Bücher von Malcolm Miles

Modernist urbanism seems progressive, even Utopian: design for a better world through a democratic and humane built environment.

When capitalism is clearly catastrophically out of control and its excesses cannot be sustained socially or ecologically, the ideas of Herbert Marcuse become as relevant as they were in the 1960s. This is the first English introduction to Marcuse to be published for decades, and deals specifically with his aesthetic theories and their relation to a critical theory of society.*BR**BR*Although Marcuse is best known as a critic of consumer society, epitomised in the classic One-Dimensional Man, Malcolm Miles provides an insight into how Marcuse's aesthetic theories evolved within his broader attitudes, from his anxiety at the rise of fascism in the 1930s through heady optimism of the 1960s, to acceptance in the 1970s that radical art becomes an invaluable progressive force when political change has become deadlocked.*BR**BR*Marcuse's aesthetics of liberation, in which art assumes a primary role in interrupting the operation of capitalism, made him a key figure for the student movement in the 1960s. As diverse forms of resistance rise once more, a new generation of students, scholars and activists will find Marcuse's radical theory essential to their struggle.

Features an account of the relations between contemporary cities and the cultures they produce which questions the received ideas of what constitutes a city's culture, through cases in which different kinds of culture are seen to be differently used in, or affected by, the development of particular cities.

This text attempts to see public art outside the normal confines of art criticism and place it within broader contexts of public space and gender by exploring both the aesthetic and political aspects of the medium.