Those Passions. On Art and Politics

The careful distillation of a lifetime s writing by the internationally renowned art historian T J Clark who addresses key issues of art s relationship with politics Is art obliged to engage with politics If so how By taking sides in political struggle by singing the song of the barricade the new nation the bombed city Or by giving form to the deeper patterns of experience the raw materials of society from which any politics is made Using case studies stretching across the centuries from Hieronymus Bosch to Jacques Louis David and the French Revolution from Walter Benjamin to Pier Paolo Pasolini Those Passions aims to show how modern art has responded to the chaos and danger of modern life In the book s three sections Precursors Moderns and Modernities internationally renowned art historian T J Clark unpicks the nature of capitalist society and its visual culture He tries to understand the politics of appearance which is now our natural home the twists and turns of consumerism the arrival of the 24 hour image world the changing modes of symbolic production and the ongoing saturation of life by pictures and data and take stock of our guilty love affair with the imagery of violence our attitude to the dream world of advertising