The Sublime

In the contemporary world, where technology, spectacle, and excess seemto eclipse nature, the individual, and society, what might be the characteristics ofa contemporary sublime? If there is any consensus, it is in the idea that thesublime represents a testing of limits to the point at which fixities begin tofragment. This anthology examines how contemporary artists and th

In the contemporary world, where technology, spectacle, and excess seemto eclipse nature, the individual, and society, what might be the characteristics ofa contemporary sublime? If there is any consensus, it is in the idea that thesublime represents a testing of limits to the point at which fixities begin tofragment. This anthology examines how contemporary artists and theorists exploreideas of the sublime, in relation to the unpresentable, transcendence, terror, nature, technology, the uncanny, and altered states. Providing a philosophical andcultural context for discourse around the sublime in recent art, the book surveysthe diverse and sometimes conflicting interpretations of the term as it has evolvedfrom the writings of Longinus, Burke, and Kant to present-day writers and artists.The sublime underlies the nobility of Classicism, the awe of Romantic nature, andthe terror of the Gothic. In the last half-century, the sublime has haunted postwarabstraction, returned from the repression of theoretical formalism, and has become akey term in critical discussions of human otherness and posthuman realms of natureand technology.Artists surveyed include Marina Abramovic accent over c], JosephBeuys, Tacita Dean, Walter De Maria, A K the artist excludes periods after theinitials] Dolven, Olafur Eliasson, Andreas Gursky, Jitka Hanzlov?, Gary Hill, SusanHiller, Shirazeh Houshiary, Anish Kapoor, Mike Kelley, Anselm Kiefer, Yves Klein, Richard Long, Barnett Newman, Tony Oursler, Cornelia Parker, Gerhard Richter, DorisSalcedo, Lorna Simpson, Hiroshi Sugimoto, Fred Tomaselli, James Turrell, LucTuymans, Bill Viola, Zhang HuanWriters include Marco Belpoliti, John Berger, PaulCrowther, Jacques Derrida, Okwui Enwezor, Jean Fisher, Barbara Claire Freeman, Jeremy Gilbert-Rolfe, Doreet LeVitte-Harten, Eleanor Hartney, Lynn M. Herbert, LuceIrigaray, Fredric Jameson, Lee Joon, Julia Kristeva, Jean-Fran?ois Lyotard, ThomasMcEvilley, Vijay Mishra, David Morgan, Jean-Luc Nancy, Jacques Ranci?re, Gene Ray, Robert Rosenblum, Philip Shaw, Paul Virilio, Marina Warner, Thomas Weiskel, SlavojŽižek