Full Description
This collection explores, theoretically through a series of case studies, how matter and materials have a role in the afterlife of artworks.
Focussing on modern and contemporary art, the book asks several related questions: How does matter affect the afterlife of works of art and images? How are contemporary artists taking afterlife/materials as part of their practice? And what role does the pair play in transforming center-periphery relations? Through a range of contributions, the book describes how the History of Art has enlarged its scope through the incidence of both the "iconic turn" and the "material turn", giving an overview of how the notion of afterlife has been increasingly changing art historical studies, and of how this fact is articulated with the growing attention paid to matter —and, when matter is considered in relation to a technique, to materials. It offers both an account of the state of things in the theoretical/historiographical discussion and a set of case studies ranging from Picasso's Guernica or Torres García's murals to the works of Ad Reinhardt or Ana Lupas, as well as more recent practices by artists such as Gala Porras-Kim or Pierre Huyghe.
This book is suitable for students and researchers in History of Art, Visual Studies, Memory Studies and Philosophy.
Contents
Introduction: The Rustle of Matter. Materiality and The Afterlife of Artworks Part 1. The Life of Artworks. Discussions Held Between the Iconic and the Material Turn 1. Between Matter as an Obstacle and Matter as a Condition: The Paths of the Nachleben 2. After Afterlife: Theorizing the Evolving Material Life of Artworks 3. Creation, Invention: Materially Imagining 4. The Socio-Political Lives of Persistent Figures Part 2. Revisiting Art History Narrations: Materials, Figures, Mediums 5. Marbles Banished and Unearthed. (Im)materiality in the Sacristy of San Lorenzo, by Brunelleschi 6. Anachronism, Material, and Memory. Luciano Fabro and the Ghost of Sculpture 7. Many Afterlives. Pablo Picasso's Guernica in the Imaginary of Atomic War, ca. 1943 8. Memory and Materiality: Pax in Lucem and the Survival of Torres García's Destroyed Murals Part 3. Engaging with Afterlife as Artistic Practice 9. No Afterlife! Ad Reinhardt's Refusal of the Material Alteration of His Works 10. An Endless Restart: The Material Transformation of Ana Lupas's Works 11. Just Afterlife: Materials and the Museum Interstices in the Work of Gala Porras-Kim 12. Liminality in the Work of Pierre Huyghe
