Uncommon Goods

This book traces the shift from the installation art of the 1990s to the material turn of current practice. It is an important contribution to the scholarship on readymade art, as well as to the study of materiality, embodiment, and globalization. It aims to fill a gap in current literature, specifically dealing with the material nature of contemporary art. Since Marcel Duchamp created his ‘readymades’ a century ago, most famously christening a urinal as Fountain, the practice of incorporating commodity objects into art has become ever more pervasive. “Uncommon Goods” traces one particularly important aspect developing since the 1990s: artistic concern with the hidden ethical dimensions of global commerce. Art historian and cultural theorist, Jaimey Hamilton discusses the work of Ai Weiwei, Cory Arcangel, Thomas Hirschhorn, Santiago Sierra, and many more, reading their artistic explorations as overlapping with debates about how common goods hold us and our world in common. In each chapter Hamilton introduces artists who exemplify the focus of readymade aesthetics on aspects of global commodity culture, including consumption, marketing, bureaucracy, labour and community.
The resulting volume will be an important contribution to scholarship on readymade art as well as to the study of materiality, embodiment and globalization.

Author Biography

Jaimey Hamilton is assistant professor of art history at the University of Hawaii.