The beauty of a social problem : photography, autonomy, economy

Bertolt Brecht once worried that our sympathy for the victims of a social problem can make the problem’s “beauty and attraction” invisible. In __The Beauty of a Social Problem__, Walter Benn Michaels explores the effort to overcome this difficulty through a study of several contemporary artist-photographers whose work speaks to questions of political economy. Although he discusses well-known figures like Walker Evans and Jeff Wall, Michaels’s focus is on a group of younger artists, including Viktoria Binschtok, Phil Chang, Liz Deschenes, and Arthur Ou. All born after 1965, they have always lived in a world where, on the one hand, artistic ambition has been synonymous with the critique of autonomous form and intentional meaning, while, on the other, the struggle between capital and labor has essentially been won by capital. Contending that the aesthetic and political conditions are connected, Michaels argues that these artists’ new commitment to form and meaning is a way for them to depict the conditions that have taken US economic inequality from its lowest level, in 1968, to its highest level today. As Michaels demonstrates, these works of art, unimaginable without the postmodern critique of autonomy and intentionality, end up departing and dissenting from that critique in continually interesting and innovative ways. "Bertolt Brecht once worried that our sympathy for the victims of a social problem can make the problem's 'beauty and attraction' invisible. In 'The Beauty of a Social Problem, ' Walter Benn Michaels explores the effort to overcome this difficulty through a study of several contemporary artist photographers whose work speaks to questions of political economy. Although he discusses well known figures like Walker Evans and Jeff Wall, Michaels's focus is on a group of younger artists, including Viktoria Binschtok, Phil Chang, Liz Deschenes, and Arthur Ou. All born after 1965, they have always lived in a world where, on the one hand, artistic ambition has been synonymous with the critique of autonomous form and intentional meaning, while, on the other, the struggle between capital and labor has essentially been won by capital. Contending that the aesthetic and political conditions are connected, Michaels argues that these artists' new commitment to form and meaning is a way for them to depict the conditions that have taken the U., S. economic inequality from its lowest level, in 1968, to its highest level today. As Michaels demonstrates, these works of art, unimaginable without the postmodern critique of autonomy and intentionality, end up departing and dissenting from that critique in continually interesting and innovative ways"--Amazon.com Bertolt Brecht once worried that our sympathy for the victims of a social problem can make the problem's "beauty and attraction" invisible. In 'The Beauty of a Social Problem', Walter Benn Michaels explores the effort to overcome this difficulty through a study of several contemporary artist-photographers whose work speaks to questions of political economy. Although he discusses well-known figures like Walker Evans and Jeff Wall, Michaels' focus is on a group of younger artists, including Viktoria Binschtok, Phil Chang, Liz Deschenes, and Arthur Ou. All born after 1965, they have always lived in a world where, on the one hand, artistic ambition has been synonymous with the critique of autonomous form and intentional meaning, while, on the other, the struggle between capital and labor has essentially been won by capital. Contending that the aesthetic and political conditions are connected, Michaels argues that these artists' new commitment to form and meaning is a way for them to portray the conditions that have taken US economic inequality from its lowest level, in 1968, to its highest level today. 0As Michaels demonstrates, these works of art, unimaginable without the postmodern critique of autonomy and intentionality, end up departing and dissenting from it in continually interesting and innovative ways "Bertolt Brecht once worried that our sympathy for the victims of a social problem can make the problem's 'beauty and attraction' invisible. In 'The Beauty of a Social Problem, ' Walter Benn Michaels explores the effort to overcome this difficulty through a study of several contemporary photographers--including Viktoria Binschtok, Phil Chang, Liz Deschenes, and Arthur Ou. As Michaels demonstrates, their art, unimaginable without the postmodern critique of autonomy and intentionality, ends up departing and powerfully dissenting from that critique." Bertolt Brecht once worried that our sympathy for the victims of a social problem can make the problem's 'beauty and attraction' invisible. In this work, Walter Benn Michaels explores the effort to overcome this difficulty through a study of several contemporary artist-photographers whose work speaks to questions of political economy. Although he discusses well known figures like Walker Evans and Jeff Wall, Michaels's focus is on a group of younger artists, including Viktoria Binschtok, Phil Chang, Liz Deschenes, and Arthur Ou Bertolt Brecht once worried that our sympathy for the victims of a social problem can make the problem's "beauty and attraction" invisible. The author explores the effort to overcome this difficulty through a study of several contemporary artist-photographers whose work speaks to questions of political economy. Title Page 4 Copyright Page 5 Contents 8 List of Illustrations 10 Preface 12 1. Formal Feelings 16 2. Neoliberal Aesthetics 58 3. The Experience of Meaning 86 4. The Art of Inequality: Then and Now 128 5. Never Again, or Nevermore 176 Acknowledgments 196 Notes 200 Index 240