Doreet Levitte-Harten

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Heaven

Doreet Levitte-Harten; Doreet Levitte Harten

Synopsis:
"Heaven" explorers, through the work of thirty internationally prominent artists, the secular religion of popular culture as it flourishes in contemporary society. Though institutional religion has gradually lost its centrality in Western society, the psychology of religion in fact persists in such things as celebrity worship (the idoltry whereby Elvis, like a saint, has sacred relics), consumer culture, the ecstasy of raves, and the cult of the body (beauty = virtue, obesity = sin). This book -- featuring work by such artists as Vanessa Beecroft, the Chapman brothers. Sylvie Fleury, Gilbert & George, and Jeff Koons, and based on an exhibition at the Kunsthalle Dusseldorf, Germany -- finds a religious aura lurking in places of seemingly purely secular significance, and illustrates how paradise has been paved and put on display at the local mall. This important and, to some, perhaps controversial, book includes essays by noted authors and scholars Thierry de Duve, Jean-Luc Nancy, and Samuel R Delany among others.

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Other editions: 2002, 1991