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Usable Pasts: Social Practice and State Formation in American Art

Paperback / softback

Main Details

Title Usable Pasts: Social Practice and State Formation in American Art
Authors and Contributors      By (author) Larne Abse Gogarty
SeriesStudies in Critical Social Sciences
Physical Properties
Format:Paperback / softback
Pages:240
Dimensions(mm): Height 228,Width 152
ISBN/Barcode 9781642599008
Audience
General

Publishing Details

Publisher Haymarket Books
Imprint Haymarket Books
NZ Release Date 8 August 2023
Publication Country United States

Description

Usable Pasts zeros in on two periods in the United States that saw the state increase its financial support for socially engaged works of culture. In the 1990s the political artworks by Suzanne lacy, Rick Lowe, and Martha Rosler helped usher in an era of social practice art, while in the 1930s saw the creation of the leftist Cultural Front and its proliferation of experiential theatre, modern dance, and photography. By analyzing these trends and their relationship to one another this book unpicks the mythic and material afterlives of the New Deal in American cultural politics, and in so doing writes a new history of social practice art in the United States. From teenage mothers organising exhibitions that challenged welfare reform, to communist dance troupes choreographing their struggles as domestic workers, Usable Pasts addresses the aesthetics and politics of these attempts to transform society through art in relation to questions of state formation.

Author Biography

Larne Abse Gogarty is a Lecturer at the Slade School of Fine Art. She writes about modern and contemporary art, and has recently published essays in Third Text, and the Zeitschrift fur Kunstgeschichte.