PETER OSBORNE
ANYWHERE OR NOT AT ALL
The Philosophy of Contemporary Art
Verso Books
(May 15, 2013)
A new reading of the philosophy of contemporary art by the author of The Politics of Time.
Contemporary art is the object of inflated and widely divergent claims. What kind of discourse can help us give it a critical sense? Anywhere or Not At All is a major philosophical intervention in art theory that challenges the terms of established positions through a new approach at once philosophical, historical, social and art-critical. Setting out the claim that ‘contemporary art is postconceptual art’, the book elaborates a series of conceptual constructions and interpretations of works by Navjot Altaf, the Atlas Group, Amar Kanwar, Sol LeWitt, Gordon Matta-Clark, Gerhard Richter and Robert Smithson, among others. It concludes with new accounts of the institutional and existential complexities of ‘art space’ and ‘art time’. Anywhere or Not At All maps out the conceptual coordinates for an art that is both critical and contemporary in the era of global capitalism.
Peter Osborne is Professor of Modern European Philosophy and founding Director of the Centre for Research in Modern European Philosophy (CRMEP), now at Kingston University London. He is a long-serving member of the editorial collective of the UK journal Radical Philosophy. His books include The Politics of Time, Philosophy in Cultural Theory, Conceptual Art and Marx.
ANYWHERE OR NOT AT ALL
The Philosophy of Contemporary Art
Verso Books
(May 15, 2013)
A new reading of the philosophy of contemporary art by the author of The Politics of Time.
Contemporary art is the object of inflated and widely divergent claims. What kind of discourse can help us give it a critical sense? Anywhere or Not At All is a major philosophical intervention in art theory that challenges the terms of established positions through a new approach at once philosophical, historical, social and art-critical. Setting out the claim that ‘contemporary art is postconceptual art’, the book elaborates a series of conceptual constructions and interpretations of works by Navjot Altaf, the Atlas Group, Amar Kanwar, Sol LeWitt, Gordon Matta-Clark, Gerhard Richter and Robert Smithson, among others. It concludes with new accounts of the institutional and existential complexities of ‘art space’ and ‘art time’. Anywhere or Not At All maps out the conceptual coordinates for an art that is both critical and contemporary in the era of global capitalism.
Peter Osborne is Professor of Modern European Philosophy and founding Director of the Centre for Research in Modern European Philosophy (CRMEP), now at Kingston University London. He is a long-serving member of the editorial collective of the UK journal Radical Philosophy. His books include The Politics of Time, Philosophy in Cultural Theory, Conceptual Art and Marx.
