A01=Tamara Trodd
Alain Resnais
alienation
Amalia Ulman
archives
austerity
austerity-era Spain
Author_Tamara Trodd
Brecht
Category=ABA
Category=AFKV
Category=AGA
Category=KCSA
common sense
contemporary British art
contemporary North American art
decay in democratic institutions
deindustrialisation
documentary
documentary film
drawing
economic inequality
Elizabeth Price
eq_art-fashion-photography
eq_bestseller
eq_business-finance-law
eq_isMigrated=1
eq_isMigrated=2
eq_new_release
eq_nobargain
eq_non-fiction
expressionism
film art
film installation
fraying social cohesion
hauntology
Henry Moore
identity
Lizzie FitchRyan Trecartin
Lukacs
Melanie Gilligan
mid-century aesthetic strategies
mining
neoliberalism
policing
post-apartheid South Africa
psycho-technics
realism
rising authoritarianism
Simone Weil
South Africa
structural violence
the Vietnam War
video art
violent and repressive politics of the 1930s
William Kentridge
Product details
- ISBN 9781526190215
- Weight: 705g
- Dimensions: 156 x 234mm
- Publication Date: 16 Dec 2025
- Publisher: Manchester University Press
- Publication City/Country: GB
- Product Form: Hardback
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Counter-realism: Art and subjectivity in contemporary capitalism is an ambitious and original study of key works of film and video art made since 2008 by leading contemporary artists, including William Kentridge, Amalia Ulman, Melanie Gilligan, Lizzie Fitch/Ryan Trecartin and Elizabeth Price. It argues their work should be understood as a reconfigured form of ‘realism’, expressing economic forces and political pressures across contexts ranging from post-apartheid South Africa, through austerity-era Spain, to contemporary Britain and North America. Supported by original artist interviews and detailed visual analysis of individual works of art, as well as a wide-ranging research base, which synthesises arguments from a variety of disciplines including art history, literary, film and political studies, the book is clearly written, and makes legible the ways in which some of the most vivid and compelling works of contemporary moving-image art engage with historical and contemporary political debates.
Tamara Trodd is Senior Lecturer in History of Art at the University of Edinburgh
