Customer Reviews

Relational Aesthetics

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

This book, presented as a critical text, gave academic cred to a group of artists who needed it. Like the fake articles in glossy magazines that upon closer inspection reveal themselves to be advertisements, this book hyped up a handful of artists whose self-congratulatory practices were all style and no content. The claim that Rirkrit Tiravanija or Liam Gillick had any sort of groundbreaking political novelty to present cannot withstand critical pressure. As we have seen, nothing they did had any effect other than annexing previously disruptive practices into the polite world of the gallery elite. Their actual relevance faded as did the ability of this text to hold any sort of critical water. Our generation's version of the emperor's new clothes. See Claire Bishop's Participation and her dialogue with Liam Gillick to see how flimsy Relational Aesthetics really is. (and by the way, it isn't just the poor translation's fault). Julian Stallabrass and Bishop both come at this type of work with a far sharper set of tools, and show that by Bourriaud's own claims, the artists who should be the referents here look far more like Thomas Hirshhorn and Gonzalez-Torres. In the context of these other artists and thinkers, Bourriaud's worldview just can't hold up.

This is an excellent book for anyone interested in performative and relational art. The translation is a little dodgy at times but the book is well worth it's price for provocative ideas, critical insight, and inspiration.

I am just beginning my venture into critical discussion of the Arts and reading Relational Aesthetics sparked my interest in art's effect of linkageing and relating. The author explores and gives names of many artists working in the 90's that used human interaction as their medium.

The bad parts about this book are the many misspellings and the major stylistic shifts in the writing and translation.

Where would we be without this essay? I'm not certain a whole generation of artists would even be recognized by the more conventional cultural community but undertaken by illusions of collectives and DIY marketing strategies. As any participant of this "relational" generation of artist knows art of the late 90's is much more complex than this and this movement has solidified a connection between design, science, economics and language that had been nearly lost during the art market crash of the 1980's.

I'm delighted that the influence of abjective art and conceptualism to urban revitalization and death of advanced capitalism has been explained in such an approachable way but can't help but feel this investigation does not go far enough into its thesis. The book feels slightly simplistic and repetitive explaining concepts referenced in numerous predating theoretical texts.

I remain a fan and heartfelt by this book and am hopeful that a more sophisticated analysis of this aesthetic will be published by this remarkable scholar.

Nicolas Bourriaud makes a notable argument into understanding relational art and aesthetics. The views on contemporary relational art is worth considering when the philosophical art agenda gets into the essential relational art debate. Having read the French text as well I must say the book is circumstantially translated.

the negative review from Smith III really made me buy the book. i'll write more when i finish it, but a book which meets such a strong disgust (about the artists it talks about) must be interesting. And i like the work of Rikrit and Liam...