This series of original essays on Pop Art and the New Brutalism in Architecture is centred on themes questioned by artists and architects of the XXth Century such as image reproduction, mechanisation, building speed, or serial production.
Including insights on literature, anthropology, sculpture, painting, photography, architectural design, etc., this book develops each theme via specific methods and key notions : the ephemeral, the expendable, the transient, ugliness, excess, formlessness, etc., each revealing a change of aesthetic criteria. This new vocabulary appears as a negative cast of classical notions such as permanence, beauty, suitability or harmony. The author questions from a historical perspective the artistic values and their versatility in the contemporary art world.
The iconography specifically created by Stefania Kenley for this book challenges the image reproduction and its current profitability. This visual universe makes reference to the innovations of the English Pop Art and of New Brutalism and opens thus the possibility of a new reading.
Stefania Kenley is an artist who writes mainly on art and architecture. She is the author of a doctoral thesis entitled Du pastiche à l'original : traces et trajectoires de l'Independent Group (1952-1956) (From a Pastiche to the Original; traces and trajectories of the Independent Group).
