Art and Fear

Description

Paul Virilio is one of contemporary Continental thought's most original and provocative critical voices. His vision of the impact of modern technology on the contemporary global condition is powerful and disturbing, ranging over art, science, politics and warfare. In Art and Fear, Paul Virilio traces the twin development of art and science over the twentieth century. In his provocative and challenging vision, art and science vie with each other for the destruction of the human form as we know it. He traces the connections between the way early twentieth century avant-garde artists twisted and tortured the human form before making it vanish in abstraction, and the blasting to bits of men who were no more than cannon fodder i nthe trenches of the Great War; and between the German Expressionists' hate-filled portraits of the damned, and the 'medical' experiments of the Nazi eugenicists; and between the mangled messages of global advertising, and the organisation of global terrorism. Now, at the start of the twenty-first century, science has finally left art behind, as genetic engineers prepare to turn themselves into the worst of expressionists, with the human being the raw material for new and monstrous forms of life. Art and Fear is essential reading for anyone wondering where art has gone and where science is taking us.

Paul Virilio is one of our foremost cultural critics. Architect and urban planner and former director of the Ecole Speciale d'Architecture in Paris, he has written widely on film, architecture, art, war and technology. Julie Rose is a freelance translator and winner of the PEN Medallion for Translation. Paul Virilio is Director of the Ecole Speciale d'Architecture in Paris and author of over 15 books, including Art and Fear and Desert Screen.

"Paul Virilio's vision of war, art and technology has informed contemporary debates about techno-capitalist modernity for some time. Often perceived as a prophet of doom and pessimism, Virlio has consistently interrogated the effects of modern technology on the human condition....John Armitage's introduction offers a concise overture to both Art and Fear and to Virlio's general trajectory of thought. Art and Fear itself, relying almost exclusively on the historical development of genres as transgenic art, does a commendable job of providing a stereoscopic view of the political contexts of such art - Auschwitz, genocide, war." -Pramod Naya, International Journal of Baudrillard Studies, January 2006 'Is Virilio a strident critic out of touch with contemporary culture or is Art and Fear a deft excoriation of excess? Either way, this is a short, sharp and gripping book?' Modern Painters * Blurb from reviewer * 'Virilio's lonely voice [is] more disturbing and timely than ever.' New Statesman * Blurb from reviewer *