A theoretically astute overview of key developments in art and its contexts since the 1990s

A Companion to Contemporary Art in a Global Framework explores the ways specialists and institutions in the fine arts, curation, cultural studies, and art history have attempted to situate art in a more global framework since the 1980s. Offering analyses of the successes and setbacks of these efforts to globalize the art world, this innovative volume presents a new and exciting way of considering art in its global contexts. Essays by an international panel of leading scholars and practicing artists assert that what we talk about as ‘art’ is essentially a Western concept, thus any attempts at understanding art in a global framework require a revising of established conceptual definitions. Organized into three sections, this work first reviews the history and theory of the visual arts since 1980 and introduces readers to the emerging area of scholarship that seeks to place contemporary art in a global framework. The second section traces the progression of recent developments in the art world, focusing on the historical and cultural contexts surrounding efforts to globalize the art world and the visual arts in particular global and transnational frameworks. The final section addresses a wide range of key themes in contemporary art, such as the fundamental institutions and ontologies of art practice, and the interactions among art, politics, and the public sphere. A Companion to Contemporary Art in a Global Framework is essential reading for undergraduate and graduate students, scholars, researchers, and general readers interested in exploring global art beyond the traditional Euro-American context.

Following the critical scepticism surrounding the notion of the ‘self’ as a singular entity during the 1960s, many artists and writers sought to test the apparent problem posed by autobiography as both a traditional genre and as a way of working. Considering the consequent emergence of autotheory, Lifework traces this shift in artistic and literary production during the late twentieth century and beyond, examining a set of diverse practices that mine the line between what it is to make art and what it is to live life. The book’s chapters connect a variety of artistic strategies that cut across medium, geography and time, uncovering how the historical marginalisation of first-person experience has taken on larger social, cultural and political implications in the contemporary moment and how the work of living might still relate to the work of art.

When the body is foregrounded in artwork – as in much contemporary performance, sculptural installation and video work – so is gendered and sexualised difference. Feminist Perspectives on Art: Contemporary Outtakes looks to interactions between art history, theory, curation, and studio-based practices to theorise the phenomenological import of this embodied gender difference in contemporary art. The essays in this collection are rooted in a wide variety of disciplines, including art-making, curating, and art history and criticism, with many of the authors combining roles of curator, artist and writer. This interdisciplinary approach enables the book to bridge the theory–practice divide and highlight new perspectives emerging from creative arts research. Fresh insights are offered on feminist aesthetics, women’s embodied experience, curatorial and art historical method, art world equity, and intersectional concerns. It engages with epistemological assertions of ‘how the body feels’, how the land has creative agency in Indigenous art, and how the use of emotional or affective registers may form one’s curatorial method. This anthology represents a significant contribution to a broader resurgence of feminist thought, methodology, and action in contemporary art, particularly in creative practice research. It will be of particular value to students and researchers in art history, visual culture, cultural studies, and gender studies, in addition to museum and gallery professionals specialising in contemporary art.

Contemporary art can be baffling and beautiful, provocative and disturbing. This pioneering book presents a new look at the controversial period between 1945 and 2015, when art and its traditional forms were called into question. It focuses on the relationship between American and European art, and challenges previously held views about the origins of some of the most innovative ideas in art of this time. Major artists such as Jackson Pollock, Robert Rauschenberg, Andy Warhol, Joseph Beuys, Gerhard Richter, Louise Bourgeois, Cindy Sherman, Jeff Koons, and Shiran Neshat are all discussed, as is the art world of the last fifty years. Important trends are also covered including Abstract Expressionism, Pop Art, Minimalism, Conceptualism, Postmodernism, and Performance Art. This revised and updated second edition includes a new chapter exploring art since 2000 and how globalization has caused shifts in the art world, an updated Bibliography, and 16 new, colour illustrations.

Drawing has been growing in recognition and stature within contemporary fine art since the mid-1970s. Simultaneously, feminist activism has been widespread, leading to the increased prominence of women artists, scholars, critics and curators and the wide acknowledgement of the crucial role played by gender and sexual difference in constituting the subject. Drawing Difference argues that these developments did not occur in parallel simply by coincidence. Rather, the intimate interplay between drawing and feminism is best characterised as allotropic a term originating in chemistry that describes a single pure element which nevertheless assumes varied physical structures, denoting the fundamental affinities which underlie apparently differing material forms. The book takes as its starting point three works from the 1970s by Annette Messager, Dorothea Rockburne and Carolee Schneeman, that are used to exemplify critical developments in feminist art history and key moments for drawing as a means of expression. Throughout the chapters, these works are further explored in relation to the contemporary drawing practices of Marco Maggi, Sian Bowen, Susan Hauptmann, Cornelia Parker, Christoph Fink and Toba Kheedori. Their works are shown to be (re)iterative sites where mark-making differs with each appearance yet retains certain essential features. Dividing its analysis into the themes Approaching, Tropes and Coinciding, the book analyses how both drawing and feminist discourse emphasise dialogue, matter and openness. It demonstrates how sexual difference, subjectivity and drawing are connected at an elemental level and thus how drawing has played a vital role in the articulation of the material and conceptual dynamics of feminism."