Joshua Shannon
Joshua Shannon is professor of contemporary art history and theory at the University of Maryland.
Shannon, Joshua
Shannon, Joshua
United States of America
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Description: Humans
Human beings are organisms, but “the human being” is a term referring to a complicated, self-contradictory, and historically evolving set of ideas and practices. This volume explores the competing understandings of the human being that have figured in the history of American art. Its seven essays consider a range of artworks from the early modern period to the present in order to...
PublisherTerra Foundation for American Art
Related print edition pages: pp.10-39
https://doi.org/10.37862/aaeportal.00289.1
Description: Humans
BOOKHumans
https://doi.org/10.37862/aaeportal.00289
Humans are organisms, but “the human being” is a term referring to a complicated, self-contradictory, and historically evolving set of concepts and practices. Humans explores competing versions, constructs, and ideas of the human being that have figured prominently in the arts of the United States. These essays consider a range of artworks from the colonial period to the present, examining how they have reflected, shaped, and modeled ideas of the human in American culture and politics. The book addresses to what extent artworks have conferred more humanity on some human beings than others, how art has shaped ideas about the relationships between humans and other beings and things, and in what ways different artistic constructions of the human being evolved, clashed, and intermingled over the course of American history. Humans both tells the history of a concept foundational to US civilization and proposes new means for its urgently needed rethinking.

*This eBook is available exclusively on the A&AePortal.*
Print publication date December 2021 (in print)
Print ISBN 9780932171726
EISBN 9780300267594
Illustrations 50
Print Status in print
Description: The Disappearance Of Objects: New York and the Rise of the Postmodern City
https://doi.org/10.37862/aaeportal.00132
In the years around 1960, a rapid process of deindustrialization profoundly changed New York City. At the same time, massive highway construction, urban housing renewal, and the growth of the financial sector altered the city’s landscape. As the new economy took shape, manufacturing lofts, piers, and small shops were replaced by sleek high-rise housing blocks and office towers.

Focusing on works by Claes Oldenburg, Jasper Johns, Robert Rauschenberg, and Donald Judd, art historian Joshua Shannon shows how New York art engaged with this transformation of the city. Shannon convincingly argues that these four artists—all living amid the changes—filled their art with old street signs, outmoded flashlights, and other discarded objects in a richly revealing effort to understand the economic and architectural transformation of their city.

*This eBook is available exclusively on the A&AePortal.*
Print publication date March 2009 (in print)
Print ISBN 9780300137064
EISBN 9780300233599
Illustrations 141 b/w + 48 color illus.
Print Status in print