Synopsis
Circus Americanus is a riotous excursion through America’s changing visual landscape. Exploring its remote corners and bizarre byways, Ralph Rugoff takes us on a tour of theme park slums and mystical police cars, futurist war and the “aesthetics of safe chaos.” With an idiosyncratic eye for detail, he maps a culture in which “reality” has become just another theme, revealing an America much stranger than the glamorous kitsch of its surfaces. Whether he is writing about Las Vegas casinos, forensic cartoons, the enigma of Napoleon’s preserved penis or the aesthetics of sewage treatment, Rugoff considers everyday marvels with a concern for how we live together in a world beyond belief.
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About the Author
Ralph Rugoff is Director of the Hayward Gallery and was previously a Los Angeles art critic covering visual culture for LA Weekly.
Reviews
With passing nods to J.G. Ballard, Reyner Banham and Jean Baudrillard, the leitmotif of this collection of short essays is the Disneyfication of America, by which all experience is subject to the hyper-realities and inflated expectations of entertainment. A contemporary art critic, Rugoff arrived on the West Coast, where he ``felt instantly, if somewhat oddly, at home,'' in 1983. Writing for LA Weekly--which first printed most of these essays--he developed a style of cultural journalism that uses art as a springboard to other topics. For example, minimalist sculptor Robert Irwin's career as a gambler ushers in a piece on a Hollywood racetrack. The ensuing ``circus'' takes in such sideshow attractions as the Liberace Museum and the Foundation for Facial Plastic Surgery to encompass the seamier realms of pulp non-fiction. An essay on forensic animators, whose work prompts jurors to witness a crime from the bullet's point of view, begins with an invitation to Quentin Tarantino to make way for the true maestros of ``chillingly violent images.'' Rugoff's illustrated essays are appropriately entertaining--a description of ``gifts from the people'' displayed at the Richard Nixon Library is especially funny. One of the strongest essays, though, is a relatively quiet homage to the conceptual artist Robyn Whitlaw, whose In-visibility Project (1973-1978) preceded her own enigmatic disappearance.
Copyright 1995 Cahners Business Information, Inc.
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Circus Americanus (Haymarket Series)
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Circus Americanus
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Circus Americanus (Haymarket Series)
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Verso November 1995, 1995
ISBN 10: 1859840035
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Paperback. Condition: Very Good. Circus Americanus (Haymarket Series) This book is in very good condition and will be shipped within 24 hours of ordering. The cover may have some limited signs of wear but the pages are clean, intact and the spine remains undamaged. This book has clearly been well maintained and looked after thus far. Money back guarantee if you are not satisfied. See all our books here, order more than 1 book and get discounted shipping. Seller Inventory # 7719-9781859840030
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Condition: Good. Your purchase helps support Sri Lankan Children's Charity 'The Rainbow Centre'. Ex-library, so some stamps and wear, but in good overall condition. Our donations to The Rainbow Centre have helped provide an education and a safe haven to hundreds of children who live in appalling conditions. Seller Inventory # Z1-R-036-02184
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Circus Americanus
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paperback. Condition: Very Good in Wrappers. No Jacket. First Edition. New York. 1995. Verso. 1st Edition. Very Good in Wrappers. 1859840035. 220 pages. paperback. keywords: Los Angeles Art Sociology. DESCRIPTION - Actors' headshots, manhole covers, forensic courtroom displays, Mexican wrestling, a sewage treatment plants may seem unlikely subjects for the gaze of an art critic, but then Ralph Rugoff - no ordinary critic - has an eye capable of discerning an aesthetic in the unlikeliest of locations. Rugoff wants to remind readers that art is not produced in a vacuum, but is a continuum of everyday life. In this spirit, this book takes us on a guided tour of some of the world's leading museums and some of the most unusual, including the L.A. County Sheriff's Museum, the Nixon Museum, the Liberace Museum, the Museum of Pathological Anatomy and the Museum of Jurassic Technology. They transport us to built spaces such as Citywalk, L.A.'s theme park of itself, around horsetracks and on freeways, barely pausing to point out that the visual appeal of a daring overpass and the aesthetic appeal of a curvilinear sculpture are not unrelated. They talk to us about the relationship between L.A. artists and theme park aesthetics, about the role of fantasy in contemporary architecture, about the art of the human body as revealed in nudist photography, bodybuilding and plastic surgery. This book, emulating the talent of artists for making unexpected connections and juxtapositions, allows readers to perceive and enjoy the beautiful, the bizarre and the downright perverse in places we never thought of looking before. inventory #26597. Seller Inventory # z26597
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