Art, agency and the continued assault on authorship / Simon Blond.

New York : Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group, 2023.

©2023

1 online resource (xii, 199 pages) : illustrations

Access is available to the Yale community.

Description based on print version record.

Access restricted by licensing agreement.

"This book presents a counter-history to the relentless critique of the humanist subject and authorial agency that has taken place over the last fifty years. It is both an interrogation of that critique and the tracing of an alternative narrative from Romanticism to the twenty-first century which celebrates the agency of the artist as a powerful contribution to the well-being of community. It does so through arguments based on philosophical aesthetics and cultural theory interspersed with case histories of particular artists. It also engages with a second issue that cannot be separated from the first. This is the question of what the role and purpose of art is in society. This has become particularly important since the 1990s because of the 'social turn' in art in which it is claimed that the only valid role for art was one that had explicit social consequences. This book argues that a political role for art is valuable, but not the only one that can be envisaged nor indeed is it the most obvious or most important. Art has other social roles both as a means to engender empathy and community, as well as to re-enchant a world bereft of meaning and reduced to material values. The book will appeal to practicing artists as well as scholars working in art history, philosophy, aesthetics, and curatorial studies"-- Provided by publisher.

Taylor & Francis. EBA 2024-2025.

Books / Online

English

October 04, 2024

Includes bibliographical references and index.