
Blow Up!
The Explosion of Contemporary Art
Robert Shore(Author)
Thames & Hudson Ltd (Publisher)
Published on 5. June 2025
Book
Hardback
232 pages
978-0-500-02798-1 (ISBN)
Description
A non-fiction graphic novel that tells the story of a century of revolutionary contemporary art.
How did a urinal become art? And a can of tomato soup, a tent, a pickled shark... How do you get at one of the world's most powerful governments by smashing an old vase? How did what seemed like a prank at the New York Armory Show of 1917 explode to become today's global multi-billion dollar art world? This graphic novel answers these questions by following the lives of seminal contemporary artists and the stories behind their groundbreaking works.
Against a backdrop of armed conflict and rapid societal change, this book tells the story of contemporary art from Marcel Duchamp's repurposed urinal to Maurizio Cattelan's taped banana. Literal bombs explode and conventions go up in flames as a series of art objects shock and electrify society: canned excrement, a pickled shark, a stuffed hare, human blood.
The story moves from Paris to New York and London, and then captures the geographical spread of a rapidly globalizing cultural scene by jumping to events in Tokyo, Belgrade, Rio de Janeiro, Lagos and Beijing, and culminating in Miami - and in the ether, everywhere and nowhere, on the internet.
Chapters follow a series of chain reactions as artists meet or inspire each other across the generations and decades. Over a period of 100 years everything changes - and yet the cry of 'It's not art!' never goes away. No matter how long people have had to get used to it, contemporary art continues to upset expectations and disrupt conventions - and inspire anew.
How did a urinal become art? And a can of tomato soup, a tent, a pickled shark... How do you get at one of the world's most powerful governments by smashing an old vase? How did what seemed like a prank at the New York Armory Show of 1917 explode to become today's global multi-billion dollar art world? This graphic novel answers these questions by following the lives of seminal contemporary artists and the stories behind their groundbreaking works.
Against a backdrop of armed conflict and rapid societal change, this book tells the story of contemporary art from Marcel Duchamp's repurposed urinal to Maurizio Cattelan's taped banana. Literal bombs explode and conventions go up in flames as a series of art objects shock and electrify society: canned excrement, a pickled shark, a stuffed hare, human blood.
The story moves from Paris to New York and London, and then captures the geographical spread of a rapidly globalizing cultural scene by jumping to events in Tokyo, Belgrade, Rio de Janeiro, Lagos and Beijing, and culminating in Miami - and in the ether, everywhere and nowhere, on the internet.
Chapters follow a series of chain reactions as artists meet or inspire each other across the generations and decades. Over a period of 100 years everything changes - and yet the cry of 'It's not art!' never goes away. No matter how long people have had to get used to it, contemporary art continues to upset expectations and disrupt conventions - and inspire anew.
More details
Language
English
Place of publication
London
United Kingdom
Target group
Children/juvenile
Illustrations
1200 Illustrations, color
Dimensions
Height: 251 mm
Width: 196 mm
Thickness: 28 mm
Weight
990 gr
ISBN-13
978-0-500-02798-1 (9780500027981)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Persons
Robert Shore is the author of several books about contemporary art and photography, including Post-Photography: The Artist with a Camera (2014), Beg, Steal and Borrow: Artists against Originality (2017), Andy Warhol (2020) and Yayoi Kusama (2021). He worked for many years as an arts reviewer and also as editor of Elephant magazine.