Elite art in an age of populism

Prof Julian Stallabrass will be giving a talk as part of the Politics, Philosophy and Aesthetics seminar series.

The art world seems split between the multicultural, documentary-oriented and politically engaged work of the biennial scene, and a populist, spectactular commercial market, catering to the super-rich. Although some of the most successful 'boom' art appealed to popular taste-- Hirst, Koons, Murakami--there also emerged new figures that were successful in the art market despite making work that did not look at all like art. Banksy was the most successful of these. What does their success tell us about populism and the elite? Do we see here a reworking and intensification of a postmodern populism? And if so, does it pose a deeper threat to elite culture than previously? In an age when there are millions of cultural producers with a potentially global audience, how do the art world and the museum respond?

Julian Stallabrass is a writer, curator, photographer and lecturer. He is Professor in art history at the Courtauld Institute of Art, and is the author of Art Incorporated, Oxford University Press 2004, Internet Art: The Online Clash Between Culture and Commerce, Tate Publishing, London 2003; Paris Pictured, Royal Academy of Arts, London 2002; High Art Lite: British Art in the 1990s, Verso, London 1999 and Gargantua: Manufactured Mass Culture, Verso, London 1996; he is the co-editor of Ground Control: Technology and Utopia, Black Dog Publishing, London 1997, Occupational Hazard: Critical Writing on Recent British Art, Black Dog Publishing, London 1998, and Locus Solus: Technology, Identity and Site in Contemporary Art, Black Dog Publishing, London 1999. He has written art criticism regularly for publications including Tate, Art Monthly and the New Statesman. He is an editorial board member of Art History and New Left Review. He curated the 2008 Brighton Photo Biennial, ‘Memory of Fire: Images of War and the War of Images’. In 2013 his edited reader Documentary for the MIT/ Whitechapel Documents of Contemporary Art series will appear; also his edited book based on the Brighton Biennial, Memory of Fire, published by Photoworks. 

To attend, please contact Dr Catherine Bergin: c.j.bergin@brighton.ac.uk