The ArgumentIt is often observed by historians of postwar American art that painters and sculptors of the 1960s sought a more mechanized “look” for their art. I argue that the changes reflected in the art have their source in a deeper shift – a shift at the level of production, expressed in new studio practices as well as in the space of the artworks themselves.In the period immediately before, during, and after World War II, the dominant topos of the American (...) artist was that of a solitary genius, alone in his studio, sole witness to the miraculous creation of his art. I demonstrate that artists of the 1960s, against this backdrop of heroic modernism, engaged in a different rhetoric and practice, one based on the models of industry and business. The studio of Andy Warhol, named the “Factory,” is viewed as apodictic of this great change, with its rudimentary assembly line and highly social mode of production.The change in practice instantiated in Warhol's Factory is significant in and of itself, but I argue further that it expressed itself in the “place of knowledge” – the space within Warhol's paintings and objects, and the newly social space in which they signify. The context for that signification thus becomes crucial to our understanding of the “Warhol phenomenon” celebrated in popular and arthistorical texts. The ambivalencies embedded in Warhol's Factory, where the artist's role oscillated between manager and proletarian worker, are seen as a function of their context. Conflicting signals are also broadcast by the works of art, which speak in the dialect of mass production with the accent of the irreplaceably unique. (shrink)

Experience offers a reading experience like no other. A heat-sensitive cover by Olafur Eliasson reveals words, colors, and a drawing when touched by human hands. Endpapers designed by Carsten Holler are printed in ink containing carefully calibrated quantities of the synthesized human pheromones estratetraenol and androstadienone, evoking the suggestibility of human desire. The margins and edges of the book are designed by Tauba Auerbach in complementary colors that create a dynamically shifting effect when the book is shifted or closed. When (...) the book is opened, bookmarks cascade from the center, emerging from spider web prints by Tomas Saraceno. Experience produces experience while bringing the concept itself into relief as an object of contemplation. The sensory experience of the book as a physical object resonates with the intellectual experience of the book as a container of ideas. Experience convenes a conversation with artists, musicians, philosophers, anthropologists, historians, and neuroscientists, each of whom explores aspects of sensorial and cultural realms of experience. The texts include new essays written for this volume and classic texts by such figures as William James and Michel Foucault -- Provided by the publisher. (shrink)