Roger Rothman is the Samuel H. Kress Professor of Art History at Bucknell University. His work has focused on Cubism, Dada, Surrealism, and most recently Fluxus. He is the author of Tiny Surrealism: Salvador Dali and the Aesthetics of the Small and co-editor (with artist Pamela Fraser) of the forthcoming anthology, Beyond Critique: Contemporary Art in Theory, Practice and Instruction. He is currently writing on a book on Fluxus.
As postmodernism recedes into the distance let’s recall two brash signs of its cultural hegemony. First, in Richard Linklater’s 1991 film, Slacker, a shot of a table in an espresso bar reveals a lightly worn copy of The Anti-Aesthetic: Essays on Postmodern Culture. Published in 1983 and edited by Hal Foster, The Anti-Aesthetic featured essays by figures who will come to stand as some of postmodernism’s most central, including Habermas, Krauss, Jameson, Baudrillard, and Said. Second, from 1999, in the Wachowskis’ The Matrix, in which we spy Neo with a book that’s been hollowed out to hide hard cash and electronic files.
“Aesthetic Turns” makes connections between modernist visual art (including film, dance, theater, etc.) and contemporary theoretical and political concerns.