In this intellectually wide-ranging book John Roberts develops a labor theory of culture as a model for explaining the dynamics of avant-garde art and the expansion of artistic authority in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries.
From Duchamp to Warhol, conceptual art, and the "post-visual" practices of the moment, Roberts explores the relationship between artistic labor and productive labor, and the limits and possibilities of authorship. In doing so, he confronts a recurring theme of both conservative and radical detractors of modern art in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries: how is skill, and the seeming absence of skill in modern art, to be theorized and evaluated? Drawing on cognitive psychology, labor process theory, social anthropology, and debates in contemporary political philosophy, Roberts' book establishes a new critical topography for examining the cultural form of art today.
- ISBN10 1844671631
- ISBN13 9781844671632
- Publish Date 17 December 2007 (first published 17 November 2007)
- Publish Status Out of Print
- Out of Print 15 August 2009
- Publish Country GB
- Imprint Verso Books
- Format Hardcover
- Pages 249
- Language English