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Sohrab Ahmari

The New Philistines

Contemporary art is obsessed with the politics of identity. Visit any contemporary gallery, museum or theatre, and chances are the art on offer will be principally concerned with race, gender, sexuality, power and privilege.
The quest for truth, freedom and the sacred has been thrust aside to make room for identity politics. Mystery, individuality and beauty are out; radical feminism, racial grievance and queer theory are in. The result is a drearily predictable culture and the narrowing of the space for creative self-expression and honest criticism.

Sohrab Ahmari's book is a passionate cri de coeur against this state of affairs. The New Philistines takes readers deep inside a cultural scene where all manner of ugly, inept art is celebrated so long as it toes the ideological line, and where the artistic glories of the Western world are revised and disfigured to fit the rigid doctrines of identity politics.
The degree of politicisation means that art no longer performs its historical function, as a mirror and repository of the human spirit — something that should alarm not just art lovers but anyone who cares about the future of liberal civilisation.
75 бумажных страниц
Правообладатель
Bookwire
Дата публикации оригинала
2016
Год выхода издания
2016
Издательство
Biteback Publishing
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Впечатления

  • Valeria Senделится впечатлением5 лет назад
    👍Worth reading
    🔮Hidden Depths
    🎯Worthwhile

    Небольшое эссе, посвященное критическому анализу современного западного левого искусства.

Цитаты

  • Valeria Senцитирует5 лет назад
    What happens in Artforum doesn’t stay in Artforum, and the result is that for many people in the West, all thinking about culture has been reduced to a single mental reflex: art is worthwhile if it validates the narratives, identities and feelings of ‘marginalised’ groups or, conversely, lays bare the injustices of the ‘mainstream’.
  • Valeria Senцитирует5 лет назад
    And this lot is more dogmatic than any crusty Victorian snob.
  • Valeria Senцитирует5 лет назад
    The difference is that, to gain a foothold in the establishment now, one has to profess solidarity with the marginal (that really isn’t all that marginal) and enmity against some repressive mainstream (that really isn’t mainstream anymore).
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