Leading social critic Carol Becker offers a timely analysis of the nature of art and its role in politics and society. Completed just before the September 11, 2001 World Trade Center catastrophe, Surpassing the Spectacle is especially relevant in its analysis of the spectacle society that was omnipresent before that fatal day.
This collection of essays explores such topics as public memorials, America's attempt to hold onto a sense of security while faced with the reality of international terrorists living within our own cities, the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission, restorative justice, and issues of freedom of expression as they relate to incidents such as New York Mayor Guiliani's quest to ban Chris Ofili's painting of The Holy Virgin Mary at the Brooklyn Museum. The essays cohere around Becker's central concerns: the education and role of artists in a post post-modern climate, controversies over public space, iconography, memorializing, and the myth of the global citizen.
“This important collection by a leading public intellectual offers innumerable opportunities to think our way out of the paper bag so many Americans live in. With startling prescience, Carol Becker covers many issues that cultural workers need to confront, integrating familiar concepts into the larger picture. This compelling book is also the story of one woman's strength—and success—in the world of ideas. Read it, and think, then act.”
— Lucy R. Lippard
“As dean of a major art school, Carol Becker speaks with unique authority and competence against a completely studio-based art education that only trains artists to become professionals within the confines of a circumscribed art world, rather than to see themselves as cultural leaders and transformers, able to take on serious issues. This book belongs in the library of anyone who believes that art has a crucial and important role to play in the shaping of today's global society.”
— Suzi Gablik
“In this passionate and fiercely engaged book, Carol Becker makes the case that without the ability of artists to speak the unspeakable and find form for the invisible, this country has no chance to resist the infantilizing seductiveness of spectacle and realize the radical potential of freedom.”
— Michael Brenson