Conversation Pieces by Grant H Kester
Some of the most innovative art of the past decade has been created far outside conventional galleries and museums. In a parking garage in Oakland, California; on a pleasure boat on the Lake of Zurich in Switzerland; at a public market in Chiang Mai, Thailand - artists operating at the intersection of art and cultural activism have been developing new forms of collaboration with diverse audiences and communities. Their projects have addressed such issues as political conflict in Northern Ireland, gang violence on Chicago's West Side, and the problems of sex workers in Switzerland. Provocative, accessible, and engaging, this book, one of the first full-length studies on the topic, situates these socially conscious projects historically, relates them to key issues in contemporary art and art theory, and offers a unique critical framework for understanding them. Grant Kester discusses a disparate network of artists and collectives - including The Art of Change, Helen and Newton Harrison, Littoral, Suzanne Lacy, Stephen Willats, and WochenKlausur - united by a desire to create new forms of understanding through creative dialogue that crosses boundaries of race, religion, and culture. Kester traces the origins of these works in the conceptual art and feminist performance art of the 1960s and 1970s and draws from the writings of Mikhail Bakhtin, Jurgen Habermas, and others as he explores the ways in which these artists corroborate and challenge many of the key principles of avant-garde art and art theory.
"A brilliant critical re-evaluaton of art critical methodologies" * Leonardo *
"A much-needed discussion regarding a practice that is too often ignored. We need a dialogue about what community art is and could be . . . [and] need more discussions like Kester’s that question the traditional roles of artists and audiences." * Public Art Review *
"Conversation Pieces nobly records and analyzes dialogical art with a respect that very few critics have offered thus far." * Flaunt *
"A much-needed discussion regarding a practice that is too often ignored. We need a dialogue about what community art is and could be . . . [and] need more discussions like Kester’s that question the traditional roles of artists and audiences." * Public Art Review *
"Conversation Pieces nobly records and analyzes dialogical art with a respect that very few critics have offered thus far." * Flaunt *
Grant H. Kester is Professor of Art History at the University of California, San Diego. He is the author of Art, Activism and Oppositionality: Essays from Afterimage , and The One and the Many: Contemporary Collaborative Art in a Global Context.
| SKU | Unavailable |
| ISBN 13 | 9780520275942 |
| ISBN 10 | 0520275942 |
| Title | Conversation Pieces |
| Author | Grant H Kester |
| Condition | Unavailable |
| Binding Type | Paperback |
| Publisher | University of California Press |
| Year published | 2013-04-15 |
| Number of pages | 264 |
| Cover note | Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary. |
| Note | Unavailable |