After Nihilism: Essays on Contemporary Art (Contemporary Artists and their Critics)

Details: In After Nihilism, Wilfried Dickhoff examines the art work of Neo Avant-Garde European and American artists, including Joseph Beuys, Marcel Broodthaers, Gerhard Richter, Cindy Sherman, and Philip Taaffe. Applying Adorno's concept of negative freedom in the autonomous work of art, he demonstrates how the works of these artists, in which the contradictions and paradoxes of deconstruction/ reconstruction; beauty/ sublime; difference/ indifference; affirmation/ negation; authenticity/cynicism; subject/ non-identity, are never resolved, thus creating images of competing complexities. Tracing the development of the Neo-Avant garde through the 1980s to the present, this collection provides indepth analysis of particular works of art and demonstrates the author's close engagement with and understanding of the contemporary art world.