Description
Crowther begins by discussing how and why form is significant. Using Derrida's notion of "iterability"-a sign's capacity to be used across different contexts-he links this possibility to key reciprocal cognitive relations that are the structural basis of self-consciousness. He then argues that while such relations are necessarily involved in any pictorial work, they are especially manifest in aesthetically valuable representation, and even more so in those twentieth-century works that radically transform or abandon conventional modes of representation. The involvement of key reciprocal relations gives such works a transhistorical and transcultural significance. To show this, Crowther investigates the theory and practice of important artists such as Malevich, Pollock, Mondrian, and Newman, and major tendencies such as Futurism, Surrealism, and Conceptual Art. By linking them to reciprocal relations, he is able to illuminate a language of twentieth-century art that cuts across those boundaries set out by such conventional notions as modern, avant-garde, and postmodern.
About the Author
Paul Crowther is lecturer in the history of art at the University of Oxford.
Book Information
ISBN 9780300072419
Author Paul Crowther
Format Hardback
Page Count 264
Imprint Yale University Press
Publisher Yale University Press
Weight(grams) 744g