Theory of the Rearguard: How to Survive Contemporary Art (and Almost Everything Else)

(Paperback)

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Cuban art critic and curator Ivan de la Nuez returns with an ironic epitaph for contemporary art. Art criticism that examines contemporary art in the 21st century in relationship to politics, iconography, and literature. "Ivan de la Nuez transforms art criticism into an artform." -Letras Libres Cuban art critic and curator Ivan de la Nuez returns with an ironic epitaph for contemporary art. Art criticism that examines contemporary art in the 21st century in relationship to politics, iconography, and literature. "Ivan de la Nuez transforms art criticism into an artform." -Letras Libres Theory of the Rearguard examines how contemporary art is in tension with survival, rather than in relation to life. In the twentieth century, Peter B rger's Theory of the Avant-Garde was a cult book focused on the two main tasks that art demanded at the time- to break its representation and to destroy the barrier that separated it from life. Forty years later, The Theory of the Rearguard is an ironic manifesto about contemporary art and its failures, even though Ivan de la Nuez does not waste his time mourning it or disguising it. He argues that our times are not characterized by the distance between art and life, but by a tension between art and survival, which is the continuation of life by any means necessary. In the twenty-first century, Ivan de la Nuez examines art in relationship to politics, iconography, and literature. This austere and sharp book-in which Duchamp stumbles upon Lupe, the revolution upon the museum, Paul Virilio upon Joan Fontcuberta or Fukuyama upon Michael Jackson-wonders if contemporary art will ever end. Because if it were mortal-"just as mortal as everything it invokes or examines under its magnifying glass"-de la Nuez argues would be worth writing an epitaph for it as he has done in this sparkling book of art criticism.

Reviews

"Ivn de la Nuez is the first writer who has the audacity to affirm that events, having first occurred as tragedy and then as farce, now occur as aesthetics." Franco "Bifo" Berardi, author of The Soul at Work

Author Bio

IV N DE LA NUEZ is an essayist, a critic, and an art curator. His books include La balsa perpetua (1998), El mapa de sal (2001), Fantasia roja (2006), Inundaciones (2010), El comunista manifiesto (2013), Teoria de la retaguardia (2018), and Posmo (2023). Cubanthropy was his English-language debut. De la Nuez has curated many exhibitions in Barcelona, and has served both as the head of the Cultural Activities Department of the Centre de Cultura Contempor nia de Barcelona and as the director of exhibitions at La Virreina Centre de la Imatge. His awards include the Espais d'Art Prize, the City of Barcelona Essay Prize, and a Rockefeller Foundation Fellowship in the Humanities. ELLEN JONES is a literary translator from Spanish into English, a writer, and an editor. Her recent translations include This Mouth is Mine by Yasnaya Elena A. Gil (Charco Press, 2024), The Remains by Margo Glantz (Charco Press, 2023), The Forgery by Ave Barrera (Charco Press, 2022, co-translated with Robin Myers), and Nancy by Bruno Lloret (Two Lines Press, 2021). Her monograph, Literature in Motion- Translating Multilingualism Across the Americas, is published by Columbia University Press (2022).