Art Power

<b>A new book by Boris Groys acknowledges the problem and potential of art's complex relationship to power.</b><p>Art has its own power in the world and is as much a force in the power play of global politics today as it once was in the arena of cold war politics. Art argues the distinguished theoretician Boris Groys is hardly a powerless commodity subject to the art market's fiats of inclusion and exclusion. In<i> Art Power</i> Groys examines modern and contemporary art according to its ideological function. Art Groys writes is produced and brought before the public in two ways--as a commodity and as a tool of political propaganda. In the contemporary art scene very little attention is paid to the latter function.</p><p>Arguing for the inclusion of politically motivated art in contemporary art discourse Groys considers art produced under totalitarianism Socialism and post-Communism. He also considers today's mainstream Western art--which he finds behaving more and more according the norms of ideological propaganda: produced and exhibited for the masses at international exhibitions biennials and festivals. Contemporary art Groys argues demonstrates its power by appropriating the iconoclastic gestures directed against itself--by positioning itself simultaneously as an image and as a critique of the image. In <i>Art Power</i> Groys examines this fundamental appropriation that produces the paradoxical object of the modern artwork.</p>