The Contingent Object of Contemporary Art

(Paperback)

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Description

In this book Martha Buskirk addresses the interesting fact that since the early 1960s, almost anything can and has been called art. Furthermore, works of art that lack traditional signs of authenticity or permanence have been embraced by institutions long devoted to the original and the permanent. Buskirk begins with questions of authorship raised by minimalists' use of industrial materials and methods, including competing claims of ownership and artistic authorship evident in conflicts over the right to fabricate artists' works. Examining recent examples of appropriation, she finds precedents in pop art and the early twentieth-century readymade and explores the intersection of contemporary artistic copying and the system of copyrights, trademarks, and brand names characteristic of other forms of commodity production. She also investigates the ways that connections between work and context have transformed art and institutional conventions, the impact of new materials on definitions of medium, the role of the document as both primary and secondary object, and the significance of conceptually oriented performance work for the intersection of photography and the human body in contemporary art.

Reviews

"Erudite... With notable argumentative clarity and welcome skepticism, Buskirk examines questions of authorship, originality, and the notably ephemeral object through specific examples, ranging from Marcel Duchamp and Robert Rauschenberg to Janine Antoni and Gabriel Orozco." - Joao Ribas, artnet.com"

Author Bio

Martha Buskirk is Associate Professor of Art History and Criticism at Montserrat College of Art. She is the coeditor of The Duchomp Effect (MIT Press, 1996) and The Destruction of Tilted Arc: Documents (MIT Press, 1990).