Industry and intelligence : contemporary art since 1820 /

In 2013, award-winning British conceptual artist Gillick delivered four lectures as part of Columbia's recurring Bampton Lectures series. He centers the present collection of his work around that series, which he titled "Creative Disruptions in the Age of Soft Revolutions." In addition to the lectures, the collection includes previously published essays and two new pieces. Each lecture focuses on a year (1820, 1948, 1963, 1974) and a body of work; he uses those works (as he writes in the introduction) "to indicate how a specific subjective history of events, technologies and desires contributes to the fabrication of the contemporary artist as a constructed persona." For Gillick, each date represents a transition to which artists of the period responded: a desire for individualism associated with the Romantic movement (1820), postwar upheavals (1948), the discovery of agency on the eve of postmodernism (1963), and a combination of self-reflexivity and skepticism linked to technology (1974). The book is most valuable if viewed as an artwork rather than as a work of art history, criticism, or theory. Included is gallery of recent works by artists other than Gillick. These works are not intended as illustrations for the text but serve as an example end point for Gillick's subjective trajectory. Summing Up: Recommended. Graduate students, researchers/faculty, professionals. --Elizabeth K. Mix, Butler University