Art and Fear (Continuum Impacts, 59) - Softcover

Virilio, Paul

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0826487963 ISBN 13: 9780826487964

Publisher: Continuum, 2006

Synopsis

Paul Virilio is one of contemporary Continental thought's most original and provocative critical voices. His vision of the impact of modern technology on the contemporary global condition is powerful and disturbing, ranging over art, science, politics and warfare.

In Art and Fear, Paul Virilio traces the twin development of art and science over the twentieth century. In his provocative and challenging vision, art and science vie with each other for the destruction of the human form as we know it. He traces the connections between the way early twentieth century avant-garde artists twisted and tortured the human form before making it vanish in abstraction, and the blasting to bits of men who were no more than cannon fodder i nthe trenches of the Great War; and between the German Expressionists' hate-filled portraits of the damned, and the 'medical' experiments of the Nazi eugenicists; and between the mangled messages of global advertising, and the organisation of global terrorism.

Now, at the start of the twenty-first century, science has finally left art behind, as genetic engineers prepare to turn themselves into the worst of expressionists, with the human being the raw material for new and monstrous forms of life.

Art and Fear is essential reading for anyone wondering where art has gone and where science is taking us.

About this title

About the Author:

Paul Virilio is one of our foremost cultural critics. Architect, urban planner and former director of the École Speciale d'Architecture in Paris, he has written widely on film, architecture, war and technology.

Review:

'Is Virilio a strident critic out of touch with contemporary culture or is Art and Fear a deft excoriation of excess? Either way, this is a short, sharp and gripping book?' Modern Painters

'Virilio's lonely voice [is] more disturbing and timely than ever.'New Statesman

"Paul Virilio's vision of war, art and technology has informedcontemporary debates about techno-capitalist modernity for some time.Often perceived as a prophet of doom and pessimism, Virlio hasconsistently interrogated the effects of modern technology on the humancondition....John Armitage's introduction offers a concise overture toboth Art and Fear and to Virlio's general trajectory of thought. Art and Fearitself, relying almost exclusively on the historical development ofgenres as transgenic art, does a commendable job of providing astereoscopic view of the political contexts of such art - Auschwitz,genocide, war." -Pramod Naya, International Journal of Baudrillard Studies, January 2006

About this edition

• Publisher: Continuum
• Publication date: 2006
• ISBN 10: 0826487963
• ISBN 13: 9780826487964
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 70