One of the most persistent themes in contemporary art since 1989 has been the proliferation of work that addresses ‘Modernist utopias’: art that takes twentieth-century architecture and design as a starting point for contemporary sculpture, installation, photography, video and research. It seems ironic that Modernism, the most futurist of movements, is now the subject matter of retrospective artistic practices. This lecture raises questions about a contemporary art of quotation, its relationship to temporality, and its tendency to bury contemporary concerns behind a fascination with canonical figures of the past.
Claire Bishop is a Professor in the PhD Program in Art History at CUNY Graduate Center, New York. Her books include Installation Art: A Critical History (2005) and Artificial Hells: Participatory Art and the Politics of Spectatorship (2012). Her most recent book, Radical Museology, or, What’s Contemporary in Museums of Contemporary Art?, was published last year by Koenig Books. She is a regular contributor to Artforum.
Organised by the National Gallery of Art, Rupert and Vilnius Academy of Arts
