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New Media in Late 20th-Century Art

by Michael Rush
Thames & Hudson, New York, U.S.A. 1999.
pp:244 ISBN 0-500-20329-6
Reviewed by Kevin Murray, Australia. E-mail: kdmurray@bigpond.com


It?s a bold decision to include ?ew media? in Thames & Hudson?s ?orld of Art? series. Electronic art is difficult to organise around a framework of definite works, as would be the case in the great movements of Renaissance and Surrealism. The field is too dispersed. Visual arts has a gallery system that gives a hierarchical order to works, from small artist-run spaces to the prestigious national galleries. By contrast, many new media works are distributed over landscape, television and Internet.

In some respects, Michael Rush avoids a canonical history of new media. He does not proffer grand ideas or formal breakthroughs. Instead, he offers a more pragmatic history of technological innovation. While story of technical development is probably what fits new media best, the reader of his book is left hankering for a little more. Where are the seminal moments? The Thames & Hudson format offers many good quality colour images. Along with Frank Popper?s book on electronic art, it is a useful general reference for our libraries. But text and image do not always combine well. Sometimes the image is left unexplained. This is particularly important in electronic art, where the work is often the epiphenomena of complex technological processes.

It would be very easy to point out other significant omissions in the book. However, I felt that if anything Rush could have been more selective to allow for in depth analysis of a few seminal pieces. As such, the 224 pages (no end pages) are packed with detail.

Besides format, the other major Thames & Hudson component is discussion of the precedents in material arts. Duchamp, Balla and Warhol are mentioned as predecessors of new media. Rush?s story resembles a relay race: new media takes up the baton from an art medium that is racing to break out of the static constraints of the picture frame. The three runners who take up this challenge are performance, video and digital.

Rush sees the video enterprise as an attempt to stake out a personal space in an otherwise commodified world. The chapter on digital claims that the field is without ?sms?. However, there is hint of liberalism when Rush makes a link between Duchamp?s role for the viewer in art with more recent viewer-determined content.

What Rush misses is the influence of formalism, particularly in the browser art of Heath Bunting and josie. This style of work evinces a Puritan disdain for graphics. As such, it follows a time-honoured concern of Western art to find the truth within each particular medium. Here, perhaps, is one grand idea that is re-emerging in the new electronic media.







Updated 13 September 2000.




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