Description
Book SynopsisArt has always been central to moments of great social change. From the avant-garde to the ages of revolution, the act of rebellious creation has been crucial to bringing people and ideas together. However, in an increasingly fractured world characterised by upheaval and crisis, what role can art play in ushering in transformation?Malcolm Miles offers a guide to contemporary art and activism, setting it firmly within the context of the avant garde and its legacies in the postwar period. He explores the rise of direct action to replace representational politics in organizations like Occupy and Extinction Rebellion, and in the movements to destroy or remove statues of slavers, and finds parallels in anti-institutional art practices. By engaging with the significant theoretical innovations of the last 50 years modernism, postmodernism and contemporary critical thinking - Miles provides both an overview of political aesthetics and an introduction to how art activism works in its most memo
Table of ContentsList of Illustrations Introduction
Part One: Avant-Gardes 1. Signed In Red. The First Avant-Garde 2. Blue Voids. The Modernist Avant-Garde And The Permanence Of Art
Part Two: Theories and Critiques 3. Society as a Work of Art? 4. States of Exception 5. Saying The Unsayable
Part Three: Critical Practices 6. After The Statues 7. Exhibiting Dissent 8. Revolution is Sublime 9. Beauty is Convulsive Bibliography
Index
