Dr. Jaleh Mansoor, an Associate Professor of Art History at the University of British Columbia, delves into the provocative connections between universal prostitution and modernist abstraction. She reinterprets Marxist aesthetics by exploring how gendered and generalized labor influences art. The discussion touches on notable works, from Manet to contemporary artists, and critiques how abstraction can mask societal inequalities. Mansoor challenges listeners to reconsider the muse's role and the implications of commodification on artistic identity in a capitalist framework.
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insights INSIGHT
Marx's Universal Prostitution Concept
Marx's term "universal prostitution" allegorizes the sale of labor power in capitalism.
It captures the estrangement between the labor bearer and their abstracted labor capacity.
insights INSIGHT
Aesthetic vs Real Abstraction
Modernist aesthetic abstraction is about material, concrete processes like paint and flatness.
Real abstraction reflects abstract labor and market relations shaping everyday life as invisible constraints.
insights INSIGHT
Sierra's Art Reveals Labor Crisis
Santiago Sierra's artwork highlights racialized labor and precarious immigration status.
It reveals brutal market relations and social vulnerability masked by abstraction in capitalism.
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Rosalind Krauss's "The Optical Unconscious" is a significant contribution to art theory, exploring the relationship between photography, psychoanalysis, and modernist art. Krauss examines how photographic images operate on the viewer's unconscious, challenging traditional notions of representation and perception. She draws on Lacanian psychoanalysis to analyze the ways in which images produce meaning and affect. The book is known for its rigorous theoretical framework and its insightful analyses of specific photographic works and modernist paintings. Krauss's work has had a lasting impact on art criticism and theory, shaping discussions about the nature of representation and the viewer's experience of art.
Intellectual and Manual Labor
Intellectual and Manual Labor
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Alfred Sohn-Rethel
Alfred Sohn-Rethel's "Intellectual and Manual Labour" is a significant work in critical theory that explores the relationship between intellectual and manual labor under capitalism. Sohn-Rethel argues that the division of labor is not merely a technical or economic phenomenon but a fundamental aspect of capitalist social relations. He connects the abstract nature of exchange in the market to the development of abstract thought and the separation of intellectual and manual labor. His work challenges traditional Marxist analyses by emphasizing the role of abstract thought in shaping social reality. Sohn-Rethel's ideas have been influential in critical theory and have informed discussions about the nature of work, knowledge, and social relations under capitalism.
The Preliminary Materials for the Theory of a Young Girl
The Preliminary Materials for the Theory of a Young Girl
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Tikoon
Lovely Andrea
Lovely Andrea
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Hito Steyerl
Universal Prostitution and Modernist Abstraction
Universal Prostitution and Modernist Abstraction
A Counterhistory
Jaleh Mansoor
Jaleh Mansoor's "Universal Prostitution and Modernist Abstraction: A Counterhistory" offers a re-examination of Marxist aesthetics through the lens of modern art. The book explores the intersection of gendered and generalized labor within modernist abstraction, analyzing artworks from various periods. Mansoor connects the concept of 'universal prostitution' – Marx's allegory for modern labor – to the dehumanizing aspects of the art market and the objectification of the artist and model. She argues that avant-garde artists often implicitly critique capitalist modes of production through their artistic forms and processes. The book ultimately suggests a counter-praxis to capital, highlighting how art can reveal the hidden abstractions of everyday life.
The painting of modern life
The painting of modern life
T.J. Clark
T.J. Clark's "The Painting of Modern Life" is a seminal work in art history that examines the relationship between art, society, and politics in 19th-century France. Clark's analysis focuses on the social and historical contexts of paintings, moving beyond purely formalist interpretations. He explores how paintings reflect and shape social relations, particularly concerning class, gender, and power. The book is known for its insightful readings of specific artworks and its broader theoretical framework for understanding art's engagement with its social environment. Clark's work has significantly influenced the field of art history, prompting a more socially engaged and historically informed approach to art criticism.
Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts Of 1844
Karl Marx
Karl Marx's Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844 are a collection of writings that explore the nature of alienation, private property, and communism. These essays delve into Marx's early critique of capitalism, focusing on the dehumanizing effects of industrial labor. He examines how capitalism alienates workers from their labor, the products of their labor, their fellow workers, and ultimately, themselves. Marx's analysis lays the groundwork for his later, more mature works, such as Das Kapital. The manuscripts offer a profound and enduring critique of the social and economic structures of capitalism.
Join me for conversation with Dr. Jaleh Mansoor (Associate Professor of Art History in the Department of Art History, Visual Art, and Theory, University of British Columbia) about her book Universal Prostitution and Modernist Abstraction: A Counterhistory (Duke University Press, 2025). Our discussion brought us to topics like the artists’ muse, the modern laborer, and other figures precariously suspended between the object/subject dialectic.
In Universal Prostitution and Modernist Abstraction, Dr. Mansoor provides a counternarrative of modernism and abstraction and a reexamination of Marxist aesthetics. Mansoor draws on Marx’s concept of prostitution—a conceptual device through which Marx allegorized modern labor—to think about the confluences of generalized and gendered labor in modern art. Analyzing works ranging from Édouard Manet’s Olympia and Georges Seurat’s The Models to contemporary work by Hito Steyerl and Hannah Black, she shows how avant-garde artists can detect changing modes of production and capitalist and biopolitical processes of abstraction that assign identities to subjects in the interest of value’s impersonal circulation. She demonstrates that art and abstraction resist modes of production and subjugation at the level of process and form rather than through referential representation. By studying gendered and generalized labor, abstraction, automation, and the worker, Mansoor shifts focus away from ideology, superstructure, and culture toward the ways art indexes crisis and transformation in the political economic base. Ultimately, she traces the outlines of a counterpraxis to capital while demonstrating how artworks give us a way to see through the abstractions of everyday life.
This episode was hosted by Asia Adomanis, a PhD student in the Department of History of Art at Ohio State.
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