Félix de Azúa, Autobiografía sin vida, Barcelona: Mondadori, 2010.

A través de la marea de imágenes y palabras que le han acompañado en el camino de su vida, Félix de Azúa ha urdido una hipnótica narración donde prescinde del anecdotario biográfico para describir su fundamental experiencia estética, la carta de navegación de una memoria, un viaje espectral por los momentos más intensos del arte, la historia y la literatura.
Narración a dos voces en la que, como en una fotografía y un grabado, se observa la misma figura bajo dos formas distintas, este libro invoca en su primera secuencia la corriente visual que configura una vida, desde la turbadora aparición de la pintura rupestre hasta las vanguardias y la defunción del arte. La literatura, la naturaleza del lenguaje, el enigma de la gran poesía y la aventura novelística del siglo XX componen, a modo de contrapunto, el paisaje verbal comentado por la segunda voz.
Entre la meditación, el relato y la elegía, Félix de Azúa ha escrito una obra capital, el destilado de su admirable trayectoria como narrador y ensayista, una pieza de cámara ágil y tensa, llena de fulgurantes iluminaciones en las que muchos lectores podrán a su vez averiguarse, en su condición de hijos de una era que empieza a anochecer.

Un destilado de su vida intelectual. Una elegía por la poesía y el arte.

Richard Noble (ed.), Utopia. Documents of Contemporary Art. Londres: Whitechapel/MIT, 2009.y

Throughout its diverse manifestations, the utopian entails two related but contradictory elements: the aspiration to a better world, and the acknowledgment that its form may only ever live in our imaginations. Furthermore, we are as haunted by the failures of utopian enterprise as we are inspired by the desire to repair the failed and build the new. Contemporary art reflects this general ambivalence. The utopian impulse informs politically activist and relational art, practices that fuse elements of art, design, and architecture, and collaborative projects aspiring to progressive social or political change. Two other tendencies have emerged in recent art: a looking backward to investigate the utopian elements of previous eras, and the imaginative modeling of alternative worlds as intimations of possibility. This anthology contextualizes these utopian currents in relation to political thought, viewing the utopian as a key term in the artistic lineage of modernity. It illuminates how the exploration of utopian themes in art today contributes to our understanding of contemporary cultures, and the possibilities for shaping their futures.

Artists surveyed include: Joseph Beuys, Paul Chan, Guy Debord, Jeremy Deller, Liam Gillick, Antony Gormley, Dan Graham, Thomas Hirschhorn, Ilya and Emilia Kabakov, Bodys Isek Kingelez, Paul McCarthy, Constant A. Nieuwenheuys, Paul Noble, Nils Norman, Philippe Parreno, Pil and Galia Kollectiv, Superflex, Rirkrit Tiravanija, Mark Titchner, Atelier van Lieshout, Jeff Wall, Andy Warhol, Wochenklauser, Carey Young

Writers include: Theodor Adorno, Jennifer Allen, Catherine Bernard, Ernst Bloch, Yve-Alain Bois, Nicolas Bourriaud, Benjamin H.D. Buchloh, Alex Farquharson, Hal Foster, Michel Foucault, Alison Green, Fredric Jameson, Rosalind Krauss, Hari Kunzru, Donald Kuspit, Dermis P. Leon, Karl Marx, Jeremy Millar, Thomas More, William Morris, Molly Nesbit, Hans Ulrich Obrist, George Orwell, Jacques Rancière, Stephanie Rosenthal, Beatrix Ruf

Iván de la Nuez, Inundaciones. Del Muro a Guantánamo: invasiones artísticas en las fronteras políticas 1989-2009, Barcelona: Debate, 2010.

El libro dedica un capítulo por año a la relación entre arte y política en las dos últimas décadas. Los 21 capítulos de este libro están armados desde la re-escritura de medio centenar de críticas, ensayos, textos de catálogo, artículos, conferencias, capítulos de algún libro, proyectos de exposiciones…

En la mayoría de los casos, están escritos en el mismo año que reflejan; en otros, provienen del impacto provocado por el año específico en que están ubicados en este libro.

Índice:

INTRODUCCIÓN: SE ABRE EL TELÓN (DE ACERO) 1989 EL ARTE DEL DESHIELO 1990 CUBA-ESTADOS UNIDOS: GUERRA FRÍA EN EL TRÓPICO 1991 EL DESTIERRO DE CALIBÁN 1992 GLOBALIZACIÓN DE MACONDO 1993 POLÍTICA DE UN ARTE EXÓTICO 1994 EL ARTE DE LAS POLÍTICAS EXÓTICAS 1995 EL MUNDO ESTÁ EN OTRA PARTE 1996 MIAMI DESPUÉS DE CHRISTO 1997 SILUETAS SOBRE EL CANON 1998 DEL CUERPO DE LA REVOLUCIÓN A LA REVOLUCIÓN DEL CUERPO 1999 LOS USOS PAGANOS 2000 LA TERCERA ODISEA 2001 ESTÉTICA DE LA REAPARICIÓN 2002 CUANDO EL ARTE MATA 2003 CUBA SEGÚN SPIELBERG 2004 CADILLACS EN LA UTOPÍA 2005 EL HOMBRE NUEVO EN BERLÍN 2006 AUTOCRÍTICA DE ARTE 2007 LA LARGA MARCA 2008 EN PARACAÍDAS O CON PARAGUAS: ARTE POLÍTICA Y SUPERVIVENCIA 2009 GUANTÁNAMO O EL DESHIELO DEL ARTE

Margaret Iversen (ed.), Chance. Documents of Contemporary Art. Londres: Whitechapel/MIT, 2010.

The chance situation or random event—whether as a strategy or as a subject of investigation—has been central to many artists' practices across a multiplicity of forms, including expressionism, automatism, the readymade, collage, surrealist and conceptual photography, fluxus event scores, film, audio and video, performance, and participatory artworks. But why—a century after Dada and Surrealism's first systematic enquiries—does chance remain a key strategy in artists' investigations into the contemporary world?

The writings in this anthology examine the gap between intention and outcome, showing it to be crucial to the meaning of chance in art. The book provides a new critical context for chance procedures in art since 1900 and aims to answer such questions as why artists deliberately set up such a gap in their practice; what new possibilities this suggests; and why the viewer finds the art so engaging.

Artists surveyed include: Vito Acconci, Bas Jan Ader, Francis Alÿs, William Anastasi, John Baldessari, Walead Beshty, Mark Boyle, George Brecht, Marcel Broodthaers, John Cage, Sophie Calle, Tacita Dean, Stan Douglas, Marcel Duchamp, Brian Eno, Fischli & Weiss, Ceal Floyer, Huang Yong Ping, Douglas Huebler, Allan Kaprow, Alison Knowles, Jiri Kovanda, Jorge Macchi, Christian Marclay, Cildo Meireles, Robert Morris, Bruce Nauman, Yoko Ono, Gabriel Orozco, Cornelia Parker, Robert Rauschenberg, Gerhard Richter, Daniel Spoerri, Keith Tyson, Jennifer West, Ceryth Wyn Evans, La Monte Young

Writers include: Paul Auster, Jacquelynn Baas, Georges Bataille, Daniel Birnbaum, Claire Bishop, Guy Brett, Benjamin H. D. Buchloh, Stanley Cavell, Lynne Cooke, Fei Dawei, Gilles Deleuze, Anna Dezeuze, Russell Ferguson, Branden W. Joseph, Siegfried Kracauer, Jacques Lacan, Sarat Maharaj, John Miller, Alexandra Munroe, Gabriel Pérez Barreiro, Jasia Reichardt, Julia Robinson, Sarah Valdez, Katharina Vossenkuhl.

Rosalind Krauss, Perpetual Inventory, MIT Press, 2010.

The job of an art critic is to take perpetual inventory, constantly revising her ideas about the direction of contemporary art and the significance of the work she writes about. In these essays, which span three decades of assessment and reassessment, Rosalind Krauss considers what she has come to call the "post-medium condition"—the abandonment by contemporary art of the modernist emphasis on the medium as the source of artistic significance. Jean-François Lyotard argued that the postmodern condition is characterized by the end of a "master narrative," and Krauss sees in the post-medium condition of contemporary art a similar farewell to coherence. The master narrative of contemporary art ended when conceptual art and other contemporary practices jettisoned the specific medium in order to juxtapose image and written text in the same work. For Krauss, this spells the end of serious art, and she devotes much of Perpetual Inventory to "wrest[ling] new media to the mat of specificity."

Krauss also writes about artists who are reinventing the medium, artists who persevere in the service of a nontraditional medium ("strange new apparatuses" often adopted from commercial culture), among them Ed Ruscha, Christian Marclay, William Kentridge, and James Coleman.

Krauss's essays work against the grain of the received ideas of contemporary criticism; she considers the postmedium condition a "monstrous myth." With Perpetual Inventory, she offers an alternative view.

Arthur Danto, Andy Warhol, Yale University Press, 2010.

In a work of great wisdom and insight, art critic and philosopher Arthur Danto delivers a compact, masterful tour of Andy Warhol’s personal, artistic, and philosophical transformations. Danto traces the evolution of the pop artist, including his early reception, relationships with artists such as Jasper Johns and Robert Rauschenberg, and the Factory phenomenon. He offers close readings of individual Warhol works, including their social context and philosophical dimensions, key differences with predecessors such as Marcel Duchamp, and parallels with successors like Jeff Koons. Danto brings to bear encyclopedic knowledge of Warhol’s time and shows us Warhol as an endlessly multidimensional figure—artist, political activist, filmmaker, writer, philosopher—who retains permanent residence in our national imagination.

Danto suggests that "what makes him an American icon is that his subject matter is always something that the ordinary American understands: everything, or nearly everything he made art out of came straight out of the daily lives of very ordinary Americans. . . . The tastes and values of ordinary persons all at once were inseparable from advanced art."

Terry Smith, What is Contemporary Art?, Chicago University Press, 2009.

Who gets to say what counts as contemporary art? Artists, critics, curators, gallerists, auctioneers, collectors, or the public? Revealing how all of these groups have shaped today’s multifaceted definition, Terry Smith brilliantly shows that an historical approach offers the best answer to the question: What is Contemporary Art?

Smith argues that the most recognizable kind is characterized by a return to mainstream modernism in the work of such artists as Richard Serra and Gerhard Richter, as well as the retro-sensationalism of figures like Damien Hirst and Takashi Murakami. At the same time, Smith reveals, postcolonial artists are engaged in a different kind of practice: one that builds on local concerns and tackles questions of identity, history, and globalization. A younger generation embodies yet a third approach to contemporaneity by investigating time, place, mediation, and ethics through small-scale, closely connective art making. Inviting readers into these diverse yet overlapping art worlds, Smith offers a behind-the-scenes introduction to the institutions, the personalities, the biennials, and of course the works that together are defining the contemporary. The resulting map of where art is now illuminates not only where it has been but also where it is going.

Theodor W. Adorno, Aesthetik (1958/59), Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 2009.

Los editores de los escritos póstumos de Adorno se han decidido a publicar los textos manuscritos de las lecciones de estética que éste impartió en el curso 58-59. Unos textos que, si bien no añaden nada fundamental a la estética de Adorno, resultan una pieza imprescindible para comprender la evolución de la filosofía del último Adorno. Hasta ahora sólo disponíamos de la edición pirata de las lecciones de 1967-68 publicadas en Zúrich en 1973. Especialmente nuevas son la interpretación que ofrece del Fedro platónico, del arte de John Cage o de un concepto moderno de belleza.

Slavoj Žižek, Living in the End of Times, Londres: Verso, 2010.

Aunque Žižek nunca ha sido santo de nuestra devoción, hay que reconocerle al pensador esloveno que lleva décadas haciendo un auténtico esfuerzo por pensar filosóficamente el presente. Quizás en detrimento de los problemas filosóficos de fondo, los sistemáticos. Pero después de Hegel y de Marx es difícil creer que la analítica de la verdad pueda avanzar ni un paso sin la ontología del presente, salvo, quizás, en algunos problemas de las ciencias formales. La fusión -fría o caliente, no sabría decir- del lacanismo con el comunismo cristiano de  Žižek produce un discurso lleno de paradojas y de extraños lugares irritantes para tanta gente. Así, este último libro parece sucumbir a la escatología propia de la tradición a la que se adscribe. El sentido de un final es constitutivo de la mentalidad cristiana occidental desde los tiempos de los padres de la iglesia hasta los nuevos postmarxismos y neosocialismos. La gran cuestión es, ¿y si esta vez es verdad? Un libro que no deja indiferente, como se suele decir. Pero, desgraciadamente, ¿cuántos tendrán tiempo de leer sus más de 400 páginas en gran formato llenas de hipérboles, retruécanos, metáforas y analogías?