Working Aesthetics: Labour, Art and Capitalism

by Danielle Child, Gillian Whiteley (Series Editor), Jane Tormey (Series Editor)

Working Aesthetics is about the relationship between art and work under contemporary capitalism. Whilst labour used to be regarded as an unattractive subject for art, the proximity of work to everyday life has subsequently narrowed the gap between work and art. The artist is no longer considered apart from the economic, but is heralded as an example of how to work in neoliberal management textbooks. As work and life become obscured within the contemporary period, this book asks how artistic practice is affected, including those who labour for artists. Through a series of case studies, Working Aesthetics critically examines the moments in which labour and art intersect under capitalism. When did labour disappear from art production, or accounts of art history? Can we consider the dematerialization of art in the 1960s in relation to the deskilling of work? And how has neoliberal management theory adopting the artist as model worker affected artistic practices in the 21st century?

With the narrowing of work and art visible in galleries and art discourse today, Working Aesthetics takes a step back to ask why labour has become a valid subject for contemporary art, and explores what this means for aesthetic culture today.

Genres: Art

240 pages, Hardcover

Published January 10, 2019

Reviews

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"The commissioned performative (or relational) works take on the appearance of intellect now combined with work — that is, they adopt the traits of immaterial labour. Call Cutta in a Box for example adopted the appearance of work — through using the call centre — and employed the tropes of the performing artist (through the script and the call centre worker). Although the work provoked a consideration of the global structures of labour, it was not intended to as political action. Intellect is the abstract thought which has become the pillar of production. Now that work is aligned with the virtuoso, it could thus be argued that sanctioned political critique (such as some of the work that Bourriaud dubs 'relational') is neutralized by the framing institutional support of the museum, replicating the virtuosic co-opted by (art)work.

"The subsumption of non-object production (i. e. unproductive labour) as the dominant work mode forms the basis of Virno's thinking. He argues that all political action is virtuosic and thus virtuosity is intrinsically political. The problem lies in separating the three spheres (work, intellect, action) that have become entwined within contemporary capitalism. Artworks that no longer produce an object, similarly, become common within contemporary art production, and this began to permeate the art institution. Hirschhorn has famously stated (paraphrasing Jean-Luc Godard) that he does not make political art but does art politically. Thus, it becomes a question of how do we separate politics from art work?"

pp. 127-128.