Donatien Grau Bücher

In almost thirty interviews, Donatien Grau probes some of the world's most prominent thinkers and preeminent arts leaders on the past, present, and future of the encyclopedic museum.

A modern history of the world’s greatest museums, as told by the people who know the institutions most intimately In his new book, French art critic Donatien Grau (born 1987) presents a case for the reconsideration of art museums as historical institutions and political forums, each one with its own rich biography.For this ambitious inquiry, Grau traveled to Williamstown, New York City, Vienna, Oxford, Ampthill, Moscow, Berlin and London to speak to the people working behind the scenes in the Western world’s greatest museums. Focusing on the 1960s to the 2000s, Grau details the stories of these cultural institutions from the perspectives of those who know them architect Frank Gehry explains his inspiration for the Guggenheim Bilbao in Spain while Irina Aleksandrovna Antonova reminisces on the five decades she spent as Director of Moscow’s Pushkin Museum of Fine Arts.Grau’s incisive research is a testament to the influence of art museums as cultural touchstones throughout history.

After the Crisis offers a platform for discussions between some of today's leading artists, writers, theorists, curators, and historians aimed at questioning the very status of photography today. Contributors come from the realms of critical theory, fiction, performance art, fashion photography, and museums, as well as film and design, and their conversations bring together history and the contemporary. Comparing the current situation of photographic images with the crisis experienced by representation at the time of the birth of photography, they set our relationship with photographic images in the digital era in perspective. Through these discussions, we come to sense the existential burden of being surrounded by images, while also beginning to grasp the historical depth of a questioning of images that started long before the current generation and engages with crucial political and cultural issues of our time.

Puisant ses sources aussi bien aux origines de la pensée occidentale, de Platon à la Renaissance, que dans l’art, la littérature, la philosophie et les séries télévisées d’aujourd’hui, cet essai invite à repenser notre quotidien dans une époque où on n’a jamais autant lu et écrit– mais où, paradoxalement, les livres ne forment plus qu’une partie minoritaire de cette vaste bibliothèque à ciel ouvert qu’est notre monde. A rebours d’un pessimisme ambiant qui prêche la fin de la lecture, Donatien Grau rappelle l’omniprésence du texte dans notre vie : sur internet, nos téléphones, nos ordinateur mais aussi sur les murs ou au travail. Difficile d’imaginer une journée sans lire... Pourtant, enfermés dans notre univers digital, nous avons cru à la nouveauté radicale de notre temps. Un temps où la lecture et l’écriture seraient devenues le pré-carré de quelques professionnels. Il n’en n’est rien et tout l’enjeu de cet essai est de retracer l’histoire de ce malentendu, de revenir sur l’opposition stérile fixée par la tradition entre philologie et philosophie, et de mettre en évidence des cas contemporains de lecture hors des livres mêmes. Peut-être alors pourrons-nous de mieux appréhender le sentiment de perte, d’abandon, de désarroi qui s’est imposé dans nos existences. Une existence où la séparation entre haute culture et culture populaire n’a en soi plus de sens, mais où les grandes œuvres demeurent.