Taking on the myth of France's creative exhaustion following World War II, this collection of essays brings together an international team of scholars, whose research offers English readers a rich and complex overview of the place of France and French artists in the visual arts since 1945. Addressing a wide range of artistic practices, spanning over seven decades, and using different methodologies, their contributions cover ground charted and unknown. They introduce greater depth and specificity to familiar artists and movements, such as Lettrism, Situationist International or Nouveau Réalisme, while bringing to the fore lesser known artists and groups, including GRAPUS, the Sociological Art Collective, and Nicolas Schöffer. Collectively, they stress the political dimensions and social ambitions of the art produced in France at the time, deconstruct the traditional geography of the French art world, and highlight the multiculturalism of the French art scene that resulted from its colonial past and the constant flux of artistic travels and migrations. Ultimately, the book contributes to a story of postwar art in which France can be inscribed not as a main or sub chapter, but rather as a vector in the wider constellation of modern and contemporary art.

A Companion to Contemporary Art is a major survey covering the major works and movements, the most important theoretical developments, and the historical, social, political, and aesthetic issues in contemporary art since 1945, primarily in the Euro-American context. Collects 27 original essays by expert scholars describing the current state of scholarship in art history and visual studies, and pointing to future directions in the field. Contains dual chronological and thematic coverage of the major themes in the art of our time: politics, culture wars, public space, diaspora, the artist, identity politics, the body, and visual culture. Offers synthetic analysis, as well as new approaches to, debates central to the visual arts since 1945 such as those addressing formalism, the avant-garde, the role of the artist, technology and art, and the society of the spectacle.

Reviews the techniques and figures associated with movements in the usual arts of Europe and the United States since the end of World War II

No other art movement has so profoundly influenced radical politics as the Situationist International. But beyond the clichs about its purported leader Guy Debord, the "society of the spectacle," dtournement and drive, lies a more complex story about key historical shifts in the composition of capital, work, labor, art, and revolutionary theory during the 1950s and 60s. With and Against reframes the history of the Situationist International as a struggle to come to terms with the then-emerging ideologies of cybernetics and automation. Through each of the book's four chapters, Dominique Routhier dissects Situationist pamphlets, documents, artworks, and objects that refract elements of a "cybernetic hypothesis": the theoretically hyperbolic belief that technological progress, computers and automation make class struggle and the idea of revolution obsolete. With equal attention to aesthetic detail and to the broader contours of political economy, this book serves as a critical intervention in art history as well a call to reconsider, more broadly, the contemporary lessons of the most political of all artistic avantgardes.

Combining a broad overview of Jean-Jacques Lebel's coming-of-age among Surrealists and his rupture with the movement, Laurel Jean Fredrickson focuses on two landmark happenings in this book: the first, “Funeral of the Thing of Tinguely” (1960), and the most scandalous, “120 Minutes dedicated to the Divine Marquis” (1966). This study illustrates the development and significance of French happenings in relation to cultural and political changes of the 1960s. Research in Lebel's archives, and others like the Archives nationale d'outre-mer are indispensable in the telling of this extraordinary historical and theoretical narrative. It illuminates sensitive, often veiled dimensions of postwar French society, from torture during the Algerian War, to government censorship, to the sexual politics of nudity in art. This volume shows how Lebel synthesized the lessons of Dada and surrealism and 1960s experimentalism, electrified by political radicalism, to participate in shaping the erotics and forms of revolution in May 1968.

Participatory art practices allow members of an audience to actively contribute to the creation of art. Annemarie Kok provides a detailed analysis and explanation of the use of participatory strategies in art in the so-called ›long sixties‹ (starting around 1958 and ending around 1974) in Western Europe. Drawing on extensive archival materials and with the help of the toolbox of the actor-network theory, she maps out the various actors of three case studies of participatory projects by John Dugger and David Medalla, Piotr Kowalski, and telewissen, all of which were part of documenta 5 (Kassel, 1972).

A comprehensive review of the artistic movements that have taken place in France from the 1960s to the present, this study benefits from the anecdotes and personal memories of its author, Catherine Millet. The internationally respected art critic, who was herself an active participant in these movements, breathes life into this factual chronology of the contemporary art scene in France. She exposes the often unexpected links between movements by underscoring their contradictions and taking into consideration the social and cultural changes that have occurred since the 1960s in France and across the globe. An extensive reference, this book provides the keys to understanding the international contemporary art scene as a whole. Contemporary Art in France serves as an historical essay, offering a profound analysis of the prevailing tendencies and characteristics of art of the past forty years. Available for the first time in English, the book is completed by a chronology of events, a thorough account of the latest creative developments, and more than 300 illustrations.