Obstinacy of Things

$35.00 Member Price: $31.50

Edited by Bettina Leidl, Maren Lübbke-Tidow. Text by Bettina Leidl, Maren Lübbke-Tidow, Martin Prinzhorn. Designed by Jan Kiesswetter.

This title brings together twenty-six contemporary artists, none of whom see themselves as a “still life photographer” or would describe themselves in that way. Today, the traditionalist idea of the genre no longer seems suitable. Yet, there is a key constant in the still life tradition that has persisted into the present: on the one hand, the denial of narrative and, on the other, the establishment of a semiotic system in the picture. What does this mean for visual culture and how can we think collectively about the twenty-six positions that are brought together in the exhibition and the book? Without bidding farewell to the still life as a pictorial form, it is a matter not only of the everyday cultural connection to the present, which has been a dominant factor in the still life from the start, but also of reasserting the autonomy or even obstinacy of artistic activity.

KunstHaus Wien and Spector Books, 2018
Softcover, 248 pages
9 x 7 inches

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