Raiding the Icebox is a kaleidoscopic review of the avant-garde and radical subcultures of the twentieth century, and explains how the most powerful artistic statements of the era redrew the line between high and low art.Beginning with an analysis of the role of Diaghilev and the Russian Ballet, Wollen argues that modernism has always had a hidden, suppressed side which cannot easily be absorbed into the master-narrative of modernity.Wollen reviews the hopes, fears and expectations of artists and critics such as the Bauhaus movement, as fascinated by Henry Ford's assembly line as they were by the Hollywood dream factory, concluding with Guy Debord's caustic dystopian vision of an all-consuming "Society of the Spectacle."Finally, Wollen chronicles the emergence of a subversive sensibility as he explores some of the unexpected new cultural forms which non-Western artists are taking as modernism enters into crisis at the beginning of a new century: reversing the rules of the game and raiding the icebox of the West.
Les mer
Provides a kaleidoscopic review of the avant-garde and radical subcultures of the twentieth century, and explains how artistic statements of the era redrew the line between high and low art.
To engage with Raiding the Icebox is exhilarating. Wolllen's lightly carried erudition seems to belong to an earlier epoch, before the professionalization of the intellectual led to the construction of a dismaying language of criticism, notable for its ugly opacity. Throughout, Raiding the Icebox is a Pandora's box of cultural subversion, filled with an astonishingly wide range of histories of art and artists.
Les mer
Groundbreaking study of radical subcultures by the influential cultural critic

Produktdetaljer

ISBN
9781844672509
Publisert
2008-08-17
Utgiver
Vendor
Verso Books
Vekt
382 gr
Høyde
234 mm
Bredde
157 mm
Dybde
20 mm
Aldersnivå
G, 01
Språk
Product language
Engelsk
Format
Product format
Heftet
Antall sider
230

Forfatter

Biographical note

Peter Wollen was Chair of the Department of Film, Television and New Media at the University of California, Los Angeles. His other books include Paris/Hollywood: Writings on Film and Paris/Manhattan: Writings on Art.