Autonomy and Commitment in Twentieth-Century British Arts

This volume focuses on the antagonist and collaborative relation-ship between autonomy and commitment as applied to a vast field of artistic practices, from Modernist sculpture to the contemporary installations of the yBa and others, through the writings on art of Lewis, Fry and Pound, film, drama, music, photography and fashion photography, Art Nouveau style and such experimental forms as the semi-graphic novel and Cummings and Lewandowska’s ‘artist pedagogical book’. These major art forms are tackled in the light of the autonomy and commitment prism and of aesthetic theories. Benjamin’s ‘aura’, Adorno’s ‘commitment’ as well as more recent concepts and works by Deleuze, de Bolla, Nancy or Lacoue-Labarthe are brought in together with the aesthetic theories put forward by such artists as Fry to address the interconnections between autonomy and commitment in relation to Modernist and contemporary British arts. In the wake of Autonomy and Commitment in Twentieth-Century British Literature, this volume means to test the validity of some accepted ideas prevailing in art criticism and to pursue the work of re-appraisal of Modernist and contemporary literature and arts.