Morley Simon. The Sublime

The MIT Press, 2010. — 237 pages. — (Documents of Contemporary Art). — ISBN: 0262513919, 0854881786.In the contemporary world, where technology, spectacle, and excess seem to eclipse nature, the individual, and society, what might be the characteristics of a contemporary sublime? If there is any consensus, it is in the idea that the sublime represents a testing of limits to the point at which fixities begin to fragment. This anthology examines how contemporary artists and theorists explore ideas of the sublime, in relation to the unpresentable, transcendence, terror, nature, technology, the uncanny, and altered states.
Providing a philosophical and cultural context for discourse around the sublime in recent art, the book surveys the diverse and sometimes conflicting interpretations of the term as it has evolved from the writings of Longinus, Burke, and Kant to present-day writers and artists. The sublime underlies the nobility of Classicism, the awe of Romantic nature, and the terror of the Gothic. In the last half-century, the sublime has haunted postwar abstraction, returned from the repression of theoretical formalism, and has become a key term in critical discussions of human otherness and posthuman realms of nature and technology.
Artists surveyed include: Marina Abramović, Joseph Beuys, Tacita Dean, Walter De Maria, A K Dolven, Olafur Eliasson, Andreas Gursky, Jitka Hanzlová, Gary Hill, Susan Hiller, Shirazeh Houshiary, Anish Kapoor, Mike Kelley, Anselm Kiefer, Yves Klein, Richard Long, Barnett Newman, Tony Oursler, Cornelia Parker, Gerhard Richter, Doris Salcedo, Lorna Simpson, Hiroshi Sugimoto, Fred Tomaselli, James Turrell, Luc Tuymans, Bill Viola, Zhang Huan.
Writers include: Marco Belpoliti, John Berger, Paul Crowther, Jacques Derrida, Okwui Enwezor, Jean Fisher, Barbara Claire Freeman, Jeremy Gilbert-Rolfe, Doreet LeVitte-Harten, Eleanor Heartney, Lynn M. Herbert, Luce Irigaray, Fredric Jameson, Lee Joon, Julia Kristeva, Jean-François Lyotard, Thomas McEvilley, Vijay Mishra, David Morgan, Jean-Luc Nancy, Jacques Rancière, Gene Ray, Robert Rosenblum, Philip Shaw, Marina Warner, Thomas Weiskel, Slavoj Žižek.
Simon Morley is a British artist and art historian who has contributed to international art journals including Art Monthly, Untitled, Contemporary Visual Art, Tate Etc. and Tema Celeste. A Lecturer in Painting at Winchester School of Art, England, he is the author of Writing on the Wall: Word and Image in Modern Art (2003).The unpresentable
Henri Michaux
To Draw the Flow of Time, 1957
Barnett Newman
The Sublime is Now, 1948
Jean-François Lyotard
The Sublime and the Avant-Garde, 1988
Jacques Derrida
Parergon, 1978
Jean-Luc Nancy
The Sublime Offering, 1988
Philip Shaw
Lacan: Sublimity and Sublimation, 2007
Slavoj Zizek
The Sublime Object of Ideology, 2009
Barbara Claire Freeman
The Feminine Sublime, 1995
Jacques Rancière
The Aesthetic Revolution and Its Outcomes, 2007
Transcendence
Yves Klein
Truth Becomes Reality, 1961
Doreet LeVitte Harten
Creating Heaven, 1999
Luce Irigaray
Belief Itself, 2002
David Morgan
Secret Wisdom and Self-Effacement: The Spiritual in the Modern Age, 1996
Jean Fisher
The Echoes of Enchantment, 1996
Anish Kapoor
Interview with Marjorie Allthorpe-Guyton, 1990
Shirazeh Houshiary
Interview with Stella Santacatterina, 1994
Bill Viola
The Crossing, 1996
Lynn M. Herbert
Spirit and Light and the Immensity Within, 1998
Lee Joon
Void: Mapping the Invisible in Korean Art, 2007
Nature
Richard Long
Heaven and earth, 2001
Robert Rosenblum
The Abstract Sublime, 1961
Gerhard Richter
Statement, 1973
Robert Smithson
Frederick Law Olmsted and the Dialectical Landscape, 1973
Walter De Maria
Some Facts, Notes, Data, Information, Statistics and Statements, 1980
Tacita Dean
Bas Jan Ader, 1997
Olafur Eliasson
The Weather Forecast and Now, 2001
John Berger
Into the Woods: On Jitka Hanzlova’s Forest, 2006
Technology
Jean-François Lyotard
Presenting the Unpresentable: The Sublime, 1982
Jeremy Gilbert-Rolfe
Beauty and the Contemporary Sublime, 1999
Fredric Jameson
Postmodernism, or, The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism, 1991
Roy Ascott
Is There Love in the Telematic Embrace?, 1990
Terror
Gustav Metzger
Manifesto: Auto-Destructive Art, 1960
Vijay Mishra
The Gothic Sublime, 1994
Thomas Weiskel
The Logic of Terror, 1979
Julia Kristeva
Approaching Abjection, 1980
Thomas McEvilley
Turned Upside Down and Torn Apart, 2001
Gene Ray
Joseph Beuys and the After-Auschwitz Sublime, 2001
Marco Belpoliti
Memory of Oblivion, 2006
Lawrence Rinder
Tuymans’ Terror, 1997
Doris Salcedo
Interview with Charles Merewether, 1998
Okwui Enwezor
The American Sublime and the Racial Self, 2006
The uncanny
Gilles Ivain
Formula for a New Urbanism, 1958
Mike Kelley
In Conversation with Thomas McEvilley, 1992
Hiroshi Sugimoto
Noh Such Thing as Time, 2002
A Found Page, 2004
Altered states
Marina Abramovic
Statements, 1992
Stelarc
Beyond the Body, 1988
George Quasha and Charles Stein
HanD HearD/ Liminal Objects, 2000
Marina Warner
‘Ourself behind Ourself, Concealed …’: Ethereal Whispers from the Dark Side, 2000
Fred Tomaselli
Interview with Siri Hustvedt, 2007
Eleanor Heartney
Zhang Huan: Becoming the Body, 2008