{"product_id":"monumental-cares-sites-of-history-and-contemporary-art-9781526168085","title":"Monumental Cares: Sites of History and","description":"\u003cb\u003eBook Synopsis\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003eMonumental cares\u003c\/i\u003e rethinks monument debates, site specificity and art activism in light of problems that strike us as monumental or overwhelming, such as war, migration and the climate crisis. The book shows how artists address these issues, from Chicago and Berlin to Oslo, Bucharest and Hong Kong, in media ranging from marble and glass to postcards, graffiti and re-enactment. A multidirectional theory of site does justice to specific places but also to how far-away audiences see them. What emerges is a new ethics of care in public art, combined with a passionate engagement with reality harking back to the realist aesthetics of the nineteenth century. Familiar questions can be answered anew: what to do with monuments, particularly when they are the products of terror and require removal, modification or recontextualisation? And can art address the monumental concerns of our present?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eTrade Review\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cp\u003e'The book is a provocative volume that is academically rigorous, and it will enrich the public debate on commemoration with its sophisticated reflections on notions of temporality and authenticity of historical markers, siting, and public participation, at a moment when monuments have been at the forefront of political activism.'\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eTijana Vujosevic, \u003ci\u003eArt Margins\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e‘Against the notion that monuments are things of the past, Widrich shows them to be generative of a contemporary art movement that is reclaiming historic places as laboratories for new artistic experiments centred around an ethic of care. She illuminates how artists are expanding what it means to care for monuments beyond the conservation of historic materials, to include looking after their capacity to conjure the collective imagination and direct it towards possible futures.  At a time when collective action seems thwarted by the intractable forces of climate change and political injustice, Widrich reveals the capacity of art to jolt the collective nerve into more ambitious forms of care. A tour de force.’\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eJorge Otero-Pailos, Professor and Director of Historic Preservation, Columbia University\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e‘\u003ci\u003eMonumental cares\u003c\/i\u003e is a well-crafted intellectual accomplishment, inviting readers to think with care and nuance about monuments as instructions about what the public sphere is or could be. Mechtild Widrich turns to the ethics of care to open up the fundamental question of what monuments in shared public space are about. There are very few books that so compellingly make the argument that monuments are not of the past, but about how we collectively care for changing the present and the future.’\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eElke Krasny, Professor for Art and Education at the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna, co-editor of \u003ci\u003eCritical Care: Architecture and Urbanism for a Broken Planet\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e'Mechtild Widrich brings to the fore key questions of contemporary approaches to monumentality, and shakes these further. Moving with agility across a wide range of detailed case studies, this book makes a compelling case for a layered perspective that sees the monumental in its complex and interrelational potential: as history materialised through art in multidirectional interactions with time, space and their mediation. It is a book that refuses simplistic solutions, reminding us of the vital role of the public sphere in confronting and commemorating our shared histories and of the importance of an ethics of care in doing so.'\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eJacek Ludwig Scarso, Reader in Art and Performance, London Metropolitan University\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003ci\u003e'Monumental Cares: Sites of History and Contemporary Art\u003c\/i\u003e presents a significant intervention in the art history of public art that makes site-specificity its key term. The book is also a bold contribution to contemporary debates about monument activism.\u003cbr\u003eThroughout \u003ci\u003eMonumental Cares\u003c\/i\u003e, Widrich confronts the difficulties posed by public art that grapples with political violence, touching on polarizing contemporary concerns about migration, climate change, and state sanctioned as well as ongoing everyday violence against people across the globe. Ultimately, the book is a plaidoyer for the careful maintenance of public space through monuments and markers that help audiences—past, present, and future—to navigate the multiplicity of sites that articulate shared and multidirectional histories. \u003ci\u003eMonumental Cares\u003c\/i\u003e also makes the case for the importance of multidirectional art history, opening the field, it is to be hoped, for more to follow.'\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eCAA Reviews, Caroline Schopp\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e'The book addresses those debates but its project is also broader, looking at the power of images and artworks to address violence. The book is also centrally concerned with the kinds of public sphere to which the reception of images and artworks give rise, especially in combination with myriad forms of digital mediation.'\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003e21 Inquiries, Adair Rounthwaite\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e -- .\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eTable of Contents\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cp\u003eWho cares? An introduction\u003cbr\u003e1 The sites of history\u003cbr\u003e2 Cold War in stone – and plastic\u003cbr\u003e3 Materializing art geographies\u003cbr\u003e4 Reversing monumentality\u003cbr\u003e5 Reflections\u003cbr\u003e6 Drawing pain: political art in circulation \u003cbr\u003eCaring about monuments: a conclusion\u003cbr\u003eIndex\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Manchester University Press","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":51041035616599,"sku":"9781526168085","price":63.75,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0817\/1739\/5799\/files\/9781526168085.jpg?v=1750948692","url":"https:\/\/bookcurl.com\/products\/monumental-cares-sites-of-history-and-contemporary-art-9781526168085","provider":"Book Curl","version":"1.0","type":"link"}