Kim Levin

Elsewhere: The Tainted Garden and Other Essays on Art, Life, and the Anthropocene Kim Levin

Written between 1991 and 2017, this perceptive commentary on the art and issues of the late 20th and early 21st centuries examines the transitional period from the end of postmodernism to the dilemmas of the present. In these 35 essays, many of which appeared only in translation elsewhere, Levin discusses such relevant "ancestors" as Robert Rauschenberg, Sol LeWitt, Jean Tinguely, Jean-Michel Basquiat, Andy Warhol, Ana Mendieta, and Mike Kelley as well as newer artists. Her incisive prose is lucid, courageous, and suffused with an unconditional love for art that goes to extremes. Linking these essays are the concepts of selective amnesia and creative misunderstanding, plus changes in the nature of time, space, the future, and the meaning of "elsewhere." From the first essay, "Art That Makes Itself," to the last, "Everywhere and Nowhere: From the Myth of Progress to the Sixth Extinction," the undercurrent is an awareness that we exist in the era of the Anthropocene. And, as the environment declines, elsewhere is becoming everywhere.