Marshall Plan Modernism

Jaleh Mansoor is Assistant Professor of Art History at the University of British Columbia and coeditor of Communities of Sense: Rethinking Aesthetics and Politics, also published by Duke University Press.

• Acknowledgments  viiIntroduction. Labor, (Workers') Autonomy, (Art) Work  11. The Monochrome in the Neocapitalist Laboratory  392. Lucio Fontana and the Politics of the Gesture  693. Alberto Burri's Plastics and the Political Aesthetics of Opacity  934. "We Want to Organicize Disintegration"  119Conclusion. "Ready-Made Artist and Human Strike" or From Autonomy to Strike  167Notes  207Bibliography  249Index  265

"Brilliantly highlighting the difference between Italian autonomy/autonomia and the far more general and metaphorical evocations of factory work in American-style pop art and minimalism, Mansoor is one among a small group of authors whose work consistently undercut the historicizing and pacifying ism in the concept of modernism. What we gain is an art historical account on par with the multiple upheavals of modernity and their various contingencies."- Ina Blom (Critical Inquiry) "Mansoor’s book is an inspiring investigation of Italian art in the post-war years, and an unprecedented attempt, at least in terms of a book-length study, to apply to artworks analytical tools derived from autonomous Marxism." - Jacopo Galimberti (Oxford Art Journal) "An ambitious book: it is literally brimming with questions and the invitation to further exploration. . . . It takes up the challenge to think differently about accepted narratives of the neo-avant-garde and of artistic practices in Europe after the Second World War." - Teresa Kittler (Art History)