Julian Stallabrass | The Courtauld Institute of Art (original) (raw)
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Papers by Julian Stallabrass
New Left Review, 2024
The concept of entropy in an information science sense can be applied to cultural complexity and ... more The concept of entropy in an information science sense can be applied to cultural complexity and its opposite. This essay argues that the denoising processes of AI image-generation and photo-processing software do more than physically clean up noise. Rather, in a nightmare envisaged by Vilém Flusser, they produce a smooth and cliched cultural landscape. Through the work of Paolo Virno and Theodor Adorno, this is related to the frailty of the sense of history and the increasing power of monopoly capital.
The Burlington Magazine, 2016
Contemporary Art: A Very Short Introduction, 2020
‘The end to the end of history’ assesses how, since the rise of the avant-garde, only art viewed ... more ‘The end to the end of history’ assesses how, since the rise of the avant-garde, only art viewed from a historical distance has appeared to have direction and coherence, while the present always seems clouded in confusion. The rise of antagonistic art and street art are both part of this, which points to a deep shift in the constitution of the contemporary art world. The shift is partly caused by the increasing use of art as pure investment. In the early 2000s, the years of the art investment boom were also those of the unfolding ‘war on terror’. One direct response in the art world was a marked revival of a great variety of documentary forms.
Qui Parle, 2003
On the face of it, the subject of net.art's aesthetic seems slightly perverse; indeed, a colleagu... more On the face of it, the subject of net.art's aesthetic seems slightly perverse; indeed, a colleague of mine once asked what I was working on, and when I told her replied with the single word: 'yuk'. 1 Much of the aesthetic feeling traditionally derived from fine art depends on the interplay between representation, idea and its instantiation in some material form, and the feeling of that material being worked with. That seems absent in online art. Furthermore, much net.art, as we shall see, strives to be manifestly anti-aesthetic, and the usual procedures that the art world uses for marking objects for aesthetic attention are not available, or are not taken up, online. I hope, though, that its very resistance to the aesthetic makes it a useful because extreme test case. 'Net.art' is the term used to refer to a strain of Internet art that emerged soon after the invention and wide take-up of web-browsers in the mid 1990s: it was a conceptually
Contemporary Art, 2006
‘New world order’ examines globalized art production and consumption. Just as business executives... more ‘New world order’ examines globalized art production and consumption. Just as business executives circled the earth in search of new markets, so a breed of nomadic global curators began to do the same, shuttling from one biennial or transnational art event to another. At first, the filtering of local material through the art system produced homogeneity. The contemporary art produced by the shock of exposure to neoliberal economic forces, in Russia and Scandinavia and the contemporary art from communist governments, China and Cuba, are important parts of the new world order. As other powers emerged to challenge the US, and as neoliberalism fell into disrepair, new worlds were revealed.
courtauld.ac.uk
That old joke encapsulates a number of key features of Tom Sach's work: it gets two of the t... more That old joke encapsulates a number of key features of Tom Sach's work: it gets two of the three references in the title Nutsy's (the other is to nuts and bolts); and Powers says it while hanging from the trousers and in uncomfortable proximity to the tattooed buttocks of his ...
Journal of Visual Culture, 2009
Flickr offers an opportunity to look at the circulation and reception of images of Barack Obama, ... more Flickr offers an opportunity to look at the circulation and reception of images of Barack Obama, unmediated by the mainstream media, in print and online. I have taken a few of the most popular images from a search for 'Barack Obama'using Flickr's 'most interesting' ...
Shopping: A Century of Art and Consumer Culture, 2002
Art and Knowledge After 1900: Interactions Between Modern Art and Thought, 2023
An essay that about knowledge, nation and colour photography--on the work of Luigi Ghirri, Raghub... more An essay that about knowledge, nation and colour photography--on the work of Luigi Ghirri, Raghubir Singh and Susan Meiselas, encompassing analytical, synthetic and experimental forms.
Design/Arts/Culture, 2023
A photo essay tracking the border between London and Essex through Epping Forest in the wake of t... more A photo essay tracking the border between London and Essex through Epping Forest in the wake of the Brexit referendum.
New Left Review, 2024
The concept of entropy in an information science sense can be applied to cultural complexity and ... more The concept of entropy in an information science sense can be applied to cultural complexity and its opposite. This essay argues that the denoising processes of AI image-generation and photo-processing software do more than physically clean up noise. Rather, in a nightmare envisaged by Vilém Flusser, they produce a smooth and cliched cultural landscape. Through the work of Paolo Virno and Theodor Adorno, this is related to the frailty of the sense of history and the increasing power of monopoly capital.
The Burlington Magazine, 2016
Contemporary Art: A Very Short Introduction, 2020
‘The end to the end of history’ assesses how, since the rise of the avant-garde, only art viewed ... more ‘The end to the end of history’ assesses how, since the rise of the avant-garde, only art viewed from a historical distance has appeared to have direction and coherence, while the present always seems clouded in confusion. The rise of antagonistic art and street art are both part of this, which points to a deep shift in the constitution of the contemporary art world. The shift is partly caused by the increasing use of art as pure investment. In the early 2000s, the years of the art investment boom were also those of the unfolding ‘war on terror’. One direct response in the art world was a marked revival of a great variety of documentary forms.
Qui Parle, 2003
On the face of it, the subject of net.art's aesthetic seems slightly perverse; indeed, a colleagu... more On the face of it, the subject of net.art's aesthetic seems slightly perverse; indeed, a colleague of mine once asked what I was working on, and when I told her replied with the single word: 'yuk'. 1 Much of the aesthetic feeling traditionally derived from fine art depends on the interplay between representation, idea and its instantiation in some material form, and the feeling of that material being worked with. That seems absent in online art. Furthermore, much net.art, as we shall see, strives to be manifestly anti-aesthetic, and the usual procedures that the art world uses for marking objects for aesthetic attention are not available, or are not taken up, online. I hope, though, that its very resistance to the aesthetic makes it a useful because extreme test case. 'Net.art' is the term used to refer to a strain of Internet art that emerged soon after the invention and wide take-up of web-browsers in the mid 1990s: it was a conceptually
Contemporary Art, 2006
‘New world order’ examines globalized art production and consumption. Just as business executives... more ‘New world order’ examines globalized art production and consumption. Just as business executives circled the earth in search of new markets, so a breed of nomadic global curators began to do the same, shuttling from one biennial or transnational art event to another. At first, the filtering of local material through the art system produced homogeneity. The contemporary art produced by the shock of exposure to neoliberal economic forces, in Russia and Scandinavia and the contemporary art from communist governments, China and Cuba, are important parts of the new world order. As other powers emerged to challenge the US, and as neoliberalism fell into disrepair, new worlds were revealed.
courtauld.ac.uk
That old joke encapsulates a number of key features of Tom Sach's work: it gets two of the t... more That old joke encapsulates a number of key features of Tom Sach's work: it gets two of the three references in the title Nutsy's (the other is to nuts and bolts); and Powers says it while hanging from the trousers and in uncomfortable proximity to the tattooed buttocks of his ...
Journal of Visual Culture, 2009
Flickr offers an opportunity to look at the circulation and reception of images of Barack Obama, ... more Flickr offers an opportunity to look at the circulation and reception of images of Barack Obama, unmediated by the mainstream media, in print and online. I have taken a few of the most popular images from a search for 'Barack Obama'using Flickr's 'most interesting' ...
Shopping: A Century of Art and Consumer Culture, 2002
Art and Knowledge After 1900: Interactions Between Modern Art and Thought, 2023
An essay that about knowledge, nation and colour photography--on the work of Luigi Ghirri, Raghub... more An essay that about knowledge, nation and colour photography--on the work of Luigi Ghirri, Raghubir Singh and Susan Meiselas, encompassing analytical, synthetic and experimental forms.
Design/Arts/Culture, 2023
A photo essay tracking the border between London and Essex through Epping Forest in the wake of t... more A photo essay tracking the border between London and Essex through Epping Forest in the wake of the Brexit referendum.