From Library Journal
Liberating artworks from their conventional chronological boundaries might appear heretical to the traditional art historian's eye, but this book, which documents an exhibition appearing at the Kunsthaus Zrich in November 2000 and at the Hamburger Kunsthalle in February 2001, reveals the didactic potential of such an action. The catalog's dismissal of historical categories allows larger conceptual affinities and stylistic patterns to emerge among artworks completed within the last 50 years. Six themes provide the conceptual framework for both exhibition and catalog and determine the artworks analyzed. Kunsthaus Zrich curator Bice Curiger (Birth of the Cool), who has published works on Meret Oppenheim and Sigmar Polke, highlights the particulars of each era's politics and manifests instead society's historical engagement with the six themes. The seven prefatory essays by notable art world figures, such as feminist art historian Griselda Pollock, are refreshingly readable and examine another subject integral to the exhibition's premise: the concept of reality in our media-inundated, postindustrial society. Recommended for academic libraries and collections that focus on contemporary art and cultural analysis. Savannah Schroll, Smithsonian Inst. Libs., Washington, DC
Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.
Book Description
"Hypermental" tracks, with unprecedented insight, the unfinished project of surrealism, exploring the visual art of the modern era not in terms of genres, schools, or media, but through the lens of subjectivity. This new catalogue explores how the modernist critique of the subject--exemplified by the art and philosophy of the Surrealists--has continued on through the postwar period and through to the present day. From Merit Oppenheim and Yayoi Kusama in the 1950s and 60s to Cindy Sherman and Matthew Barney in the 90s, we find works that interrogate the construction of the subject, and the body, through sexual difference. From the Pop-era pieces of Richard Hamilton and James Rosenquist to the more recent work of Richard Prince and Barbara Kruger, we find a narrative of the production of desire, one that refers explicitly to the elevated status of the commodity. "Hypermental" presents work by these artists and many more, juxtaposing their work with that of the original surrealists, and the resulting book is an exceptionally unique history of the most radical trends in the history of 20th century art.
