Materials, Practices, and Politics of Shine in Modern Art and Popular Culture

Shine allures and awakens desire. As a phenomenon of perception shiny things and materials fascinate and tantalize. They are a formative element of material culture, promising luxury, social distinction and the hope of limitless experience and excess. Since the early twentieth century the mass production, dissemination and popularization of synthetic materials that produce heretofore-unknown effects of shine have increased. At the same time, shine is subjectified as "glamor" and made into a token of performative self-empowerment. The volume illuminates genealogical as well as systematic relationships between material phenomena of shine and cultural-philosophical concepts of appearance, illusion, distraction and glare in bringing together renowned scholars from various disciplines.

Antje Krause-Wahl is Professor for Contemporary Art at Goethe University Frankfurt, Germany. Her research focuses on Art and visual culture of the 20th and 21st centuries, especially in the US; artist's identity and education; painting and painting theory after 1945; gender studies (queer studies); interaction between art and digital culture; (artist) magazines, fashion and fashion photography. Petra Löffler is Professor for Theory & History of Contemporary Media at Carl von Ossietzky University Oldenburg, Germany. Her research focuses on material culture, film and photography, affect theory and media ecology. Änne Söll is Professor for Modern Art History at Ruhr University Bochum, Germany. Her areas of research include: art of the Weimar Republic, gender studies (masculinities), portraiture, fashion photography, video installations, artists magazines, museum architecture and period rooms.

Acknowledgments List of Contributors List of Illustrations Introduction, Antje Krause-Wahl (Goethe-University Frankfurt, Germany), Petra Löffler (Humboldt-University, Germany) and Änne Söll (Ruhr-University, Germany) Part I: Dissemination of Shine (in Popular Culture) 1. Gloss for all: Shiny Cars and Bemberg Silk in the 1920s, Monika Wagner (University of Hamburg, Germany) 2. Flickering Lights: Shine and Diversion in Weimar Cinema, Petra Löffler (Humboldt-University, Germany) 3. Matte Black/Pan Cake: On the Negation of Shine, Tom Holert (Harun Farocki Institute, Germany) Part II: Temporalities of Shine within Material Cultures: Between Nostalgia, Appropriation and Expropriation 4. Fabric of Light, Surface of Displacement: Lamé and its Shine in Early Twentieth-Century French Fashion, Mei Mei Rado (Parsons School of Design, USA) 5. Gleam: Rebranding Big Steel in Post-war America, Nicolas Maffei (Norwich University of the Arts, UK) 6. The Sheen of Shellac: From Reflective Material to Self-Reflective Medium, Elodie Roy (University of Glasgow, UK) Part III: Glimmer, Sparkle, Glitter - Performing Queer Identities 7. All that Sparkles and Shines: Deco, Dissidence and the Design of Glamorous Modern Interiors, John Potvin (Concordia University, Canada) 8. Cosmic Surfaces: Materiality and Portraiture in Queer Modernism, Antje Krause-Wahl (Goethe-University Frankfurt, Germany) 9. Double Shiny: Leigh Bowery's costume design for Because We Must (1987/1989), Alistair O'Neil (Central St. Martins, UK) 10. "Inevitable Plastic Palace": A Surface Reading of Andy Warhol's Factory, Barbara Reisinger (University of Vienna, Austria) Part IV: Shiny Surfaces in the Art of the 1960s (and beyond) 11. Against the Biological Metaphor: Robert Smithson's Crystalline Figuration, Eva Ehninger (Humboldt University, Germany) 12. Shiny, Glossy and Smooth: Commodity Surfaces in 1960s and 70s Painting, Christian Spies (University of Cologne, Germany) 13. Finish Fetish: Judy Chicago in L.A., Kathrin Rottmann (Ruhr-University, Germany) 14. Shine on: The Mirror Ball as Art Object, Änne Söll (Ruhr-Universität, Germany) Index