Contemporary Art and the Home

Colin Painter

• Publisher: Taylor & Francis
• Year: 2020
• eBook ISBN: 9781000180824
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Art General
• Index: Social Sciences

The home is, for many people, the location for their most intense relationships with visual things. Because they are constructed through the objects we choose, domestic spaces are deeply revealing of a range of cultural issues. How is our interpretation of an object affected by the domestic environment in which it is placed? Why choose a stainless steel teapot over a leopard print one? How do the images hanging on the walls of our homes arrive there? In placing contemporary art in the context of the ordinary home, this book embarks on the contentious topic of whether high art impacts on ordinary people. What is the size and nature of the audience for contemporary art in Britain? Do people really visit more art galleries than attend football matches? What is the significance of the home in relation to such questions? Indeed, what constitutes art in the home? This book carefully unpicks these questions as well as the troubled relationship between the home as a place of comfort and reassurance and the often unsettling and challenging images offered by contemporary art. Within the art world, the home has been addressed as a subject and even used as a temporary gallery and a space for installations, and yet it is not common for works by todays avant-garde artists to be conceived and marketed to participate in the domestic lives that most people live. Handsomely illustrated, this book unites contemporary art, craft and design, with sociology, anthropology and cultural studies to provide an unusual and forthright addition to ongoing art and culture debates.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• List of Illustrations
• Acknowledgements
• Notes on Contributors
• Introduction
• 1 The At Home With Art Project: A Summary
• 2 Audiences for Contemporary Art: Assertions vs Evidence
• 3 Domestic Disturbances: Challenging the Anti-domestic Modern
• 4 House-trained Objects: Notes Toward Writing an Alternative History of Modern Art
• 5 The Art of Home-making and the Design Industries
• 6 What Would We Do Without It? A Few Thoughts About Reproduction in the History of Art
• 7 Accommodating
• 8 Taste Wars and Design Dilemmas: Aesthetic Practice in the Home
• 9 What Happened At Home With Art: Tracing the Experience of Consumers
• 10 Mass-production, Distribution and Destination
• 11 Images, Contemporary Art and the Home
• 12 Avant-Garde and Kitsch Revisited
• Index