Search results for ""Author John O'Brian""

Taking 1959–1960 as a pivotal cultural and political moment, the contributors to Breathless Days reframe postwar Western art history, examining the aesthetic and ideological alliances and tensions in art throughout Western Europe and the Americas. The collection provides a heterogeneous account of the intersections of the fine art world with literature, jazz, film, and theater in New York, Paris, Milan, Brazil, and Cuba. This reveals the knotty and multilayered connections among these divergent artistic milieus. Whether discussing Duchamp’s With My Tongue in My Cheek, Brazilian abstraction, postrevolutionary Cuban art, Jean Tinguely’s self-destroying machines, or Burroughs’s Naked Lunch, the contributors show this brief period to be a key to the cultural and political development of Western Europe and the Americas during the Cold War. Contributors. Carla Benzan, Clint Burnham, Jill Carrick, Eric de Chassey, Mari Dumett, Serge Guilbaut, Luc Lang, Hadrien Laroche, Aleca Le Blanc, Richard Leeman, Tom McDonough, Regis Michel, John O'Brian, Kjetil Rodje, Ludovic Tournès, Antonio Eligio (Tonel)

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Clement Greenberg is widely recognized as the most influential and articulate champion of modernism during its American ascendency after World War II, the period largely covered by these highly acclaimed volumes of "The Collected Essays and Criticism". "Volume 3: Affirmations and Refusals" presents Greenberg's writings from the period between 1950 and 1956, while "Volume 4: Modernism with a Vengeance" gathers essays and criticism of the years 1957 to 1969. The 120 works range from little-known pieces originally appearing "Vogue" and "Harper's Bazaar" to such celebrated essays as "The Plight of Our Culture" (1953), "Modernist Painting" (1960), and "Post Painterly Abstraction" (1964). Preserved in their original form, these writings allow readers to witness the development and direction of Greenberg's criticism, from his advocacy of abstract expressionism to his enthusiasm for color-field painting.With the inclusion of critical exchanges between Greenberg and F. R. Leavis, Fairfield Porter, Thomas B. Hess, Herbert Read, Max Kozloff, and Robert Goldwater, these volumes are essential sources in the ongoing debate over modern art.

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Clement Greenberg is widely recognized as the most influential and articulate champion of modernism during its American ascendency after World War II, the period largely covered by these highly acclaimed volumes of _The Collected Essays and Criticism_. _Volume 3: Affirmations and Refusals_ presents Greenberg's writings from the period between 1950 and 1956, while _Volume 4: Modernism with a Vengeance_ gathers essays and criticism of the years 1957 to 1969. The 120 works range from little-known pieces originally appearing _Vogue_ and _Harper's Bazaar_ to such celebrated essays as "The Plight of Our Culture" (1953), "Modernist Painting" (1960), and "Post Painterly Abstraction" (1964). Preserved in their original form, these writings allow readers to witness the development and direction of Greenberg's criticism, from his advocacy of abstract expressionism to his enthusiasm for color-field painting.With the inclusion of critical exchanges between Greenberg and F. R. Leavis, Fairfield Porter, Thomas B. Hess, Herbert Read, Max Kozloff, and Robert Goldwater, these volumes are essential sources in the ongoing debate over modern art.

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What does it mean to live in a post-atomic world? Photography and contemporary art offer a provocative lens through which to comprehend the by-products of the atomic age, from weapons proliferation, nuclear disaster, and aerial surveillance to toxic waste disposal and climate change. Confronting cultural fallout from the dawn of the nuclear age, Through Post-Atomic Eyes addresses the myriad iterations of nuclear threat and their visual legacy in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Whether in the iconic black-and-white photograph of a mushroom cloud rising over Nagasaki in 1945 or in the steady stream of real-time video documenting the 2011 meltdown at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant, atomic culture - and our understanding of it - is inextricably constructed by the visual. This book takes the image as its starting point to address the visual inheritance of atomic anxieties; the intersection of photography, nuclear industries, and military technocultures; and the complex temporality of nuclear technologies. Contemporary artists contribute lens-based works that explore the consequences of the nuclear, and its afterlives, in the Anthropocene. Revealing, through both art and prose, startling new connections between the ongoing threat of nuclear catastrophe and current global crises, Through Post-Atomic Eyes is a richly illustrated examination of how photography shapes and is shaped by nuclear culture.

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Taking 1959–1960 as a pivotal cultural and political moment, the contributors to Breathless Days reframe postwar Western art history, examining the aesthetic and ideological alliances and tensions in art throughout Western Europe and the Americas. The collection provides a heterogeneous account of the intersections of the fine art world with literature, jazz, film, and theater in New York, Paris, Milan, Brazil, and Cuba. This reveals the knotty and multilayered connections among these divergent artistic milieus. Whether discussing Duchamp’s With My Tongue in My Cheek, Brazilian abstraction, postrevolutionary Cuban art, Jean Tinguely’s self-destroying machines, or Burroughs’s Naked Lunch, the contributors show this brief period to be a key to the cultural and political development of Western Europe and the Americas during the Cold War. Contributors. Carla Benzan, Clint Burnham, Jill Carrick, Eric de Chassey, Mari Dumett, Serge Guilbaut, Luc Lang, Hadrien Laroche, Aleca Le Blanc, Richard Leeman, Tom McDonough, Regis Michel, John O'Brian, Kjetil Rodje, Ludovic Tournès, Antonio Eligio (Tonel)

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Atomic postcards played an important role in creating and disseminating a public image of nuclear power. Presenting small-scale images of test explosions, power plants, fallout shelters, and long-range missiles, the cards were produced for mass audiences in China, the United States, the Soviet Union, and Japan, and they link the multilayered geographies of Atomic Age nationalism and tourism. From the unfailingly cheery slogans—“Greetings from Los Alamos”—to blithe, handwritten notes and no-irony-intended “Pray for Peace” postmarks, these postcards mailed from the edge of danger nonetheless maintain the upbeat language of their medium. With 150 reproductions of cards and handwritten messages dating from the 1945 bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki to the end of the Cold War, Atomic Postcards offers a fascinating glimpse of a time when the end of the world seemed close at hand.

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Art critic Clement Greenberg, champion of abstract expressionism, is more interested in silencing his rival Harold Rosenberg than with the threat of nuclear destruction. Greenberg is driving from New York to the Emma Lake artist colony in Saskatchewan, where he intends to silence Rosenberg once and for all. With him is infamous Marxist Louis Althusser, who escaped prosecution for strangling his wife in France on an insanity plea. Althusser is heading to a Saskatchewan hospital for LSD therapy. Pursuing them is Jean Claude Piche, a veteran of the conflicts in Indochina and Algeria, contracted to execute Althusser for the unpunished murder. The 1950s were Greenberg's decade. Yet by 1962, everywhere Greenberg looks he is bedevilled by Andy Warhol's Campbell Soup cans, just as everywhere Althusser looks he sees capitalist decay. Jean Claude catches Greenberg and Althusser at Niagara Falls. The enigmatic arch patriot Swen catches all three in North Dakota. Convinced that they are communist subversives, Swen imprisons and interrogates them even as, hour by hour, minute by minute, Khrushchev and Kennedy threaten to launch World War III. An absurdist romp, Atomic Road charts its own course between historical veracity, fictional invention, and the unfettered egotism of two mad intellectuals.

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Photographs have played a crucial role in shaping perceptions of nuclear weapons and nuclear energy. In Camera Atomica, art historian John O’Brian explores the intimate relationship between photography and nuclear events to uncover how the camera lens has shaped public perceptions of the atomic age and its anxieties. Bringing together both vintage and contemporary photographs that have recorded and, in certain instances, provided motivation for the production of nuclear events, O’Brian travels through history — from the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945 to the triple meltdown at Fukushima Daiichi in 2011. In this vivid volume, readers will encounter more than 200 images that simultaneously document and raise questions about the contradictory roles of photography during this period. Included are Hiromitso Toyosaki and Shomei Tomatsu’s photographs of hibakusha (individuals exposed to radiation from atomic bombs), David McMillan’s photographs at Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant, and Sandy Skoglund’s darkly humorous Radioactive Cats, along with photographs by Nancy Burson, Edward Burtynsky, Carol Condé and Karl Beveridge, Kenji Higuchi, Richard Misrach, Weegee, and many others.

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