After Art (POINT: Essays on Architecture)

Clear, concise, elegantly argued, After Art is an expansive attempt to understand the production, distribution, and meaning of art in a digitally networked global art world. As ambitious in his program as Walter Benjamin was in "The Work of Art in the Age of Its Technological Reproduceability," Joselit outlines the changes, the challenges, and the opportunities brought about by the vast amount of imagery now available to anyone with a wi fi connection. The contributing players come from every contemporary nook and historical cranny: from Hannah Arendt and Sherrie Levine to Rem Koolhaas and Ai Weiwei from Ethnicity Inc and James Gilmore and Joseph Pine (creators of "experience branding") to UNESCO's Convention on the Means of Prohibiting and Preventing the Illicit Import, Export, and Transport of Ownership of Cultural Property. Illustrated with original diagrams by Geoff Kaplan, Joselit shapes this wide array of sources into a dynamic framework of movement and activity in which images emerge into networks, artists expand formats into meanings, and institutions provide political platforms. Informed optimism runs across the grain of most contemporary critical voices, but in the midst of turmoil and excess, David Joselit has outlined a way forward, a theory of art that re-imagines and reaffirms its ability to affect positive change in the world.

After finishing my MFA a year ago, i became increasingly worried with a very simple question that I wasnt expecting to have with a grad degree: What is Art now?Im glad I read this book, as it gave me the perspective grad school didnt gave me on the nature of art in a globalized, networked enviroment. It addressed many of my prejudices about non-material art, strenghtening my conceptual position and... although this is not the objective of the book, it inspired me on reinventing myself as an artist.

This book is small in size but dense in content. I found it took couple of reads to really absorb, but is very useful for the contemporary artist.

Difficult to understand if you are not an academic. I wish that academic writers would explain their theories in plain language. But maybe we non-academics aren't supposed to be reading scholarly works.

If you want to have some idea about where art and culture are going these days. After Art is a nicely engaging and insightful short book about the current state of art, artists, architecture and culture in a changing and networked world.

I am not sure who and why anyone are gaining from reading this book since the book communicates nothing.

lucid, relevant and well written. required reading.

Excellent! A must read.