
Sheila Hicks and the Consecration of Fiber Art
Elissa Auther
Chapter 4
The Elephant in the Church: Ai Weiwei, the Media Circus and the Global Canon
Wenny Teo
Chapter 5
El Anatsui’s Abstractions: Transformations, Analogies and the New Global
Elizabeth Harney
Part II: Mediums/Media
Introduction
Chapter 6
The Apotheosis of Video Art
William Kaizen
Chapter 7
Performance Art: Part of the Canon?
Jennie Klein
Chapter 8
Street Art: Critique, Commodification, Canonization
Paula J. Birnbaum
Chapter 9
New Media Art and Canonization: A Round-Robin Conversation
Sarah Cook with Karin de Wild
Part III: Exhibitions, Museums, Markets
Introduction
Chapter 10
On the Canon of Exhibition History
Felix Vogel
Chapter 11
Canonizing Hitler’s "Degenerate Art" in Three American Exhibitions, 1939‒1942
Jennifer McComas
Chapter 12
Museum Relations
Martha Buskirk
Chapter 13
The Commodification of the Contemporary Artist and High-Profile Solo Exhibition:
The Case of Takashi Murakami
Ronit Milano
Chapter 14
Troubling Canons: Curating and Exhibiting Women’s and Feminist Art, A Roundtable Discussion
Helena Reckitt
Chapter 15
The Contemporary Art Canon and the Market, A Roundtable Discussion
Jonathan T. D. Neil
