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Plastics
Series: ART/WORK
Brief Description
Why modern and contemporary art and art conservation can't be understood without taking account of the revolutionary impact of plastics. Modern and contemporary art wouldn't exist without the invention of plastics. From sculpture to paint, and photography to film, plastics have shaped every major medium of...
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Format: Paperback / softback
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Description
Why modern and contemporary art and art conservation can't be understood without taking account of the revolutionary impact of plastics.
Modern and contemporary art wouldn't exist without the invention of plastics. From sculpture to paint, and photography to film, plastics have shaped every major medium of art. In turn, plastics have revolutionised art conservation, transforming the possibilities of preservation but also producing new challenges for conservators struggling to preserve toxic and degrading material. Hailed as utopian in the twentieth century, plastics today are often understood as pollution and waste—a central cause of ecological crisis. Plastics is the first book to address the multifaceted history of plastics from the perspective of artists, art historians, conservators, and environmental scientists.
Plastics demonstrates that this material cannot easily be summarised as toxic or utopian, catastrophic or necessary. Instead, plastics define the modern world in both its possibility and failures. The book also reveals how artists have been a critically overlooked voice in debates about plastics, and how they have offered theories of the material through works that explore its potential and harmfulness.
Presenting a variety of perspectives on the world of plastics through the lens of art, artmaking, art history, and art conservation, Plastics shows why and how coming to terms with this material is critical to understanding not only modern and contemporary art and art conservation but also the crises of the twenty-first century.
Series: ART/WORK
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Pigments
Over the millennia, humans have used pigments to decorate, narrate, and instruct. Charred bone, ground earth, stones, bugs, and blood were the first pigments. New pigments were manufactured by simple processes such as corrosion and calcination until the Industrial Revolution introduced colours outside the spectrum of the natural world. Pigments brings together leading art historians and conservators to trace the...PaperbackSold Out -
Ceramic Art
A new examination of the history of ceramic art, spanning ancient to modern times, emphasising its traditions, materials, and methods of making. Concise but comprehensive, Ceramic Art brings together the voices of art historians, conservators, and artists to tell the history of making art from fired clay. The story spans history and continents, examining the global traditions of ceramists that...PaperbackSold Out -
Plastics
Why modern and contemporary art and art conservation can't be understood without taking account of the revolutionary impact of plastics. Modern and contemporary art wouldn't exist without the invention of plastics. From sculpture to paint, and photography to film, plastics have shaped every major medium of art. In turn, plastics have revolutionised art conservation, transforming the possibilities of preservation but...PaperbackSold Out
Book Details
INFORMATION
ISBN: 9780691238821
Publisher: Princeton University Press
Format: Paperback / softback
Date Published: 11 November 2025
Country: United States
Imprint: Princeton University Press
Illustration: 39 color + 4 b/w illus.
Contributors:
- Edited by Ittai Weinryb
- Edited by Caroline Fowler
- Contributions by Bess Williamson
- Contributions by Susan Heald
- Contributions by Kevin Beasley
- Contributions by Elena Torok
- Contributions by Jennifer Gabrys
Audience: General / adult, Tertiary education, Professional and scholarly
DIMENSIONS
Width: 178.0mm
Height: 229.0mm
Weight: 250g
Pages: 160
About the Author
Anne Gunnison is the Alan J. Dworsky Senior Associate Conservator of Objects at the Yale University Art Gallery.
David Joselit is the Arthur Kingsley Porter Professor of Art, Film, and Visual Studies at Harvard University and the author of, among other books, Art's Properties and After Art (both Princeton).
Also by David Joselit
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After Art
Art as we know it is dramatically changing, but popular and critical responses lag behind. In this trenchant illustrated essay, David Joselit describes how art and architecture are being transformed in the age of Google. Under the dual pressures of digital technology, which allows images to be reformatted and disseminated effortlessly, and the exponential acceleration of cultural exchange enabled by...Hardback$12800Unit price /UnavailableAvailableShips in 2-3 weeks -
Art’s Properties
In this provocative new account, David Joselit shows how art from the nineteenth to the twenty-first centuries began to function as a commodity, while the qualities of the artist, nation, or period themselves became valuable properties. Joselit explores repatriation, explaining that this is not just a contemporary conflict between the Global South and Euro-American museums, noting that the Louvre, the...HardbackSold Out
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