Perception and Agency in Shared Spaces of Contemporary Art

This book examines the interconnections between art, phenomenology, and cognitive studies. Contributors question the binary oppositions generally drawn between visuality and agency, sensing and thinking, phenomenal art and politics, phenomenology and structuralism, and subjective involvement and social belonging. Instead, they foreground the many ways that artists ask us to consider how we sense, think, and act in relation to a work of art.

Introduction: Beside Ourselves (Cristina Albu and Dawna Schuld) Part I: Phenomenal Worlds 1. Michael Fried, Robert Morris, and the Early and Late Writings of Maurice Merleau-Ponty (Robert Hobbs) 2.Art World, Life World. Robert Irwin and the Aesthetic Influence of Alfred Schutz (James Merle Thomas) 3. Wave of the Future? Reconsidering the Neuroscientific Turn in Art History (Kate Mondloch) Part II: Disruption in Transmission: Staging Spontaneity 4. Perceptual Contrast and Social Tension in Allan Kaprow’s Push and Pull – A Furniture Comedy for Hans Hofmann (Emily Ruth Capper) 5. Analogue Exchanges: Communication Technologies, Surveillance and Selfhood in Roy Ascott’s Pedagogy (Kate Sloan) 6. Indexical Proof: Post-studio Intersections of Earthrise and John Baldessari’s California Map Project (Ginger Elliott Smith) Part III: Double Vision: Multi-Focal Lenses 7. Seeing in Stereo: Robert Smithson's Enantiomorphic Chambers (Sienna Brown) 8. Double Looking: The Point of View and the Political Sublime in Contemporary Art (Kit Messham-Muir) 9. Global and Local Multistability in Contemporary Art (Gregory Minissale) Part IV: The Aesthetics of Social Space 10. National Vision: Venezuelan Cinetismo and the Phenomenal Framework of Democracy (Juan Ledezma) 11. Gérard Fromanger’s Souffles and the Politics of Phenomenal Art (Sami Siegelbaum) 12. There’s No Accounting for Taste: Eating, Thinking and Debating in Contemporary Art (Sabine Flach) Part V: The Accretion of Attention 13. Eyes Wide Open: Hunting Ephemeral Images (Inge Hinterwaldner ) 14. Enraptured: Attention and Art (Ellen Levy) 15. Just Noticeable Difference: Ontogenesis, Performativity, and the Perceptual Gap (Chris Salter) Part VI: Entangled Realities 16. Nonstop Modernism: Continuity in Jack Burnham’s Systems, Structures, and Occultism (Charissa Terranova) 17. "Not Directed Toward Anyone": The Indifference of a Situation or, Perception under the Influence (Christine Ross) 18. Impossible to Name: Performing the Ineffable (Barbara Maria Stafford)

Cristina Albu is Assistant Professor in the Department of Art History at the University of Missouri–Kansas City, USA. Dawna Schuld is Assistant Professor of Modern and Contemporary Art Historyin the Department of Visualization at Texas A&M University, USA.