Undermining the museum: The rhetorics of Michael Asher, Marcel Broodthaers, Daniel Buren, Hans Haacke and Louise Lawler.
Item
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Title
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Undermining the museum: The rhetorics of Michael Asher, Marcel Broodthaers, Daniel Buren, Hans Haacke and Louise Lawler.
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Identifier
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AAI3063822
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identifier
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3063822
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Creator
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Cummins, Louis J.
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Contributor
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Adviser: Romy Golan
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Date
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2002
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Language
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English
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Publisher
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City University of New York.
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Subject
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Art History
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Abstract
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This dissertation brings together the work of Modern and Postmodern artists who have addressed the issue of the museum, both as institution and as space, within their own practices in order to make it speak with a different voice. From Courbet to Louise Lawler---by way of Marcel Duchamp, Jean Dubuffet, Robert Smithson, Marcel Broodthaers, Daniel Buren, Michael Asher and Hans Haacke---these artists have brought to light the different contexts in which art is displayed and distributed within capitalist society. Unlike the interventions of most of their fellow artists, theirs bear upon the conditions governing the exhibition and dis-semination of art, rather than on the making of new objects for the market. The museum and gallery nexus can be viewed as an enunciatory system in which art dealers, critics, curators and scholars display materials and presentation procedures, catalogues and symposia, educational training sessions and public education tours, museum architecture and exhibition design, acquisition policies and de-accessioning practices---all of which help to form and establish a specific vision of art. Similarly, the strategies of artists who intervene on this level are aimed at bringing other possible discourses to the fore, and at transforming the conventional system of art distribution. I have examined, both diachronically and synchronically, how the most significant artists to have addressed the issue of the museum have also inscribed their work within a broader cultural context that includes the market-place. From Courbet to Lawler, all of the artists who have drawn my interest show a concern with the economic dimension of art circulation. It has, therefore, become impossible to separate this system into one side that articulates aesthetic standards, and another that makes art profitable. In fact, the link connecting them is shown and analyzed throughout this dissertation, as it was explored, appropriated or otherwise used by the artists I am examining.
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Type
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dissertation
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Source
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PQT Legacy CUNY.xlsx
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degree
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Ph.D.
