Steven Henry Madoff, Unseparate: Modernism, Interdisciplinary Art, and Network Aesthetics

The discussion with the author of the book will be moderated by Adam Budak

13.3.2026, 6 pm

In the series: Paradigm of Thought

Discussion in English

In his new book Unseparate: Modernism, Interdisciplinary Art, and Network Aesthetics (Stanford University Press, 2025), Steven Henry Madoff proposes that at the root of contemporary installation art and performance, the practices of early Modernists, ranging from Wagner and Cézanne to Hugo Ball, Duchamp, and Gropius’s Bauhaus, can be thought of as proto-networks and give rise to a network aesthetics. This revision, seeing modernism not only as a traumatic expression of fragmentation but also as systems of interconnectivity that link bodies and organizational structures in space as collectivities, points toward later practices from Warhol’s Factory to e-flux and the Rebuild Foundation, and to artists and collectives as diverse as Joan Jonas, Rirkrit Tiravanija, Thomas Hirschhorn, Hito Steyerl, Anne Imhof, ruangrupa, and many more. Since the time of the early modernists, the engines of war, political propaganda, and new technologies have driven these practices toward visions of wholeness. Blending history, phenomenology, media theory, and network theory, the book deepens our understanding of classic modernism and contemporary practices, while also suggesting ways in which network aesthetics can model societal structures in our increasingly divisive times.

 

Steven Henry Madoff is the founding chair of the MA Curatorial Practice program at the School of Visual Arts in New York. Previously, he served as senior critic at Yale University’s School of Art, as executive editor of ARTnews magazine, and as president of AltaCultura, a project of the Museum of Modern Art. His new book is Unseparate: Modernism, Interdisciplinary Art, and Network Aesthetics from Stanford University Press, with ongoing and past publications including Thoughts on Curating from Sternberg Press (series editor) and Art School (Propositions for the 21^st Century) from MIT Press, among many others. His criticism and journalism have appeared in The New York Times, Artforum, Art in America, Tate Etc., as well as in ARTnews and Modern Painters, where he has also served as a contributing editor.