Reluctant Modernity: The Institution of Art and its Historical Forms [Paperback]

A major contribution to the critical analysis of the autonomy of art in contemporary capitalism. Ales Debeljak, following in the tradition of Adorno and Habermas, provides a penetrating and comprehensive inquiry in the contradictory character of art in modern society.At last, a book which punctures the bolder claims of postmodernism, while retaining a shrewd perspective on the limitations of Modernist theories. Debeljak's book is an insightful addition to the literature. Required reading for serious social theorists.Debeljak's work elegantly restates the importance of the autonomy and the critical potential of art. It also forcefully articulates the problem that postmodernism obviates critique and makes important contributions to our understanding of the development of the institution of art through an excellent account which links this development to the public sphere.In this book, Aleš Debeljak offers a refreshing alternative to postmodernists such as Baudrillard, who declare the death of art was conceived as yet another source of rootless, circulating fictions. The deterioration of bourgeois liberal individualism into the narcissism of mass society accompanied the decomposition of art into simplified mass art and commercialized kitsch. Maintaining its formal autonomy (museums, galleries, etc.), its content became the universal object of indirect corporate exploitation. Today postmodern art, argues Debeljak, is subjected to infinite reproducibility, total integration into mass society, and political resignation-no longer representing an alternative reality. The postmodern institution of art thus cannot be simply cured of modern structures and assumptions, but is, instead, fated to a continuous and painful relationship with modernity.In this book, Aleš Debeljak offers a refreshing alternative to postmodernists such as Baudrillard, who declare the death of art conceived as yet another source of rootless, circulating fictions. Inspired by the melanclY