Chronophobia On Time in the Art of The 1960s

Author/creator Lee, Pamela M. Author
Format Electronic
Publication InfoCambridge : MIT Press
Description336 p. ill 09.000 x 08.000 in.
Supplemental ContentFull text available from eBooks on EBSCOhost
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Summary Annotation In the 1960s art fell out of time; both artists and critics lost their temporalbearings in response to what E. M. Cioran called "not being entitled to time." This anxiety anduneasiness about time, which Pamela Lee calls "chronophobia," cut across movements, media, andgenres, and was figured in works ranging from kinetic sculptures to Andy Warhol films. Despite itspervasiveness, the subject of time and 1960s art has gone largely unexamined in historical accountsof the period. Chronophobia is the first critical attempt to define this obsession and analyze it inrelation to art and technology.Lee discusses the chronophobia of art relative to the emergence ofthe Information Age in postwar culture. The accompanying rapid technological transformations,including the advent of computers and automation processes, produced for many an acute sense ofhistorical unknowing; the seemingly accelerated pace of life began to outstrip any attempts to makesense of the present. Lee sees the attitude of 1960s art to time as a historical prelude to ourcurrent fixation on time and speed within digital culture. Reflecting upon the 1960s culturalanxiety about temporality, she argues, helps us historicize our current relation to technology andtime.After an introductory framing of terms, Lee discusses such topics as "presentness" with repectto the interest in systems theory in 1960s art; kinetic sculpture and new forms of global media; thetemporality of the body and the spatialization of the visual image in the paintings of Bridget Rileyand the performance art of Carolee Schneemann; Robert Smithson's interest in seriality and futurity,considered in light of his reading of George Kubler's important work The Shape of Time: Remarks onthe History of Things and Norbert Wiener's discussion of cybernetics; and the endless belaboring ofthe present in sixties art, as seen in Warhol's Empire and the work of On Kawara.
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Technical detailsMode of access: World Wide Web
Genre/formElectronic books.
ISBN9780262622035
ISBN0262622033 (Perfect) Active Record
Standard identifier# 9780262622035
Stock number0262622033 00015994

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