Search results for ""Author Jan Baetens""
Leuven University Press Critical Realism in Contemporary Art: Around Allan Sekula's Photography
What is the place of Critical Realism today, given the fact that both realism and commitment in art have become highly problematic notions since at least several decades? Realism in the first place appears to be relegated to the museum of pre-modern styles and devices, safely locked-up in the toolbox of 19th-Century art history. Secondly, in our cool, postmodern times, the place for commitment has become highly confuse. The naïve confusion between Critical Realism and notions like Social(ist) Realism or Political Correctness has complexified that situation. The ambition of this volume is to position Critical Realism as clearly as possible in the current art scene. This book makes a strong plea for a critically engaged art, as it can be encountered in a most exemplary way in the work of Allan Sekula. Sekula’s oeuvre features a number of characteristics whose combination makes it unique: his iconography rediscovers and reinvents the theme of labor and his photos, on the verge between art and documentary – thus creating a kind of proto-documentary, reflect on the possibilities for the visual arts today to deliver an ‘act of criticism’. Internationally known as one of the most prominent artists engaged in this debate, Sekula’s research methods allow us to discuss the ways art can be critical about contemporary social questions without succumbing into a plain or overtly partial political statement.
£26.00
Leuven University Press Digital Reason: A Guide to Meaning, Medium and Community in a Modern World
Introductory and user-friendly textbook for scholars and students in the humanities Multidisciplinary approach to digital culture Cross-fertilization of three major perspectives: history of ideas, art, identity and memory studies Includes a wide selection of examples and case studies with many suggestions for advanced study and reading The digital revolution has changed our ways of thinking, working, writing, and living together. In this book the authors critically analyse the ways in which these new technologies have reshaped our world in numerous respects, ranging from politics, ideology, and philosophy over art and communication to memory and identity. The book challenges the customary view of a divide between analog and digital culture, claiming instead that human endeavour has always been characterized by certain forms and aspects of digital thinking, building, and communicating, and that essential parts of analog culture are still being reshaped by new digital technologies. It offers a multidisciplinary approach to digital reason, reflecting the diversity of humanities scholarship and its fundamental contribution to the ongoing changes in our current and future thinking and doing.
£26.00