Death of the Artist: Art World Dissidents and Their Alternative Identities

by Nicola McCartney

There exists a series of contemporary artists who continually defy the traditional role of the artist/author, including Art & Language, Guerrilla Girls, Bob and Roberta Smith, Marvin Gaye Chetwynd and Lucky PDF. In Death of the Artist , Nicola McCartney explores their work and uses previously unpublished interviews to provoke a vital and nuanced discussion about contemporary artistic authorship. How do emerging artists navigate intellectual property or work collectively and share the recognition? How might a pseudonym aid 'artivism'? Most strikingly, she demonstrates how an alternative identity can challenge the art market and is symptomatic of greater cultural and political rebellion. As such, this book exposes the art world's financially incentivised infrastructures, but also examines how they might be reshaped from within. In an age of cuts to arts funding and forced self-promotion, this offers an important analysis of the pressing need for the artistic community to construct new ways to reinvent itself and incite fresh responses to its work.

Genres: Nonfiction

312 pages, Hardcover

Published November 1, 2018

Reviews

[Nick West · Rating 5 out of 5]

Illuminating and engaging. Buy it, borrow it, read it.

I wanted to read this book for two reasons: The first was academic. When I was art school in the late nineties I wrote my dissertation on the legacy that Barthes' critique had made on contemporary art. McCartney's choice of artists - Art & Language, LuckyPDF, Guerrilla Girls, Bob and Roberta Smith, and Marvin Gaye Chetwynd - situate these issues with art practices that explore collectivity, anonymity, the use of pseudonyms, and performance as means of opposing the solitary voice of the artist-author. But McCartney also introduced to the work of Claude Cahun and Marcel Moore along the way, and the subject was also bought up to date by contextualising it in an era of identity politics.

My second reason for wanting to read this book was that I had had some connection with the artists featured. Bob and Roberta Smith's wife Jessica Voorsanger was a tutor at Kent when I was a student there. And when I moved to London in 2002 I met the artist now known as Marvin Gaye Chetwynd. I was lucky enough to experience a number of her performances, including 'Thriller' at Hoxton Hall, 'The Great Gatsby' at Hackney Social Club, and Yves Klein's 'Anthropometry' in Southwark. The spirit of each of these events were irreverent and chaotic and fun. I only wish there would have been an interview with her too.

A great read.

[Chris Hall · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was reasonable, but I thought McCartney had this habit of labouring quite simple points.