Art History as Social Praxis: The Collected Writings of David Craven brings together more than thirty essays that chart the development of Craven’s voice as an unorthodox Marxist who applied historical materialism to the study of modern art. This book demonstrates the range and versatility of David Craven’s praxis as a ‘democratic socialist’ art historian who assessed the essential role the visual arts play in imagining more just and equitable societies. The essays collected here reveal Craven’s lifelong commitment to exposing interstices between western and non-western cultures by researching the reciprocating influences between First- and Third-World artists, critics and historians.
David Lee Craven, Ph.D. (1979), University of North Carolina, was Distinguished Professor at University of New Mexico and passed away in 2012. He was an art historian who displayed rare intellect and industry. In his lifetime Craven wrote more than fifteen monographs and exhibition catalogues on such diverse topics as Diego Rivera, Abstract Expressionism, Rudolf Baranik and art associated with Latin American revolutions. In addition to being a dedicated professor and inspirational lecturer, he published over 150 essays, articles and reviews in such academic journals as
Art History,
Kritische Berichte and
Third Text and mass-circulation publications such as
Arts Magazine and
Tema Celeste; further, his writings have appeared in dozens of anthologies, encyclopaedias and newspapers.
Brian Winkenweder, Ph.D. (2004), Stony Brook University is Professor of Art History at Linfield College, McMinnville, Oregon. He co-edited
Dialectical Conversions: Donald Kuspit’s Art Criticism with David Craven (Liverpool University Press, 2011). He also published 'David Craven’s Future Perfect' at the online journal Third Text.
Acknowledgements List of Sources
Introduction: David Craven, Democratic Socialism and Art History
Artists
1
Mondrian De-Mythologised: Towards a Newer Virgil
2
Charles Biederman and Art Theory
3
Marcel Duchamp and the Perceptual Dimension of Conceptual Art
4
Robert Smithson’s ‘Liquidating Intellect’
5
Richard Serra and the Phenomenology of Perception
6
Hans Haacke and the Aesthetics of Dependency Theory
7
Norman Lewis as Political Activist and Post-Colonial Artist
8
René Magritte and the Spectre of Commodity Fetishism
Art Critics
9
Ruskin vs. Whistler: The Case against Capitalist Art
10
The Critique-Poésie of Thomas Hess
11
John Berger as Art Critic
12
Meyer Schapiro, Karl Korsch, and the Emergence of Critical Theory
13
Clement Greenberg and the ‘Triumph’ of Western Art
14
Aesthetics as Ethics in the Writings of Robert Motherwell and Meyer Schapiro
Critical Theory
15
Prerequisites for a New Criticism
16
Herbert Marcuse on Aesthetics
17
Corporate Capitalism and South Africa
18
Popular Culture versus Mass Culture
19
Hegemonic Art History
20
Art History and the Challenge of Post-Colonial Modernism
21
C.L.R. James as a Critical Theorist of Modernist Art
22
Present Indicative Politics and Future Perfect Positions: Barack Obama and Third Text
Latin America
23
Formative Art and Social Transformation: The Nicaraguan Revolution on Its Tenth Anniversary (1979–1989)
24
Cuban Art and the Democratisation of Culture
25
The Latin American Origins of Alternative Modernism
26
Post-Colonial Modernism in the Work of Diego Rivera and José Carlos Mariátegui
27
Realism Revisited and Re-Theorised in ‘Pan-American’ Terms
Abstract Expressionism
28
Abstract Expressionism, Automatism, and the Age of Automation
29
Abstract Expressionism and Third World Art: A Post-Colonial Approach to ‘American’ Art
30
New Documents: The Unpublished F.B.I. Files on Ad Reinhardt, Mark Rothko and Adolph Gottlieb
31
A Legacy for the Left: Abstract Expressionism as Anti-Imperialist Art
32
Postscript. Different Conceptions of Art: An Outline
Bibliography Index
All interested in Post-Colonial studies and Marxist-inflected cultural analysis, with particular regard for Critical Theory, Latin American art history and Abstract Expressionism.