Art And Fear (Continuum Impacts Series)

Description:
Paul Virilio is one of contemporary Continental thought's most original and provocative critical voices. His vision of the impact of modern technology on the contemporary global condition is powerful and disturbing, ranging over art, science, politics and warfare. In 'Art and Fear', Paul Virilio traces the twin development of art and science over the twentieth century. In his provocative and challenging vision, art and science vie with each other for the destruction of the human form as we know it. He traces the connections between the way early twentieth century avant-garde artists twisted and tortured the human form before making it vanish in abstraction, and the blasting to bits of men who were no more than cannon fodder in the trenches of the Great War; and between the German Expressionists' hate-filled portraits of the damned, and the 'medical' experiments of the Nazi eugenicists; and between the mangled messages of global advertising, and the organisation of global terrorism. Now, at the start of the twenty-first century, science has finally left art behind, as genetic engineers prepare to turn themselves into the worst of expressionists, with the human being the raw material for new and monstrous forms of life. 'Art and Fear' is essential reading for anyone wondering where art has gone and where science is taking us.

Review:
''Is Virilio a strident critic out of touch with contemporary culture or is Art and Fear a deft excoriation of excess? Either way, this is a short, sharp and gripping book' Modern Painters 'Virilio's lonely voice [is] more disturbing and timely than ever.' New Statesman'

Table of Contents:
Translator's Preface; Art and Fear: An Introduction by John Armitage; A Pitiless Art; Silence on Trial; Notes; Bibliography.

Author Biography:
Paul Virilio is Director of the Ecole Speciale d'Architecture in Paris and the author of over fifteen books, including Desert Screen and Negative Horizon.