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3 books match the query 'Communism and art'
Icons of the Left
Benjamin and Eisenstein, Picasso and Kafka after the Fall of CommunismOtto Karl Werckmeister
University of Chicago Press, 1999
In his new book, art historian O. K. Werckmeister advances a critique of Marxist culture in capitalist society.
Focusing on some of the most celebrated instances of traditional "Western Marxism," Werckmeister shows how such "icons of the Left" have been progressively detached from their political roots in communist activism to the safe distance of utopian or revolutionary speculations. He assesses some recent critiques of "Western Marxism" in popular culture such as Soderbergh's film Kafka, pointing out the historic fallacies that underlie such wholesale repudiations. With this analysis, Werckmeister seeks to clear the ground for a coherent cultural policy of the Left that responds to the continuing crisis of society.
Focusing on some of the most celebrated instances of traditional "Western Marxism," Werckmeister shows how such "icons of the Left" have been progressively detached from their political roots in communist activism to the safe distance of utopian or revolutionary speculations. He assesses some recent critiques of "Western Marxism" in popular culture such as Soderbergh's film Kafka, pointing out the historic fallacies that underlie such wholesale repudiations. With this analysis, Werckmeister seeks to clear the ground for a coherent cultural policy of the Left that responds to the continuing crisis of society.
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Marxism and the History of Art
From William Morris to the New LeftEdited by Andrew Hemingway
Pluto Press, 2006
This unique book is the first comprehensive introduction to Marxist approaches to art history. Although the aesthetic was a crucial part of Marx and Engels's thought, they left no programmatic statements on the arts. In meeting this gap, succeeding Marxists have inevitably devised a wide variety of approaches to both aesthetics and the writing of art's history. Although there is an abundant scholarship on Marxist approaches to literature, the historiography of the visual arts from a Marxist perspective has been largely neglected despite the large impact it has had within academic art history since 1970.
This book encompasses a range of influential thinkers and historians from the period of the Second and Third Internationals down to the heyday of the New Left. Among the individuals it covers are William Morris, Mikhail Lifshits, Frederick Antal, Francis Klingender, Max Raphael, Meyer Schapiro, Walter Benjamin, Henri Lefebvre, and Arnold Hauser. It also includes three essays addressing the heritage of the New Left. In the spirit of Marxism itself, the authors interpret the achievements and limitations of Marxist art history in relation to the historical and political circumstances of its production and provide an indispensable and lucid introduction to contemporary radical practices in the field.
This book encompasses a range of influential thinkers and historians from the period of the Second and Third Internationals down to the heyday of the New Left. Among the individuals it covers are William Morris, Mikhail Lifshits, Frederick Antal, Francis Klingender, Max Raphael, Meyer Schapiro, Walter Benjamin, Henri Lefebvre, and Arnold Hauser. It also includes three essays addressing the heritage of the New Left. In the spirit of Marxism itself, the authors interpret the achievements and limitations of Marxist art history in relation to the historical and political circumstances of its production and provide an indispensable and lucid introduction to contemporary radical practices in the field.
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Universal Prostitution and Modernist Abstraction
A CounterhistoryJaleh Mansoor
Duke University Press, 2025
In Universal Prostitution and Modernist Abstraction, Jaleh Mansoor provides a counternarrative of modernism and abstraction and a reexamination of Marxist aesthetics. Mansoor draws on Marx’s concept of prostitution—a conceptual device through which Marx allegorized modern labor—to think about the confluences of generalized and gendered labor in modern art. Analyzing works ranging from Édouard Manet’s Olympia and Georges Seurat’s The Models to contemporary work by Hito Steyerl and Hannah Black, she shows how avant-garde artists can detect changing modes of production and capitalist and biopolitical processes of abstraction that assign identities to subjects in the interest of value’s impersonal circulation. She demonstrates that art and abstraction resist modes of production and subjugation at the level of process and form rather than through referential representation. By studying gendered and generalized labor, abstraction, automation, and the worker, Mansoor shifts focus away from ideology, superstructure, and culture toward the ways art indexes crisis and transformation in the political economic base. Ultimately, she traces the outlines of a counterpraxis to capital while demonstrating how artworks give us a way to see through the abstractions of everyday life.
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