Art in the After-Culture: Capitalist Crisis and Cultural Strategy

by Ben Davis

Overview

“This kaleidoscopic collection will help you see and comprehend the world anew—which is, in my book, what good art should do.”
—Astra Taylor

It is a scary and disorienting time for art, as it is a scary and disorienting time in general. Aesthetic experience is both overshadowed by the spectacle of current events and pressed into new connection with them. The self-image of art as a social good is collapsing under the weight of capitalism’s dysfunction.

In these incisive essays, art critic Ben Davis makes sense of our extreme present as an emerging "after-culture"—a culture whose forms and functions are being radically reshaped by cataclysmic events. In the face of catastrophe, he holds out hope that reckoning with the new realities of art, technology, activism, and the media, can help us weather the super-storms of the future.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781642594621
Publisher:	Haymarket Books
Publication date:	03/15/2022
Pages:	180
Sales rank:	224,550
Product dimensions:	5.50(w) x 8.50(h) x 0.90(d)

About the Author

Ben Davis has been artnet News's National Art Critic since 2016. He is the author of 9.5 Theses on Art and Class, and was an editor of The Elements of Architecture, which began as the catalogue to the 2014 Venice Architecture Biennial. Recent essays have appeared in the books Public Servants: Art and the Crisis of the Common Good and The Future of Public Space. His writings have been featured in The New York Times, New York Magazine, Slate, Adbusters, The Brooklyn Rail, e-Flux Journal, Frieze, The Village Voice, and many other venues. In 2019, Harvard 's Nieman Journalism Lab reported that he was one of the five most influential art critics in the United States, and the only one to write for an online publication.

Table of Contents

Prologue: Art in the After-Culture ix

Introduction 1

Chapter 1 Connoisseurship and Critique 9

Chapter 2 Elite Capture and Radical Chic 28

Chapter 3 The Art World and the Culture Network 55

Chapter 4 AI Aesthetics and Capitalism 91

Chapter 5 The Anarchist in the Network 113

Chapter 6 Cultural Appropriation and Cultural Materialism 133

Chapter 7 The Mirror of Conspiracy 178

Chapter 8 Art and Ecotopia 205

Epilogue: Art in the After-Culture 224

Notes 228

Index 261

Editorial Reviews

Praise for 9.5 Theses on Art and Class:

"Just when it seemed that contemporary art writing and the subject of real-life politics had permanently parted ways, along comes the young New York critic Ben Davis with a book that brings them together. No cheerleading here, no swoony prosody, no easy kiss-offs; just smart, ardent, illusion-puncturing observation and analysis on the intersection of art, commerce, and the elephant in the art-fair VIP lounge class. None of this would matter much if he didn 't tell us why we should care, but he does. Under all his excoriations lies a faith in art as an agent of transformation toward a post-neoliberal, post-greed society that could be, should be."
Holland Cotter, art critic, New York Times

"Like watching an expert pole-vaulter ply his craft, witnessing this critic reach for first principles in this day and age constitutes its own reward... On 9.5 Theses, the verdict is crystal: This is one helluva pamphlet."
Christian Viveros-Faune, The Village Voice

"...a riveting manifesto..."
New York Magazine

"By reminding artists where they really stand, Davis hopes, in the end, to put them on firmer footing, both politically and creatively."
Dushko Petrovich, BOOKFORUM

"Davis is an intellectually clearheaded critic dishing out some tough truths, often backed up with statistics, to the rarefied 'art world.' . . . The book reframes the production and sale of art in tough terms, which is why the collection 's centerpiece, 9.5 Theses on Art and Class, should be required reading for art professionals. In this first book, Davis proves himself a critic to be reckoned with."
Publishers Weekly

"Written beautifully and for all of us... this book has a high purpose that many attempt and few fulfill. It is a compelling and convincing reminder of why art matters and what's ultimately at stake."
Mary Louise Schumacher, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

"9.5 Theses on Art and Class is the first book I 've read by an art critic that spoke to the world I lived and worked in as an artist. Incisive, irreverent, and intellectually fearless. A truth-bomb of a book."
Molly Crabapple, artist

From the Publisher