The Long 1980s

The Long 1980s PDF Author: Nick Aikens
Publisher: Valiz/L'Internationale
ISBN: 9789492095497
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 416

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Book Description
The 1980s triggered a fundamental reorientation in the relationship between governments and their publics, in turn shaping the imaginative landscape of the 21st century. Art and culture played a central role in responding to, pre-empting, and articulating these changes. Although globalisation has produced greater inequality and mixed economic results, it has also permitted the emergence of new regional cultural and activist networks, along with the possibility of a new global or transnational culture. How the effects of this shift have impacted our contemporary condition is told in diverse microhistories which compare very different geopolitical situations in Europe and beyond.

The Long 1980s

The Long 1980s PDF Author: Nick Aikens
Publisher: Valiz/L'Internationale
ISBN: 9789492095497
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 416

Get Book

Book Description
The 1980s triggered a fundamental reorientation in the relationship between governments and their publics, in turn shaping the imaginative landscape of the 21st century. Art and culture played a central role in responding to, pre-empting, and articulating these changes. Although globalisation has produced greater inequality and mixed economic results, it has also permitted the emergence of new regional cultural and activist networks, along with the possibility of a new global or transnational culture. How the effects of this shift have impacted our contemporary condition is told in diverse microhistories which compare very different geopolitical situations in Europe and beyond.

British Art of the Long 1980s

British Art of the Long 1980s PDF Author: Imogen Racz
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 135019154X
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 368

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Book Description
The sculptural history of the long 1980s has been dominated by New British Sculpture and Young British Artists. Arguing for a more expansive history of British sculpture and its supporting infrastructures, these twenty-three vivid and enthralling interviews with artists, curators, dealers and facilitators working then demonstrate the interconnected networks, diversity of ideas and practices, energy, imagination and determination that transformed British art from being marginal to internationally celebrated. With a substantial introduction, this timely volume provides valuable new insights into the education, work, careers, studios, infrastructures and exhibitions of the artists and facilitators, substantially enlarging our understanding of the era.

The Global 1980s

The Global 1980s PDF Author: Jonathan Davis
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 0429624360
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 284

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Book Description
The Global 1980s takes an international perspective on the upheaval across the world during the long 1980s (1979–1991) with the end of the Cold War, a move towards a free-market economic system, and the increasing connectedness of the world. The 1980s was a decade of unimaginable change. At its start, dictatorships across the world appeared stable, the state was still seen as having a role to play in ensuring people’s well-being, and the Cold War seemed set to continue long into the future. By the end of the decade, dictatorships had fallen, globalisation was on the march and the opening of the Berlin Wall paved the way for the end of the Cold War. Divided into four chronological parts, sixteen chapters on themes including domestic politics, the global spread of democracy, international relations and global concerns including AIDS, acid rain and nuclear war, explore how world-wide change was initiated both from above and below. The book covers such topics as ideological changes in the liberal democratic west and socialist east, protests against nuclear weapons and for democratic governance, global environmental worries, and the end of apartheid in South Africa. Offering an overview of a decade in transition, as the global order established after 1945 broke down and a new, globalised world order emerged, and supported by case studies from across the world, this truly global book is an essential resource for students and scholars of the long 1980s and the twentieth century more generally.

Back to Our Future

Back to Our Future PDF Author: David Sirota
Publisher: Ballantine Books
ISBN: 0345518802
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 305

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Book Description
Wall Street scandals. Fights over taxes. Racial resentments. A Lakers-Celtics championship. The Karate Kid topping the box-office charts. Bon Jovi touring the country. These words could describe our current moment—or the vaunted iconography of three decades past. In this wide-ranging and wickedly entertaining book, New York Times bestselling journalist David Sirota takes readers on a rollicking DeLorean ride back in time to reveal how so many of our present-day conflicts are rooted in the larger-than-life pop culture of the 1980s—from the “Greed is good” ethos of Gordon Gekko (and Bernie Madoff) to the “Make my day” foreign policy of Ronald Reagan (and George W. Bush) to the “transcendence” of Cliff Huxtable (and Barack Obama). Today’s mindless militarism and hypernarcissism, Sirota argues, first became the norm when an ’80s generation weaned on Rambo one-liners and “Just Do It” exhortations embraced a new religion—with comic books, cartoons, sneaker commercials, videogames, and even children’s toys serving as the key instruments of cultural indoctrination. Meanwhile, in productions such as Back to the Future, Family Ties, and The Big Chill, a campaign was launched to reimagine the 1950s as America’s lost golden age and vilify the 1960s as the source of all our troubles. That 1980s revisionism, Sirota shows, still rages today, with Barack Obama cast as the 60s hippie being assailed by Alex P. Keaton–esque Republicans who long for a return to Eisenhower-era conservatism. “The past is never dead,” William Faulkner wrote. “It’s not even past.” The 1980s—even more so. With the native dexterity only a child of the Atari Age could possess, David Sirota twists and turns this multicolored Rubik’s Cube of a decade, exposing it as a warning for our own troubled present—and possible future.

Scandals and Abstraction

Scandals and Abstraction PDF Author: Leigh Claire La Berge
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
ISBN: 019937287X
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 241

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Book Description
"The greed, excess, and decadence of the long 1980s has been famously chronicled, critiqued, and satirized in epochal works like White Noise by Don DeLillo, American Psycho by Bret Easton Ellis, and Tom Wolfe's The Bonfire of the Vanities. Leigh Claire La Berge offers an in-depth study of these fictions alongside the key moments of financial history that inform them, contending that throughout the 1980s, novelists, journalists, and filmmakers began to reimagine the capitalist economy as one that was newly personal, masculine, and anxiety producing. The study's first half links the linguistic to the technological by exploring the arrival of ATMs and their ubiquity in postmodern American literature. In transformative readings of novels such as White Noise and American Psycho, La Berge traces how the ATM serves as a symbol of anxious isolation and the erosion of interpersonal communication. A subsequent chapter on Ellis' novel and Jane Smiley's Good Faith explores how male protagonists in each develop unique associations between money and masculinity. The second half of the monograph features chapters that attend to works-most notably Oliver Stone's Wall Street and Wolfe's The Bonfire of the Vanities-that capture aspects of the arrogance and recklessnessthat led to the savings-and-loan crisis and the 1987 stock market crash. Concluding with a coda on the recent Occupy Wall Street Movement and four short stories written in its wake, Scandals and Abstraction demonstrates how economic forces continue to remain a powerful presence in today's fiction"--

I'll Take Manhattan

I'll Take Manhattan PDF Author: Judith Krantz
Publisher: Bantam
ISBN: 0553264079
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 465

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Book Description
In the high-stakes world of magazine publishing, Judith Krantz weaves a dazzling tale of love and betrayal, and creates her most joyous character—sensational Maxi, an uninhibited woman who unexpectedly discovers that her talent for life is matched by a hunger to succeed. Gorgeous, flamboyant Maxi Amberville is twenty-nine and has already discarded three husbands on two continents. Life is a stream of endless pleasure in her lavish Trump Tower apartment—until her widowed mother married a man who plots to sell her father's magazine empire. And Maxi turns her incredible lust for living into a passionate quest for power. Maxi takes over the small weekly Buttons And Bows. She gathers her hot-blooded ex-husband, sassy daughter and a coterie of the powerful elite. Then, risking all, Maxi creates B&B—the glitziest, ritziest, most successful fashion magazine in the country. Here is a dramatic, sizzling story of love, family, ambition and one unforgettable woman who gives life and love everything she has.

No Such Thing as Society

No Such Thing as Society PDF Author: Andy McSmith
Publisher: Constable
ISBN: 1849016615
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 555

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Book Description
The 1980s was the revolutionary decade of the twentieth century. To look back in 1990 at the Britain of ten years earlier was to look into another country. The changes were not superficial, like the revolution in fashion and music that enlivened the 1960s; nor were they quite as unsettling and joyless as the troubles of the 1970s. And yet they were irreversible. By the end of the decade, society as a whole was wealthier, money was easier to borrow, there was less social upheaval, less uncertainty about the future. Perhaps the greatest transformation of the decade was that by 1990, the British lived in a new ideological universe where the defining conflict of the twentieth century, between capitalism and socialism, was over. Thatcherism took the politics out of politics and created vast differences between rich and poor, but no expectation that the existence of such gross inequalities was a problem that society or government could solve - because as Mrs Thatcher said, 'There is no such thing as society ... people must look to themselves first.' From the Falklands war and the miners' strike to Bobby Sands and the Guildford Four, from Diana and the New Romantics to Live Aid and the 'big bang', from the Rubik's cube to the ZX Spectrum, McSmith's brilliant narrative account uncovers the truth behind the decade that changed Britain forever.

Mad World

Mad World PDF Author: Lori Majewski
Publisher: Abrams
ISBN: 1613126662
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 400

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Book Description
A “hugely entertaining” history of the 1980s New Wave music scene told through new interviews with its biggest artists (Rolling Stone). Mad World is a compelling oral history that celebrates the New Wave music phenomenon of the 1980s via new interviews with 35 of the most notable artists of the period. Each chapter begins with a discussion of their most popular song and leads to stories of their history and place in the scene, ultimately painting a vivid picture of this colorful, idiosyncratic time. Mixtape suggestions, fashion sidebars, and quotes from famous contemporary admirers help fill out the fun. Participants include members of Duran Duran, New Order, The Smiths, Tears for Fears, Adam Ant, Echo, and the Bunnymen, Devo, ABC, Spandau Ballet, A Flock of Seagulls, Thompson Twins, INXS, and more. “One addictive chapter after another.” —Rob Sheffield, author of Talking to Girls About Duran Duran “Tells the tale of some of the decade’s most unforgettable songs . . . in fascinating detail, letting the architects of these memorable records shine a light on how the sound of a generation came to be.” —The Hollywood Reporter “The new wave era is often dismissed for its one-hit wonders and silly haircuts, but [Mad World] examines the period with a great deal of love and reverence.” —Buzzfeed “A really informative and insightful read.” —People

This Will Have Been

This Will Have Been PDF Author: Helen Anne Molesworth
Publisher: Yale University Press
ISBN:
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 454

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Book Description
A fascinating examination of the cultural and political forces that shaped the art of a tumultuous decade

The Long Boom

The Long Boom PDF Author: Peter Schwartz
Publisher: Texere Publishing
ISBN: 9781587990403
Category : Economic development
Languages : en
Pages : 335

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Book Description
This optimistic text examines and predicts the 40-year period from 1980-2020 as the key years of a remarkable economic transformation.