The Conspiracy Of Modern Art

Description

In The Conspiracy of Modern Art the Brazilian critic and art-historian Luiz Renato Martins presents an engaging new account of modern art from David to Abstract Expressionism. Seen from the megalopolis of Sao Paulo, this art of Paris and New York-which were once seen as touchstones of modernism that embodied Revolution, Thermidor, Bonapartism, and Bourgeois 'Triump'-now pulsates in a tragic, stale, key. Equally attentive to form and politics, Martins invites us to look again at familiar pictures. In the process, modern art appears in a new light. These essays, largely unknown to an English-speaking audience, may be the most important contribution to the account of modern painting since the important debates of the 1980s

Luiz Renato Martins teaches art history and aesthetics at the Visual Arts Department of the School of Arts and Communications of the University of Sao Paulo. He has taught in several universities in Mexico, Chile, Argentina, Spain, France and the USA, and has published many books and articles on issues such as modern art, fi lm and the contemporary global crisis. Steve Edwards is Professor in the Department of Art History at Birkbeck College, University of London. He is the author of several books on art and photography; an editor of the Oxford Art Journal and of the Historical Materialism Book Series.