The Clever Object: Three Pavilions, Three Loggias, and a Planetarium

This issue of the journal 'Art History' addresses one specific question: what is a clever object? This phrase sits on the threshold of recent thinking in thing theory, anthropology and art history. The objects discussed speak less to a high-minded intelligence of art, indeed, they may not...

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Bibliographic Details
Published inArt history Vol. 36; no. 3; pp. 474 - 497
Main Authors Hunter, Matthew C., Lucchini, Francesco
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published Oxford, UK Blackwell Publishing Ltd 01.06.2013
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Summary:This issue of the journal 'Art History' addresses one specific question: what is a clever object? This phrase sits on the threshold of recent thinking in thing theory, anthropology and art history. The objects discussed speak less to a high-minded intelligence of art, indeed, they may not be art at all, than they body forth wily species of situated canniness. Even when we take the standard warnings against specious animism and commodity fetishism under advisement, these far-flung objects resist conventional terms of engagement. These artefacts seem to guide, subvert and even entrap their makers, beholders and interpreters alike. Rather than shatter these objects into disciplinary comprehensibility, their soundings are allowed to reveal the contours of the semantic fields they occupy and the varieties of subterranean thinking their material forms seem to instantiate.
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ISSN:0141-6790
1467-8365
DOI:10.1111/1467-8365.12015