Author: John Walker

Translation: Haido Papavassiliou, Peny Fylaktaki
Editor: Alexandros Baltzis
Thessaloniki: University Studio Press, 2010
ISBN: 978-960-12-1928-8

Synopsis

Can the fine arts survive in an age of mass media? If so, in what forms and to what purpose? And can radical art still play a critical role in today's divided world? These are some of the challenging questions addressed in this thoroughly revised, updated and expanded edition of Art in the Age of Mass Media.

John Walker examines the fascinating relationship between the arts and mass media, and the myriad interactions between high and low culture in a postmodern, culturally pluralistic world. Using a range of historic and contemporary works of art to illustrate theoretical points, Walker explores the variety of ways in which modern artists have responded to the arrival of new mass media. Ranging from the socialist paintings of Courbet to the anti-Nazi photomontages of Heartfield, from Keith Haring's use of graffiti and the kitsch self-promotion associated with Jeff Koons to the Benetton advertisements by Toscani, the activist and the Internet art, Walker offers a comprehensible and illuminating analysis of the changing relationship between the arts and mass culture.

Art in the Age of Mass Media is an invaluable introduction to the continuing debates between high art and low culture for students of media and cultural studies and art history. It is also a contribution to the limited literature on these issues published in Greek.

Contents

Preface to the third edition / Acknowledgements

Alexandros Baltzis
John Walker's Analysis: Premodern Production of Meaning and Mass Communication

Introduction

Existing Literature

1. Core terms/concepts

The Fine Arts
The Mass Media and Mass Culture

2. Art uses mass culture

Courbet, Van Gogh and Popular Imagery
Pop Art Translates Mass Culture
American Pop
Formalism in Pop Art
The Politics of Pop
Transubstantiation
Indirect Influences of the Mass Media

3. The mass media use art

Art as Subject-matter
Image of the Artist in Advertisements
Art as a Source of Styles and Formal Innovations
Art as Subject-matter in the Cinema
Artists as a Pool of Skilled Labour

4. Mechanical reproduction and the fine arts

5. High culture: affirmative or negative?

6. Cultural pluralism and post-modernism

Reporting the Zeitgeist
The Politics of Pluralism

7. Alternatives

John Heartfield and Photo-montage
Community Art/Murals
Political Art in the Galleries

8. Art and mass media in the 1980s

Cross-overs and Mass Avant-gardism
Simulacra
Art, Advertising and Billboards
Appropriationists
Plagiarists
Koons, the Master of Kitsch and Business Art

9. Artists and new media technologies

Photography
Photocopiers
Video
Computers

10. Art and mass media 1990-2000

War, the Media and Art
Art and Surveillance
Art and Advertising
Art and Cinema
The Artist as Media Celebrity: Damien Hirst
Simulation
Digital Art
The Internet and Website Design
Museums
Melrose Place

11. Conclusion

Bibliography

Index