The Art Of Cruelty: A Reckoning (2011) - Plot & Excerpts
Emma Komlos-Hrobsky (Editorial Assistant, Tin House Magazine): You’d be hard-pressed to find a more deft read on cultural uses of violence than what Maggie Nelson offers in The Art of Cruelty. More even than I admire what the book has to say, I’m awed by the writing itself. Nelson conjoins and balances the instances that build her case in a way that makes me think of Calder’s mobiles, where the movement of one remote element of the project quietly pushes the others into motion until the whole piece is spinning.Elisabeth Pusack (Intern, Tin House Magazine): Nelson talks about all the juicy stuff–Michael Haneke, the Vienna Actionists, Ana Mendieta, Lars von Trier. She has no blanket policies about when violence in art is illuminating and when it is gratuitous. Instead she charts her visceral reactions–both revulsions and attractions. I got really riled up, sometimes rallying behind her and sometimes wanting to call her up and argue! This kind of impressionistic criticism is really inspiring. Her approach is still kind of haunting me. Many are the questions I've contemplated answers to regarding art, transgression, shock value, ethics and morality, violence in media and other such things. Punk rock has certainly always had a shock-art component to it as well as a fascination with violent imagery, violence itself, and violating society's norms.Maggie Nelson talks about many of these things in this book, only far more intelligently than I ever could. She also has a greater exposure to, and tolerance of, art (especially performance art and the weird video category).What I like best about this exploration is that while she isn't afraid to state her own opinions, the book proceeds as an inquiry rather than a series of declarations. This creates the space to contemplate what she's saying or describing--space where you can make up your own mind.That space is also the major theme of the book: that art, whether it involves cruelty or not, shouldn't assault or insult the viewer but provide the space for the viewer to experience and contemplate.
What do You think about The Art Of Cruelty: A Reckoning (2011)?
This book helped me to think better about art (especially performance art) and violence.
—Yetel31
B.o.r.i.n.g.I still can't figure out what exactly her point was.
—David
