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Gothic Capitalism
As western capitalism outlives any sense of social development or progress, culture takes on an increasingly gothic hue. The ruins of our industrial heyday are illuminated by digital billboards. The cyber-utopianism of the early Internet has waned, exposing Silicon Valley's anti-democratic ideologies and economies. As a result, far-right governments and fascist movements replace our meagre democracies. Looking around there are no saviours. Politics is moribund, while artists, once the dreamers of the modernist avant-garde, have become institutionalized and weak. Our revolutionary dreams are in tatters. Gothic Capitalism argues that artists can salvage art's spiritual and social roots by reassociating our art with working-class communities, class struggle, and gothic capitalism's everyday contradictions.
"Turl's ideas are an incitement, a reckoning - and perhaps even a way forward."
- Holly Lewis, author of The Politics of Everybody
"A vital critique of the extractive machinery of the contemporary art world... this is not just a diagnosis - it's a call to arms.
- Anupam Roy, artist
"At once a protest and a clearing of the path forward... a tour de force of Marxist art history."
- Jyotsna Kapur, author of The Politics of Time and Youth in Brand India
"Summons avant-garde artists to break free from a market-driven art world whose institutions permit only capitalist dreams and nightmares -- and to produce art that is truly for the proletariat and its revolution."
- Joe Shapiro, author of The Illiberal Imagination
"Turl's ideas are an incitement, a reckoning - and perhaps even a way forward."
- Holly Lewis, author of The Politics of Everybody
"A vital critique of the extractive machinery of the contemporary art world... this is not just a diagnosis - it's a call to arms.
- Anupam Roy, artist
"At once a protest and a clearing of the path forward... a tour de force of Marxist art history."
- Jyotsna Kapur, author of The Politics of Time and Youth in Brand India
"Summons avant-garde artists to break free from a market-driven art world whose institutions permit only capitalist dreams and nightmares -- and to produce art that is truly for the proletariat and its revolution."
- Joe Shapiro, author of The Illiberal Imagination
148 pages, Paperback
Published May 2, 2025
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September 27, 2025
This is one of those laser-guided pieces of Marxist criticism directly aimed at all of my special interests. Drawing from Benjamin, Fisher, Brecht, and um, a few of my friends in Historical Materialism circles, this looks at the relationships between art, the Art World(TM), capitalism, and fascism. It's a dense, provocative read about how we can create a truly proletarian, revolutionary art.
Displaying 1 of 1 review