Enhanced descriptions from Syndetics:

The "biennale culture" now determines much of the art world. Literature on the worldwide dissemination of art assumes nationalism and ethnic identity, but rarely analyzes it. At the same time there is extensive theorizing about globalization in political theory, cultural studies, postcolonial theory, political economy, sociology, and anthropology. Art and Globalization brings political and cultural theorists together with writers and historians concerned specifically with the visual arts in order to test the limits of the conceptualization of the global in art.

Among the major writers on contemporary international art represented in this book are Rasheed Araeen, Joaquín Barriendos, Susan Buck-Morss, John Clark, Iftikhar Dadi, T. J. Demos, Néstor García Canclini, Charles Green, Suman Gupta, Harry Harootunian, Michael Ann Holly, Shigemi Inaga, Fredric Jameson, Caroline Jones, Thomas DaCosta Kaufmann, Anthony D. King, Partha Mitter, Keith Moxey, Saskia Sassen, Ming Tiampo, and C. J. W.-L. Wee.

Art and Globalization is the first book in the Stone Art Theory Institutes Series. The five volumes, each on a different theoretical issue in contemporary art, build on conversations held in intensive, weeklong closed meetings. Each volume begins with edited and annotated transcripts of those meetings, followed by assessments written by a wide community of artists, scholars, historians, theorists, and critics. The result is a series of well-informed, contentious, open-ended dialogues about the most difficult theoretical and philosophical problems we face in rethinking the arts today.

Table of contents provided by Syndetics

• Series Preface
• First Introduction
• Second Introduction
• The Seminars
• 1 The National Situation
• 2 Translation
• 3 The Prehistory of Globalization
• 4 Hybridity
• 5 Temporality
• 6 Postcolonial Narratives
• 7 Neoliberalism
• 8 Four Failures of the Seminars
• 9 Universality
• Assessments
• Afterword
• Notes on the Contributors
• Index

Reviews provided by Syndetics

CHOICE Review

The term "globalization" originates from economic discourse in conjunction with American commercial enterprises' forays into foreign markets; it has since been applied to the spread of digital technology and then to describe the "internationalization" of art. The Walker Art Center's 2003 exhibition, How Latitudes Become Forms: Art in a Global Age, initiated a dialogue on the subject among artists, curators, and critics. These discussions were published in the exhibition catalogue of the same name, edited by M. Piranio. Art and Globalization has much the same mission, minus the artists' visible and vocal participation. This new volume reproduces proceedings of a weeklong institute held at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago (SAIC). Faculty, fellows, and graduate students had a common reading list, including essays from Is Art History Global? (2007), edited by Elkins. The participants' discussions on topics ranging from hybridity to neoliberalism form the first part of the book; the latter contains writings inspired by nonparticipants' readings of the seminar transcripts. While the book does contribute to what remains an undertheorized area of contemporary art, its usefulness depends greatly on readers' prior knowledge of the scholarship being discussed by the participants. Summing Up: Recommended. Graduate students and above. E. K. Mix Butler University

Author notes provided by Syndetics

James Elkins is Associate Professor in the Department of Art History, Theory, and Criticism at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.

Zhivka Valiavicharska is a PhD candidate in the Rhetoric Department at the University of California, Berkeley.

Alice Kim is a PhD candidate in the Rhetoric Department at the University of California, Berkeley.