• Publisher: *cf.
• 358 pages
• Author: Rade Pantić
• Original title: Umetnost skozi teorijo: historičnomaterialistične analize

Rade Pantić develops an original materialistic theory of art that successfully captures, in a single problematic, the analysis of artistic works, the relationships between artistic practices and their ideological backgrounds, and the wider impact of art on the reproduction of different social formations. Pantić connects the formalistic analysis of specific aesthetic mechanisms with the analysis of contemporaneous social processes, and shows the interaction of the art sphere and other social spheres in different historical periods; he thus demonstrates how the specific aesthetic effects of artistic practices interfere with ideological, political, and economic social processes and their historic contradictions. When he, for example, analyses classical Greek sculpture, he first introduces the class composition of the Archaic period and the class struggle that resulted in the emergence of the polis social order. He then analyses the class struggle within the polis social formation and shows the role of ideological practices in these struggles; only once he has defined these social processes, he moves on to the analysis of classical sculpture itself.

About the author

Rade Pantić

Rade Pantić (1982) is an Associate Professor in the Department of Political Studies at the Faculty of Media and Communication, Singidunum University, Belgrade. He is co-editor of the book, Contemporary Marxist Theory of Art (Orion art/Fakultet za medije i komunikacije, Belgrade, 2015) [Serbian]. His areas of interest include historical materialism, theory of ideology, art theory, film and urban studies. He is currently working on a Marxist analysis of Yugoslav and post-Yugoslav history.