Overview

Shiny objects attract and fascinate us. While they used to derive their power from their rarity, today shininess is pervasive: its attraction is a foundation of consumer culture and it has attendant effects on our architecture, our conceptions of the body, and our production of spectacle. In Shiny Things, Leonard Diepeveen and Timothy van Laar examine the meanings and functions of shininess in visual art and material culture.  Exploring the works of a diverse range of artists—including Anish Kapoor, Olafur Eliasson, Jeff Koons, Carolee Schneemann, Audrey Flack, Fra Angelico, and Gerard ter Borch—the authors open the discourse to topics as disparate as automobiles, Richard Nixon, and Liberace. With accessible writing and a careful application of contemporary theory, this is scholarship that challenges stale thought and will appeal to any progressive thinker looking for new ways to present ideas.

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9781789383782

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"""Shiny Things is a smart, accessible, and often humorous, examination of the various meanings of shininess across multiple facets of culture, with a particular emphasis on the visual arts. It stands as an exemplary investigation of the meaning of an overlooked, but pervasive facet of material culture.”    -- David Klamen, Dean of the School of the Arts at Indiana University Northwest"

Shiny Things is a smart, accessible, and often humorous, examination of the various meanings of shininess across multiple facets of culture, with a particular emphasis on the visual arts. It stands as an exemplary investigation of the meaning of an overlooked, but pervasive facet of material culture. -- David Klamen, Dean of the School of the Arts at Indiana University Northwest

Author Information

Leonard Diepeveen, Emeritus George Munro Professor of Literature and Rhetoric at Dalhousie University, is the author of Modernist Fraud: Hoax, Parody, Deception (Oxford, 2019), The Difficulties of Modernism (Routledge, 2003) and Mock Modernism: An Anthology of Parodies, Travesties, Frauds, 1910-1935 (Toronto 2014). As well, he is co-author, with Timothy van Laar, of Artworld Prestige: Arguing Cultural Value (Oxford, 2013). Timothy van Laar, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign Professor of Art Emeritus and former Professor and Chair of Fine Arts at the College for Creative Studies in Detroit, is an artist and writer. His artwork is included in numerous public and private collections, including, the Detroit Institute of Arts, the Minneapolis Institute of Art, and the Illinois State Museum. He has co-authored three books and writes reviews and essays on contemporary art.

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