Review of Vid Simoniti, Artists Remake the World: A Contemporary Manifesto (2023), New Haven: Yale University Press

Abstract

With Artists Remake the World: A Contemporary Manifesto (2023), Vid Simoniti surveys recent exhibition-based contemporary art (most since 2016) that ‘glimpse possibilities for repairing the world’. By deferring to institutional definitions of art, Simoniti avoids having to defend whether exhibited objects are art, yet this approach ignores the fact that not all exhibited objects begin/endure as art, let alone begin/endure as political art. Early on, he admits of a paradox regarding exhibition-based political art, that is, it can feel ‘forbiddingly abstruse, experimental, hard to access, inward looking, even elitist’.

Simoniti’s introduction describes his aim to demonstrate how ‘through art, we momentarily remake the world as we know it’. He develops this argument over seven chapters beginning with ‘when and how art contemporary art became political’, then ‘Realism for our time: on art and truth’, ‘unity and utopia: on socially engaged art’, ‘worldmaking: on the role of aesthetics in political art’, ‘spectacle and surveillance: on art in the internet age’, ‘creativity in the face of extinction: on art and climate change’, and finally ‘remaking the world’s hinges’.