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Author:   Ara H Merjian
Publisher:   The University of Chicago Press
Imprint:   University of Chicago Press
Dimensions:   Width: 17.80cm , Height: 2.60cm , Length: 25.40cm
Weight:   1.058kg
ISBN:  

9780226655277

ISBN 10:   022665527
Pages:   304
Publication Date:   15 July 2020
Audience:   General/trade ,  General
Format:   Hardback
Publisher's Status:   Active
Availability:   Out of stock  
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Table of Contents

Introduction Heretical Aesthetics Technical Sacrality/Heretical Aesthetics Against the Avant-Garde Communism, Humanism, Modernism Aesthetic Deceleration A Tradition of Antitradition One Abstraction: The Zero Degree of History Abstraction and Neocapital History, Rage, Painting Abstraction and/as Failed Revolution A Cinema of Poetry and Painting The Zero Moment of History Two Pop: A Mimesis of the Future Mass Culture and the Crisis of Communism Pop Polemics on the Left All the World at Home Objective Indifference/Pop Vernacular Pop, Politics, and the Ends of Irony The Division of History A Mimesis of the Future Three Arte Povera: Prehistory and the Aesthetics of Contamination An Irrational Marxism and the Intimacy of 'Things' Contamination, Craft, and the Slang of Matter The Third World between History and Prehistory Double Representation Phenomenology versus Frame 1968 and After: Cold War, Hot Autumn Four Performance: A Semiology of Action Body/Struggle Intellectual Flesh Intimacy and Exposure From What Is Fascism to Salo Performing the Pseudorevolution Conclusion Hopes and Alibis: Pasolini and Contemporary Art Acknowledgments Notes Index

Reviews

Fluently interweaving the histories of film, literature, and the visual arts in postwar Italy, Against the Avant-Garde is as 'extravagantly interdisciplinary' as its subject, the director, author, and polemicist Pier Paolo Pasolini, himself claimed to be. With admirable subtlety, Merjian sets out, not so much to accord him a place within the established trajectory of art history-from the abstract informalist painting of the 1950s through the body art of the 1970s-but to highlight the inconvenience and untimeliness of Pasolini's resolute critique of his neo-avant-garde contemporaries. Better still, Merjian manages to preserve a sense of the urgency with which Pasolini condemned a voracious postwar capitalism, with all its powers of consumerist seduction, as the necessary context for his resistance to so much of the art of his time-all the while inspiring us to return to the films and the artworks the author addresses with new, more discerning eyes. -- Tom McDonough, author of The Beautiful Language of My Century : Reinventing the Language of Contestation in Postwar France, 1945-1968 Merjian's new book is an illuminating, acute analysis of Pier Paolo Pasolini's hostility to the avant-garde, which he regarded as a form of expression that is subaltern to neocapitalism and its cult of the new. Merjian skillfully examines the paradoxical use of avant-garde strategies such as abstraction, self-reflexivity, and performance in Pasolini's own vast interdisciplinary work, most especially in his films and paintings. The result is a tour de force of contemporary scholarship that establishes Merjian as one of the most authoritative, erudite, and imaginative scholars of Pasolini's work and a leading cultural critic of our day. -- Alessia Ricciardi, author of After La Dolce Vita: A Cultural Prehistory of Berlusconi's Italy Against the Avant-Garde stands out as a very original interdisciplinary study based on rigorous scholarship and critical finesse. It contains brilliant insights, both about individual works and about wider patterns in Pasolini's extensive corpus. Merjian shows a deep knowledge of the works discussed, the historical situation in which Pasolini realized them, and the fraught relationship between Pasolini and the Italian art scene. -- Gian-Maria Annovi, author of Pier Paolo Pasolini: Performing Authorship ...this rigorous, minutely documented, and beautifully illustrated book makes a solid case for the relevance of Pasolini's legacy, exploring how its influence surfaces in work by artists as disparate as '80s art star and now filmmaker Julian Schnabel (himself a multidisciplinarian in the busy Pasolini mode) and the zanies behind the Monty Python films (yes, you read that right). * The Arts Fuse *

Against the Avant-Garde stands out as a very original interdisciplinary study based on rigorous scholarship and critical finesse. It contains brilliant insights, both about individual works and about wider patterns in Pasolini's extensive corpus. Merjian shows a deep knowledge of the works discussed, the historical situation in which Pasolini realized them, and the fraught relationship between Pasolini and the Italian art scene. --Gian-Maria Annovi, author of Pier Paolo Pasolini: Performing Authorship Fluently interweaving the histories of film, literature, and the visual arts in postwar Italy, Against the Avant-Garde is as 'extravagantly interdisciplinary' as its subject, the director, author, and polemicist Pier Paolo Pasolini, himself claimed to be. With admirable subtlety, Merjian sets out, not so much to accord him a place within the established trajectory of art history--from the abstract informalist painting of the 1950s through the body art of the 1970s--but to highlight the inconvenience and untimeliness of Pasolini's resolute critique of his neo-avant-garde contemporaries. Better still, Merjian manages to preserve a sense of the urgency with which Pasolini condemned a voracious postwar capitalism, with all its powers of consumerist seduction, as the necessary context for his resistance to so much of the art of his time--all the while inspiring us to return to the films and the artworks the author addresses with new, more discerning eyes. --Tom McDonough, author of The Beautiful Language of My Century Reinventing the Language of Contestation in Postwar France, 1945-1968

Against the Avant-Garde stands out as a very original interdisciplinary study based on rigorous scholarship and critical finesse. It contains brilliant insights, both about individual works and about wider patterns in Pasolini's extensive corpus. Merjian shows a deep knowledge of the works discussed, the historical situation in which Pasolini realized them, and the fraught relationship between Pasolini and the Italian art scene. --Gian-Maria Annovi, author of Pier Paolo Pasolini: Performing Authorship Merjian's new book is an illuminating, acute analysis of Pier Paolo Pasolini's hostility to the avant-garde, which he regarded as a form of expression that is subaltern to neocapitalism and its cult of the new. Merjian skillfully examines the paradoxical use of avant-garde strategies such as abstraction, self-reflexivity, and performance in Pasolini's own vast interdisciplinary work, most especially in his films and paintings. The result is a tour de force of contemporary scholarship that establishes Merjian as one of the most authoritative, erudite, and imaginative scholars of Pasolini's work and a leading cultural critic of our day. --Alessia Ricciardi, author of After La Dolce Vita: A Cultural Prehistory of Berlusconi's Italy Fluently interweaving the histories of film, literature, and the visual arts in postwar Italy, Against the Avant-Garde is as 'extravagantly interdisciplinary' as its subject, the director, author, and polemicist Pier Paolo Pasolini, himself claimed to be. With admirable subtlety, Merjian sets out, not so much to accord him a place within the established trajectory of art history--from the abstract informalist painting of the 1950s through the body art of the 1970s--but to highlight the inconvenience and untimeliness of Pasolini's resolute critique of his neo-avant-garde contemporaries. Better still, Merjian manages to preserve a sense of the urgency with which Pasolini condemned a voracious postwar capitalism, with all its powers of consumerist seduction, as the necessary context for his resistance to so much of the art of his time--all the while inspiring us to return to the films and the artworks the author addresses with new, more discerning eyes. --Tom McDonough, author of The Beautiful Language of My Century Reinventing the Language of Contestation in Postwar France, 1945-1968

...this rigorous, minutely documented, and beautifully illustrated book makes a solid case for the relevance of Pasolini's legacy, exploring how its influence surfaces in work by artists as disparate as '80s art star and now filmmaker Julian Schnabel (himself a multidisciplinarian in the busy Pasolini mode) and the zanies behind the Monty Python films (yes, you read that right). --Gian-Maria Annovi, author of Pier Paolo Pasolini: Performing Authorship The Arts Fuse (9/9/2020 12:00:00 AM) Merjian's new book is an illuminating, acute analysis of Pier Paolo Pasolini's hostility to the avant-garde, which he regarded as a form of expression that is subaltern to neocapitalism and its cult of the new. Merjian skillfully examines the paradoxical use of avant-garde strategies such as abstraction, self-reflexivity, and performance in Pasolini's own vast interdisciplinary work, most especially in his films and paintings. The result is a tour de force of contemporary scholarship that establishes Merjian as one of the most authoritative, erudite, and imaginative scholars of Pasolini's work and a leading cultural critic of our day. --Alessia Ricciardi, author of After La Dolce Vita: A Cultural Prehistory of Berlusconi's Italy Against the Avant-Garde stands out as a very original interdisciplinary study based on rigorous scholarship and critical finesse. It contains brilliant insights, both about individual works and about wider patterns in Pasolini's extensive corpus. Merjian shows a deep knowledge of the works discussed, the historical situation in which Pasolini realized them, and the fraught relationship between Pasolini and the Italian art scene. --Gian-Maria Annovi, author of Pier Paolo Pasolini: Performing Authorship Fluently interweaving the histories of film, literature, and the visual arts in postwar Italy, Against the Avant-Garde is as 'extravagantly interdisciplinary' as its subject, the director, author, and polemicist Pier Paolo Pasolini, himself claimed to be. With admirable subtlety, Merjian sets out, not so much to accord him a place within the established trajectory of art history--from the abstract informalist painting of the 1950s through the body art of the 1970s--but to highlight the inconvenience and untimeliness of Pasolini's resolute critique of his neo-avant-garde contemporaries. Better still, Merjian manages to preserve a sense of the urgency with which Pasolini condemned a voracious postwar capitalism, with all its powers of consumerist seduction, as the necessary context for his resistance to so much of the art of his time--all the while inspiring us to return to the films and the artworks the author addresses with new, more discerning eyes. --Tom McDonough, author of The Beautiful Language of My Century Reinventing the Language of Contestation in Postwar France, 1945-1968

...this rigorous, minutely documented, and beautifully illustrated book makes a solid case for the relevance of Pasolini's legacy, exploring how its influence surfaces in work by artists as disparate as '80s art star and now filmmaker Julian Schnabel (himself a multidisciplinarian in the busy Pasolini mode) and the zanies behind the Monty Python films (yes, you read that right). -- The Arts Fuse (9/9/2020 12:00:00 AM) Merjian's new book is an illuminating, acute analysis of Pier Paolo Pasolini's hostility to the avant-garde, which he regarded as a form of expression that is subaltern to neocapitalism and its cult of the new. Merjian skillfully examines the paradoxical use of avant-garde strategies such as abstraction, self-reflexivity, and performance in Pasolini's own vast interdisciplinary work, most especially in his films and paintings. The result is a tour de force of contemporary scholarship that establishes Merjian as one of the most authoritative, erudite, and imaginative scholars of Pasolini's work and a leading cultural critic of our day. --Alessia Ricciardi, author of After La Dolce Vita: A Cultural Prehistory of Berlusconi's Italy Against the Avant-Garde stands out as a very original interdisciplinary study based on rigorous scholarship and critical finesse. It contains brilliant insights, both about individual works and about wider patterns in Pasolini's extensive corpus. Merjian shows a deep knowledge of the works discussed, the historical situation in which Pasolini realized them, and the fraught relationship between Pasolini and the Italian art scene. --Gian-Maria Annovi, author of Pier Paolo Pasolini: Performing Authorship Fluently interweaving the histories of film, literature, and the visual arts in postwar Italy, Against the Avant-Garde is as 'extravagantly interdisciplinary' as its subject, the director, author, and polemicist Pier Paolo Pasolini, himself claimed to be. With admirable subtlety, Merjian sets out, not so much to accord him a place within the established trajectory of art history--from the abstract informalist painting of the 1950s through the body art of the 1970s--but to highlight the inconvenience and untimeliness of Pasolini's resolute critique of his neo-avant-garde contemporaries. Better still, Merjian manages to preserve a sense of the urgency with which Pasolini condemned a voracious postwar capitalism, with all its powers of consumerist seduction, as the necessary context for his resistance to so much of the art of his time--all the while inspiring us to return to the films and the artworks the author addresses with new, more discerning eyes. --Tom McDonough, author of The Beautiful Language of My Century Reinventing the Language of Contestation in Postwar France, 1945-1968

Author Information

Ara H. Merjian is associate professor of Italian Studies at New York University, where he is an affiliate of the Institute of Fine Arts and the Department of Art History. He is the author of Giorgio de Chirico and the Metaphysical City.

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