Breathless Days, 1959-1960 - Paperback

by Serge Guilbaut (Editor), John O'Brian (Editor)

Taking 1959-1960 as a pivotal cultural and political moment, the contributors to Breathless Days reframe postwar Western art history, examining the aesthetic and ideological alliances and tensions in art throughout Western Europe and the Americas. The collection provides a heterogeneous account of the intersections of the fine art world with literature, jazz, film, and theater in New York, Paris, Milan, Brazil, and Cuba. This reveals the knotty and multilayered connections among these divergent artistic milieus. Whether discussing Duchamp's With My Tongue in My Cheek, Brazilian abstraction, postrevolutionary Cuban art, Jean Tinguely's self-destroying machines, or Burroughs's Naked Lunch, the contributors show this brief period to be a key to the cultural and political development of Western Europe and the Americas during the Cold War.
Contributors. Carla Benzan, Clint Burnham, Jill Carrick, Eric de Chassey, Mari Dumett, Serge Guilbaut, Luc Lang, Hadrien Laroche, Aleca Le Blanc, Richard Leeman, Tom McDonough, Regis Michel, John O'Brian, Kjetil Rodje, Ludovic Tournès, Antonio Eligio (Tonel)

Author Biography

Serge Guilbaut is Professor Emeritus of Art History at the University of British Columbia and the author and editor of several books, including How New York Stole the Idea of Modern Art: Abstract Expressionism, Freedom, and the Cold War. John O'Brian is Professor of Art History and Faculty Associate of the Peter Wall Institute for Advanced Studies at the University of British Columbia and the author and editor of several books, most recently, Camera Atomica.