Globalized Art

"Globalized Art", offers a first-ever sustained and coherent history of the subject in twentieth century art in Europe and North America. Through analyses of a series of key examples - artists, artefacts and what he calls 'globalist moments' - Harris make the case that globalization didn't just 'happen' to art as a recent occurrence. "Globalized Art" examines a potpourri of key modernist producers and artworks from the first six decades of the twentieth century to later postmodernist artists and artefacts from c 1970-2006. Beginning with Vladmir Tatlin's attempt to combine painting, sculpture and architecture in his "Monument" in 1917, the volume traces 'globalizing impulses' through a variety of artists, media, and historical periods - Picacco's overtly political canvasses of the inter-war and Cold War periods; Joeseph Beuys utopian objects and actions; Guy DuBord's "Spectacle"; pop art 'happenings'; Christo's 'wrapped' projects of the mid-l970s-l990s; and the contemporary and commercial initiatives of the Tate Modern at the dawn of a most globalized 21st century. "Globalizing Art" demonstrates that the varying and evolving 'globalist' appeals that key artists and artworks have made to publics, values and futures over the last hundred years define globalization far more deeply and thoroughly than ever imagined. Not a mere construct of contemporary life and parlance, it is a long-standing pre-occupation that has played a determining role in what we understand to be Western art history.