Art and pluralism : Lawrence Alloway's cultural criticism / Nigel Whiteley.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Whiteley, Nigel.

Series:

Value, art, politics

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Art--Philosophy.

Art.

Art, Modern--20th century.

Art, Modern.

Pluralism.

Alloway, Lawrence, 1926-1990.

Alloway, Lawrence.

Physical Description:

xiv, 510 pages : illustrations (some color) ; 24 cm.

Place of Publication:

Liverpool : Liverpool University Press, [2012]

Summary:

Lawrence Alloway (1926-1990) was one of the most influential and widely respected (as well as prolific) art writers of the post-war years. His many books, catalogue essays and reviews manifest the changing paradigms of art away from the formal values of modernism towards the inclusiveness of the visual culture model in the 1950s, through the diversity and excesses of the 1960s, to the politicisation in the wake of 1968 and the Vietnam war, on to postmodern concerns in the 1970s.

Alloway was in the right places at the right times. From his central involvement with the Independent Group and the ICA in London in the 1950s, he moved to New York, the new world centre of art, at the beginning of the 1960s. In the early 1970s he became deeply involved with the realist revival and the early feminist movement in art - Sylvia Sleigh, the painter, was his wife - and went on to write extensively about the gallery and art market as a system, examining the critic's role within this system. Positioning himself against the formalism and exclusivism associated with Clement Greenberg, Alloway was wholeheartedly committed to pluralism and diversity in both art and society. For him, art and criticism were always to be understood within a wider set of cultural, social and political concerns, with the emphasis on democracy, social inclusiveness, and freedom of expression. Art and Pluralism provides a close critical reading of Alloway's writings, and sets his work and thought within the cultural contexts of the London and New York art worlds from the 1950s through to the early 1980s. It is a fascinating study of one of the most significant art critics of the twentieth century.

Art and Pluralism provides a wonderfully detailed account of the history of art and criticism in the post-war period. Particularly impressive is the way that [Whiteley] locates Alloway in relation to the cultural historians and critics of his time. By far the most nuanced and complete evocation available, it [achieves] a fresh and inspiring account of this period - its artists, its institutions and its arguments. Professor Barry Curtis, Fellow of the London Consortium and Tutor at the Royal College of Art Book jacket.

Contents:

Section A Introduction

1 Alloway and pluralism 3

2 Background 7

3 The British art scene 11

4 Early career 14

Section B Continuum, 1952-1961

1 Art criticism, 1951-1952 21

2 The ICA in the early 1950s 25

3 The Independent Group: aesthetic problems 28

4 The Independent Group: popular culture 32

5 Art criticism, 1953-1955 38

6 Alloway and abstraction 43

7 Alloway and figurative art 47

8 This Is Tomorrow, 1956 50

9 Information Theory 53

10 Group 12 and Information Theory 56

11 Science fiction 59

12 The cultural continuum model 62

13 Writings about the movies 72

14 Graphics and advertising 78

15 Design 82

16 Architecture and the city 86

17 Channel flows 91

18 Art autre 95

19 The human image 99

20 Modern Art in the United States, 1956 106

21 Action Painting 111

22 First trip to the USA 115

23 The New American Painting, 1958 118

24 Alloway and Greenberg 121

25 Cold wars 125

26 British art and the USA: The Middle Generation 128

27 A younger generation and the avant-garde 132

28 Hard Edge 138

29 Place and the avant-garde, 1959 141

30 Situation and its legacy 147

31 The emergence of Pop art 154

32 Alloway's departure 159

Section C Abundance, 1961-1971

1 Arrival in the USA and "Clemsville" 167

2 Junk art 171

3 American Pop 175

4 Curator at the Guggenheim 177

5 Six Painters and the Object and Six More, 1963 180

6 Other writings on Pop 186

7 Art as human evidence 189

8 Alexander Liberman and Paul Feeley 196

9 Systemic Painting, 1966 201

10 Abstraction and iconography 207

11 The communications network 213

12 Departure from the Guggenheim 220

13 Exile in Carbondale 223

14 Arts Magazine 227

15 The Venice Biennale 231

16 Return to New York: SVA, SUNY, and The Nation 237

17 Options 239

18 Expanding and disappearing works of art 244

19 Alloway's Nation criticism 248

20 Newness and the avant-garde 252

21 Post-Minimal radicalism 258

22 Historical revisions: Abstract Expressionism and Picasso 263

23 Mass communications 270

24 Film criticism 274

25 Violent America 279

26 Pluralism as a "unifying theory" 286

Section D Alternatives, 1971-1988

1 Disorientation and dissent in the art world 291

2 Alloway and the politicization of art, 1968-1970 296

3 Changing values, 1971-1972 304

4 Artforum and the art world as a system 307

5 1973 and a new pluralism 313

6 The uses and limits of art criticism 320

7 Criticism and women's art, 1972-1974 326

8 Women's art and criticism, 1975 334

9 The realist "renewal" 338

10 Photo-Realism 343

11 The realist "revival" 348

12 Realist revisionism 356

13 The decline of the avant-garde 360

14 "Legitimate variables" 364

15 Earth art 368

16 Public art 372

17 In praise of plenty 376

18 Crises in the art world: criticism 378

19 Crises in the art world: feminism 385

20 Crises in the art world: curatorship 392

21 The co-ops and "alternative" spaces 400

22 Turn of the decade decline 409

23 Mainstream... 413

24 ...and "alternative" 419

25 The last years 422

26 The complex present 426

Section E Summary and Conclusion

1 Pluralism 433

2 "Post-Modernism" 441

3 Art history 447

4 Art criticism 451

5 Alloway's reputation 457

6 Art 464

7 The legacy of pluralism 469.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

9781846316456

1846316456

OCLC:

760973343