Historical Materialism Book Series397- After Critical Realism

Borrowed from the critic Georg Lukács, the term critical realism first came to prominence in the artworld during the early 2000s with the emergence of the documentary and social turns. Although many of the political and aesthetic commitments that characterised this moment continue to shape contemporary forms of realism, today, many of these practices have become increasingly journalistic or evidence-based. Bringing together new essays from an international group of scholars, After Critical Realism offers a reassessment of the aims and stakes of critical realism, whilst also examining the new wave of challenges that have begun to plague the field, from the emergence of a post-truth media climate to the professionalisation of research-based art. The outcome is an account of critical realism as a crucial, yet ultimately unstable term for Marxist art history.