Discrepant Abstraction

For anyone who thinks the question of abstract art is settled, this book will come as a surprise. Discrepant Abstraction includes almost everything that does not neatly fit into institutional narratives that once regarded ‘purity’ as the ultimate criterion for abstract art.

Annotating Art’s Histories is a first-of-its-kind series that adds fresh cultural perspectives to the history of 20th century art.

Impure, imperfect and incomplete, the alternative version of abstraction that emerges from this global journey - from Hong Kong and Islamic regions to Canada, Australia, Europe and the United States - highlights the cross-cultural exchanges that arise when disparate visual languages are brought into creative dialogue.

Featuring an international ensemble of scholars and curators who explore the twists and turns of abstract art in the 20th century imagination - from the visual dynamics of calligraphy and the conceptual challenge of the monochrome's blank surface to the ‘quantum ghosts' described by novelist Wilson Harris - this book enriches our understanding of abstract art as a signifier of modernity by revealing the multiple directions it has taken in diverse international contexts.

A panoramic and revelatory survey of abstract art that dramatically expands its canon of artists, geographies and meanings. This compilation of new scholarly perspectives redefines abstraction as a global phenomenon. Vital reading for any student of the modern. Iwona Blazwick, Director, Whitechapel Gallery

Contributors: Stanley K. Abe, Mark A. Cheetham, David Clarke, David Craven, Iftikhar Dadi, Wilson Harris, Kellie Jones, Nathaniel Mackey, Kobena Mercer, Angeline Morrison

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Publication Details 

Published by inIVA and MIT Press, September 2006

ISBN: 1-899846-43-3

£15.95 + P&P

Paperback, 223pp, 220 x 170mm, 33 illustrations

Information and orders: booksales@iniva.org, +44 (0)20 7729 9616,  http://www.iniva.org/

Supported by

The Getty Foundation

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Other titles in inIVA's Annotating Art's Histories series

Cosmopolitan Modernisms

Published by inIVA & MIT Press, 2005

ISBN: 1-899846-41-7

£15.95

From the 1922 Bauhaus exhibition in Calcutta to the polemics of Neo-Concrete art in 1950s Brazil, Cosmopolitan Modernisms redefines the modern artist as ‘world-citizen.' Revealing how cross-cultural encounters have produced distinctive insights into the lived experience of modernity, a distinguished cast of international scholars and curators explore fresh perspectives on Constructivism, Surrealism, and Abstract Expressionism. With essays on the aesthetic philosophy of C.L.R James and the collages of Romare Bearden, this unique collection pushes beyond separate areas of study to arrive at a more connective approach to the history of art.

Edited by Kobena Mercer

Contributors: Michael Asbury; David Craven; Ann Eden Gibson; Kobena Mercer; Partha Mitter; Paul Overy; Michael Richardson and Lowery Stokes Sims.

This is exactly what we have been waiting for... These essays ensure that cultural difference and social place are not optional add-ons but the very stuff of the expanded history of artistic practise and interpretation. Insisting on the combination of socio-historical determinations and aesthetic-semiotic creativities, ‘Cosmopolitan Modernisms' shows how art history can engage with difference so that the excluded subjects of the old canon become the psychologically complex articulations of a radically enriched understanding of the whole of 20^th-century art and visual culture.

Griselda Pollock, Professor of Social and Critical Histories of Art, University of Leeds

Pop Art & Vernacular Cultures.

Forthcoming, to be published by inIVA & MIT Press, October 07

ISBN: 1-899846-44-1

£15.95

Witty, dissident, irreverent and provocative - artists all over the world have turned to the vernacular forms of popular culture to challenge the discourse of officialdom. From the bohemian New York avant-garde of the 1950s to the re-cycling of ‘waste' among South African artists in the 1980s, these in-depth studies travel through India, China and Brazil to produce a truly global understanding of pop art that turns this familiar story inside out.

Edited by Kobena Mercer

Featuring contributions by: Holly Barnet-Sanchez, Gavin Butt, Geeta Kapur, Martina Koppel-Yang, Kobena Mercer, Sonia Salzstein, Colin Richards and Judith Wilson

Exiles, Diasporas & Strangers.

Forthcoming, to be published by inIVA & MIT Press, November 07

ISBN: 1-899846-45-X

£15.95

Re-mapping the standard picture of art since 1900 in light of the insights of post-colonial studies, this book reveals how traumatic experiences of displacement and migration have shaped the entire story of 20th century art. From Native North American ‘apprentices' and Aboriginal Modernists to Central European emigres who re-wrote the history of art in post-1945 America, these richly detailed case studies reveal how identities and objects acquire different values and meanings as they circulate in a global system of exchange.

Edited by Kobena Mercer

Featuring contributions by: Jean Fisher, Ian MacLean, Sieglinde Lemke, Amna Malik, Steven Mansbach, Kobena Mercer, Ikem Stanley Okoye and Ruth Phillips

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Editors Notes

Kobena Mercer is Reader in Diaspora Studies in the Department of Visual Culture and Media at Middlesex University, London, and is an inaugural recipient of the 2006 Clark Prize for Excellence in Arts Writing. He has taught at New York University and University of California at Santa Cruz and received fellowships from Cornell University and the New School University in New York. His first book, Welcome to the Jungle (1994) opened new lines of enquiry in art, film and photography; his monographs include James VanDerZee, Adrian Piper, Isaac Julien, Rotimi Fani-Kayode and Keith Piper; and his writings on art and identity are featured in several landmark anthologies, including Out There (1990), Visual Culture: The Reader (1999) and Theorising Diaspora (2003).

 inIVA creates exhibitions, publications, multimedia, education and research projects designed to bring the work of artists from culturally-diverse backgrounds to the attention of the widest possible public. (ww.iniva.org)

Rivington Place: In 2007 Rivington Place, inIVA and Autograph ABP's new contemporary visual arts space will open in the heart of East London. Supported by the Arts Council England Lottery Capital 2 Programme, this will be the UK's first permanent home for culturally diverse visual arts and photography. Barclays Bank plc is the Rivington Place founding corporate partner, contributing £1million towards the development. This innovative partnership reflects Barclays history of supporting positive social change and making a real and lasting difference to the diverse communities in which it operates. (www.rivingtonplace.org)