Art Is a Problem

In this volume of selected essays, interviews, curatorial texts, and reviews, spanning 1986–2012, Joshua Decter examines contemporary art in relation to its various ideological, public, discursive, and social contexts. The book encompasses seven chapters: Institutional Critique and its Discontents; Aporia (Art as Politics, the Politics of Art); Everything Is Social; Convoluted Cities; The (Un)De-definition of Art; What Do We Want from Exhibitions?; On the Curatorial Road.

The author unpacks art’s paradoxical condition: art problematizes, and is intrinsically a problem. From this standpoint, he analyzes art’s definitions, functions, ethical entanglements, societal aspirations, and cultural contradictions.