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This innovative new history examines in-depth how the growing popularity of large-scale international survey exhibitions, or 'biennials', has influenced global contemporary art since the 1950s. Provides a comprehensive global history of biennialization from the rise of the European star-curator in the 1970s to the emergence of mega-exhibitions in Asia in the 1990s Introduces a global array of case studies to illustrate the trajectory of biennials and their growing influence on artistic expression, from the Biennale de la Mditerrane in Alexandria, Egypt in 1955, the second Havana Biennial of 1986, New York's Whitney Biennial in 1993, and the 2002 Documenta11 in Kassel, to the Gwangju Biennale of 2014 Explores the evolving curatorial approaches to biennials, including analysis of the roles of sponsors, philanthropists and biennial directors and their re-shaping of the contemporary art scene Uses the history of biennials as a means of illustrating and inciting further discussions of globalization in contemporary art.



About the Author

Charles Green

Charles Green is Professor of Contemporary Art in the School of Culture and Communication at the University of Melbourne. Author of Peripheral Vision: Contemporary Australian Art 1970-94 (Craftsman House, 1996) and The Third Hand: Artist Collaborations from Conceptualism to Postmodernism (University of Minnesota Press, 2001) , he recently completed a history of biennials in contemporary art, Biennials, Triennials and Documenta: Exhibitions that Created Contemporary Art, 1955-2015 (Wiley-Blackwell, 2016) , with Associate Professor Anthony Gardner (Oxford University) , assisted by an Australian Research Council Discovery Grant. Lyndell Brown and Charles Green have worked in collaboration as one artist since 1989. In 2007, they were Australia's Official War Artists, deployed to Afghanistan and Iraq, and in 2014 published a book (Framing Conflict: Contemporary War and Aftermath, Macmillan Art Publishing, 2014) .



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