ART PAPERS 32.05 - Sept/Oct 2008

For quite some time already, a multivalent debate has been raging about the relationship between contemporary art and modernism. The borders are constantly redesigned, the lines pushed this or that way. At the core of the problem is the very question of history: its nature, performance, and uses. In the current issue, the articles on German artists Katharina Grosse (by Melissa Ragona) and Florian Slotawa (by John Chilver) and American artists Stephen Prina (by Nuit Banai) and Jamie Isenstein (by Piper Marshall) trace different paths through this minefield. So do the editor's picks of notable shows: After 1968: Contemporary Artists and the Civil Rights Legacy by Wendy Koenig, NeoHooDoo: Art for a Forgotten Faith, by Cailin Haskell, and The Cinema Effect: Illusion, Reality and the Moving Image, by John Gayer.