Shiny Things: Reflective Surfaces and Their Mixed Meanings

Shiny objects attract and fascinate us. While they used to derive their power from their rarity, today shininess is pervasive: its attraction is a foundation of consumer culture and it has attendant effects on our architecture, our conceptions of the body, and our production of spectacle. In Shiny Things, Leonard Diepeveen and Timothy van Laar examine the meanings and functions of shininess in visual art and material culture. 

Exploring the works of a diverse range of artists—including Anish Kapoor, Olafur Eliasson, Jeff Koons, Carolee Schneemann, Audrey Flack, Fra Angelico, and Gerard ter Borch—the authors open the discourse to topics as disparate as automobiles, Richard Nixon, and Liberace. With accessible writing and a careful application of contemporary theory, this is scholarship that challenges stale thought and will appeal to any progressive thinker looking for new ways to present ideas.

Leonard Diepeveen is the George Munro Professor Emeritus of Literature and Rhetoric in English at Dalhousie University in Nova Scotia, Canada. His most recent books include Modernist Fraud: Hoax, Parody, Deception and Mock Modernism: An Anthology of Parodies, Travesties, Frauds, 1910–1935.

Timothy van Laar is an artist, writer, and professor emeritus of art at the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign. His work has been exhibited at the Detroit Institute of Arts, Minneapolis Institute of Art, and Illinois State Museum. He is the coauthor of several books, most recently Artworld Prestige: Arguing Cultural Value.