Boris Groys Books

Some of the most representative tendencies of the second half of the 20th century are represented in the private collection of German Reinhard Onnasch, which features work by Hans Hofmann, Robert Motherwell, Morris Louis, Barnett Newman, Cy Twombly, Robert Rauschenberg, Claes Oldenburg, Andy Warhol, Edward Kienholz, Dan Flavin, Hans Haacke, Robert Smithson, Mike Kelley, Dan Graham, Lawrence Weiner, Jason Rhoades, and others.Essays by Boris Groys, Petra Kipphoff. Artworks by Dan Flavin, Dan Graham, Hans Haacke, Hans Hofmann, Mike Kelley, Edward Kienholz, Morris Louis, Robert Motherwell, Barnett Newman, Claes Oldenburg, Robert Rauschenberg, Robert Smithson, Cy Twombly, Andy Warhol, Lawrence Weiner. 8.75 x 10.5 in.110 color illustrationsEnglish/Portuguese

The leading art theorist takes on art in the age of the Internet In the early twentieth century, art and its institutions came under critique from a new democratic and egalitarian spirit. The notion of works of art as sacred objects was decried and subsequently they would be understood merely as things. This meant an attack on realism, as well as on the traditional preservative mission of the museum. Acclaimed art theorist Boris Groys argues this led to the development of -direct realism- an art that would not produce objects, but practices (from performance art to relational aesthetics) that would not survive. But for more than a century now, every advance in this direction has been quickly followed by new means of preserving art's distinction. In this major new work, Groys charts the paradoxes produced by this tension, and explores art in the age of the thingless medium, the Internet. Groys claims that if the techniques of mechanical reproduction gave us objects without aura, digital production generates aura without objects, transforming all its materials into vanishing markers of the transitory present.

A provocative essay on the relationship between communism, philosophy and language. Since Plato, philosophers have dreamed of establishing a rational state ruled through the power of language. In this radical and disturbing account of Soviet philosophy, Boris Groys argues that communism shares that dream and is best understood as an attempt to replace financial with linguistic bonds as the cement uniting society. The transformative power of language, the medium of equality, is the key to any new communist revolution.

Art has its own power in the world, and is as much a force in the power play of global politics today as it once was in the arena of cold war politics. Art, argues the distinguished theoretician Boris Groys, is hardly a powerless commodity subject to the art market's fiats of inclusion and exclusion. In Art Power , Groys examines modern and contemporary art according to its ideological function. Art, Groys writes, is produced and brought before the public in two ways -- as a commodity and as a tool of political propaganda. In the contemporary art scene, very little attention is paid to the latter function. Arguing for the inclusion of politically motivated art in contemporary art discourse, Groys considers art produced under totalitarianism, Socialism, and post-Communism. He also considers today's mainstream Western art -- which he finds behaving more and more according the norms of ideological produced and exhibited for the masses at international exhibitions, biennials, and festivals. Contemporary art, Groys argues, demonstrates its power by appropriating the iconoclastic gestures directed against itself -- by positioning itself simultaneously as an image and as a critique of the image. In Art Power , Groys examines this fundamental appropriation that produces the paradoxical object of the modern artwork.

The success of ?social distancing? as a cure-all to the COVID-19 pandemic proves that neoliberalism has created an insurmountable distance to the very notion of society itself. This rejection is best embodied in Margaret Thatcher?s infamous dictum ?There is no society,? which supplies the title of this anthology, with a crucial question mark added. How can we deal with the paradoxical mix of solitude and imposed togetherness that the pandemic entails? How can culture and critical discourse even continue when public0space has been shut down upon the advice of epidemiologists? How do we grasp the new political constellations arising today? Such are the questions tackled by the authors of this anthology, based on the discussion program of the Paranoia TV edition of the steirischer herbst festival.00Exhibition: steirischer herbst ?20?Paranoia TV, Graz, Austria (2020).

On the New looks at the economies of exchange and valuation that drive modern culture's key sites: the intellectual marketplace and the archive. As ideas move from one context to another, newness is created. This continuous shifting of the line that separates the valuable from the worthless, culture from profanity, is at the center of Boris Groys's investigation which aims to map the uncharted territory of what constitutes artistic innovation and what processes underpin its recognition and appropriation.