The term decolonize has gained a new life in recent art activism, as a radical challenge to the E... more The term decolonize has gained a new life in recent art activism, as a radical challenge to the Eurocentrism of museums (in light of Native, Indigenous, and other epistemological perspectives) as well as in the museum's structural relation to violence (either in its ties to oligarchic trustees or to corporations engaged in the business of war or environmental depredation). In calling forth the mid-twentieth-century period of decolonization as its historical point of reference, the word's emphatic return is rhetorically powerful, and it corresponds to a parallel interest among scholars in a plural field of postcolonial or global modernisms. The exhortation to decolonize, however, is not uncontroversial-some believe it still carries a Eurocentric bias. Indeed, it has been proposed that, for the West, de-imperialization is perhaps even more urgent than decolonization. What does the term decolonize mean to you in your work in activism, criticism, art, and/or scholarship? Why has...
In a brief excerpt from his book Heritage and Debt: Art in Globalization (MIT, Spring 2020), Davi... more In a brief excerpt from his book Heritage and Debt: Art in Globalization (MIT, Spring 2020), David Joselit discusses how global contemporary art reanimates the past as a resource for the present, combating modern art's legacy of Eurocentrism.
David Joselit argues that although the politicization of information and fake news is nothing new... more David Joselit argues that although the politicization of information and fake news is nothing new—facts, after all, have always been ratified by power, and standards of evidence are historically specific—the mode of its authentication is now in crisis. He describes this condition as a state of cognitive conflict in which different species of knowledge battle one another for pre-eminence, rather than reach for an agonistic but productive political translation or negotiation. Adopting the concept of cognitive justice as theorized by Boaventura de Sousa Santos, Joselit proposes that under Trumpism art can be a resource for working out a politicized and materialized, even formal, theory of information. By tracking the plasticity of information—the shapes it assumes through circulation, shifts in scale and saturation, and its velocities and frictions—which is deeply enmeshed in relations of power, post-Conceptual art can have real purchase on cognitive justice.
With varying emphasis, these essays attempt to articulate a crisis in the direction and definitio... more With varying emphasis, these essays attempt to articulate a crisis in the direction and definition of representation and in postmodern critical and artistic practices. Biographical notes on essayists. Circa 100 bibl. ref.
... Bob Riley describes media performances by Richard Baim, Gretchen Bendes and Perry Hoberman wh... more ... Bob Riley describes media performances by Richard Baim, Gretchen Bendes and Perry Hoberman which accompany Endgame. David Joselit, Bob Riley, and Elisabeth Sussman are curators at The Institute of Contemporary Art in Boston. Distributed by The MIT Press. ...
The term decolonize has gained a new life in recent art activism, as a radical challenge to the E... more The term decolonize has gained a new life in recent art activism, as a radical challenge to the Eurocentrism of museums (in light of Native, Indigenous, and other epistemological perspectives) as well as in the museum's structural relation to violence (either in its ties to oligarchic trustees or to corporations engaged in the business of war or environmental depredation). In calling forth the mid-twentieth-century period of decolonization as its historical point of reference, the word's emphatic return is rhetorically powerful, and it corresponds to a parallel interest among scholars in a plural field of postcolonial or global modernisms. The exhortation to decolonize, however, is not uncontroversial-some believe it still carries a Eurocentric bias. Indeed, it has been proposed that, for the West, de-imperialization is perhaps even more urgent than decolonization. What does the term decolonize mean to you in your work in activism, criticism, art, and/or scholarship? Why has...
In a brief excerpt from his book Heritage and Debt: Art in Globalization (MIT, Spring 2020), Davi... more In a brief excerpt from his book Heritage and Debt: Art in Globalization (MIT, Spring 2020), David Joselit discusses how global contemporary art reanimates the past as a resource for the present, combating modern art's legacy of Eurocentrism.
David Joselit argues that although the politicization of information and fake news is nothing new... more David Joselit argues that although the politicization of information and fake news is nothing new—facts, after all, have always been ratified by power, and standards of evidence are historically specific—the mode of its authentication is now in crisis. He describes this condition as a state of cognitive conflict in which different species of knowledge battle one another for pre-eminence, rather than reach for an agonistic but productive political translation or negotiation. Adopting the concept of cognitive justice as theorized by Boaventura de Sousa Santos, Joselit proposes that under Trumpism art can be a resource for working out a politicized and materialized, even formal, theory of information. By tracking the plasticity of information—the shapes it assumes through circulation, shifts in scale and saturation, and its velocities and frictions—which is deeply enmeshed in relations of power, post-Conceptual art can have real purchase on cognitive justice.
With varying emphasis, these essays attempt to articulate a crisis in the direction and definitio... more With varying emphasis, these essays attempt to articulate a crisis in the direction and definition of representation and in postmodern critical and artistic practices. Biographical notes on essayists. Circa 100 bibl. ref.
... Bob Riley describes media performances by Richard Baim, Gretchen Bendes and Perry Hoberman wh... more ... Bob Riley describes media performances by Richard Baim, Gretchen Bendes and Perry Hoberman which accompany Endgame. David Joselit, Bob Riley, and Elisabeth Sussman are curators at The Institute of Contemporary Art in Boston. Distributed by The MIT Press. ...
My new book, "Art's Properties" shows how art from the nineteenth to the twenty-first centuries b... more My new book, "Art's Properties" shows how art from the nineteenth to the twenty-first centuries began to function as a commodity, while the qualities of the artist, nation, or period themselves became valuable properties. The book explores repatriation, explaining that this is not just a contemporary conflict between the Global South and Euro-American museums, noting that the Louvre, the first modern museum, was built on looted works and faced demands for restitution and repatriation early in its history. I argue that the property values of white supremacy underlie the ideology of possessive individualism animating modern art, and he considers issues of identity and proprietary authorship. "Art's Properties" redefines art’s politics, arguing that these pertain not to an artwork’s content or form but to the way it is “captured,” made to represent powerful interests—whether a nation, a government, or a celebrity artist collected by oligarchs. Artworks themselves are not political, but occupy at once the here and now and an “elsewhere”—an alterity—that can’t ever be fully appropriated. The history of modern art, I assert, is the history of transforming this alterity into private property. Narrating scenes from the emergence and capture of modern art—touching on a range of topics that include the Byzantine church, French copyright law, the 1900 Paris Exposition, W.E.B. Dubois, the conceptual artist Adrian Piper, and the controversy over Dana Schutz’s painting Open Casket—I argue that the meaning of art is its infinite capacity to generate experience over time.
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Papers by David Joselit
"Art's Properties" redefines art’s politics, arguing that these pertain not to an artwork’s content or form but to the way it is “captured,” made to represent powerful interests—whether a nation, a government, or a celebrity artist collected by oligarchs. Artworks themselves are not political, but occupy at once the here and now and an “elsewhere”—an alterity—that can’t ever be fully appropriated. The history of modern art, I assert, is the history of transforming this alterity into private property.
Narrating scenes from the emergence and capture of modern art—touching on a range of topics that include the Byzantine church, French copyright law, the 1900 Paris Exposition, W.E.B. Dubois, the conceptual artist Adrian Piper, and the controversy over Dana Schutz’s painting Open Casket—I argue that the meaning of art is its infinite capacity to generate experience over time.