{"product_id":"the-independent-group-postwar-britain-and-the-aesthetics-of-plenty","title":"The Independent Group: Postwar Britain and the Aesthetics of Plenty","description":"\u003cp\u003eThe Independent Group  or the IG  as it was called  is best known for having launched Pop Art. But the young artists  architects  and critics who met informally at Londons Institute of Contemporary Arts in the early 1950s were actually embarked on a far more subversive and constructive mission than the founding of an art movement. Street-smart  anti-academic  and iconoclastic  they embraced Hollywood and Madison Avenue and rejected the traditional dichotomies between high and low culture  British and American values. They used their meetings and exhibitions to challenge the official modernist assumptions of British aesthetics and to advocate instead a media-based  consumer-based aesthetics of change and inclusiveness - an aesthetics of plenty. In doing so they drew upon Dadaist  Futurist  and Surrealist strategies to invigorate their alternative version of modernism - a version that today can be said to have insinuated the terms of postmodernism.  This book provides the first comprehensive view of the IGs aims and significance. The texts and illustrations fully represent the achievements of its leaders  including artists Richard Hamilton and Eduardo Paolozzi  architects Alison and Peter Smithson  and critics Lawrence Alloway and Reyner Banham. The historic exhibitions that publicized the ideas of IG members are also documented - \"Parallel of Life and Art \" \"Man  Machine and Motions \" \"This Is Tomorrow \" and \"An Exhibit.\" Above all  the book emphasizes the interaction between the exhibitions  discussions  art and writings of IG members  showing the ways in which they established a new aesthetic horizon.  David Robbins is a freelance writer and editor in Berkeley  California. Distributed for the University Art Museum  University of California at Berkeley.  Essays by: Lawrence Alloway  Theo Crosby  Barry Curtis  Diane Kirkpatrick  David Mellor  David Robbins  Denise Scott Brown  Alison and Peter Smithson  David Thistlewood  Retrospective Statements by: Lawrence Alloway  Mary Banham  Richard Hamilton  Geoffrey Holroyd  Magda Cordell McHale  Dorothy Morland  Eduardo Paolozzi  Toni del Renzio  Alison and Peter Smithson  James Stirling  William Turnbull  Colin St. John Wilson\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"My Store","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":44965372624949,"sku":"ByrdShop_0262181398","price":154.56,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0627\/8139\/0901\/files\/9780262181396.jpg?v=1770494521","url":"https:\/\/atxbooks.com\/products\/the-independent-group-postwar-britain-and-the-aesthetics-of-plenty","provider":"ATX Books","version":"1.0","type":"link"}