In the Flow

The leading art theorist takes on art in the age of the Internet In the early twentieth century, art and its institutions came under critique from a new democratic and egalitarian spirit. The notion of works of art as sacred objects was decried and subsequently they would be understood merely as things. This meant an attack on realism, as well as on the traditional preservative mission of the museum. Acclaimed art theorist Boris Groys argues this led to the development of “direct realism”: an art that would not produce objects, but practices (from performance art to relational aesthetics) that would not survive. But for more than a century now, every advance in this direction has been quickly followed by new means of preserving art’s distinction. In this major new work, Groys charts the paradoxes produced by this tension, and explores art in the age of the thingless medium, the Internet. Groys claims that if the techniques of mechanical reproduction gave us objects without aura, digital production generates aura without objects, transforming all its materials into vanishing markers of the transitory present. In the early 20th century, art and its institutions came under critique from a new democratic and egalitarian spirit. In an age of secularism and materialism, artworks would be understood as merely things among other things. This meant an attack on the techniques of realism, and the traditional mission of the museum, both designed shield a small class of objects from the entropic fate awaiting everything else-and the development of an approach that Boris Groys calls "direct realism": an art that would not produce objects, but practices that could enter the flow of time to live and die like the rest of us. But for more than a century now, every advance in this direction has been quickly followed by new means of preserving art's distinction. In this major new work, Groys, one of the world's leading art theorists, charts the paradoxes produced by this tension, which continues to structure the production and reception of new art. The internet, the latest medium through which artists have attempted to disavow this special status, inverts the most notorious consequence of early modernist developments. If the techniques of mechanical reproduction gave us objects without aura, digital production generates aura without objects, transforming all its materials into vanishing markers of the transitory present. Entering The Flow -- Under The Gaze Of Theory -- On Art Activism -- Becoming Revolutionary : On Kazimir Malevich -- Installing Communism -- Clement Greenberg : An Engineer Of Art -- On Realism -- Global Conceptualism Revisited -- Modernity And Contemporaneity : Mechanical Vs. Digital Reproduction -- Google : Words Beyond Grammar -- Wikileaks : The Revolt Of The Clerks, Or Universality As Conspiracy -- Art On The Internet. By Boris Groys. Includes Bibliographical References And Index.