Everything Is Connected: Art and Conspiracy

by Douglas Eklund, Ian Alteveer, Jonathan Lethem

Since the mid-twentieth century, conspiracy has pervaded our collective worldview, shaped by events such as the assassination of John F. Kennedy, the Vietnam War, Watergate, the Iran-Contra affair, and 9/11. Everything Is Connected examines how artists from the 1960s to the present have explored both the covert operations of power and the mutual suspicion between governments and their citizens. Featured are works by some thirty artists—including Sarah Charlesworth, Emory Douglas, Hans Haacke, Rachel Harrison, Jenny Holzer, Mike Kelley, Mark Lombardi, Cady Noland, Trevor Paglen, Raymond Pettibon, Jim Shaw, and Sue Williams—in media ranging from painting, drawing, and photography to video and installation art. Whether they uncover webs of deceit hidden in the public record or dive headlong into paranoid fever dreams, these artists use their work to take a powerful and proactive stance against the political corruption, consumerism, bureaucracy, and media manipulation that are hallmarks of contemporary life.

Genres: Art, Conspiracy Theories

196 pages, Hardcover

Published October 16, 2018

About the author

Douglas Eklund is Curator, Department of Photographs, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. He began his career at The Met in 1994, cataloguing the archive of the legendary photographer Walker Evans, whose iconic images documented ordinary American life from the Great Depression to the 1970s. Since the late 1990s he has been the curator responsible for contemporary photography and related media (film/video/new media). Eklund was the curator behind the groundbreaking 2009 exhibition and publication, The Pictures Generation, 1974–84. He has also contributed to numerous exhibition catalogues, including essays on John Baldessari and Piotr Uklanski, among many others.

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[Vash1012 · Rating 5 out of 5]

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