Plastics

Name: Plastics
Price: 49.99 AUD
Availability: PreOrder
ISBN: 9780691238821

Anne Gunnison, David Joselit, Caroline Fowler , Ittai Weinryb

$49.99

Paperback

Forthcoming
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English

Miscellaneous
01 March 2026

Art & Architecture; Conservation, restoration & care of artworks; History of Art & Design Styles; Material culture; Conservation of the environment; Materials science

Series: ART/WORK

Why modern and contemporary art

and art conservation

can't be understood without taking account of the revolutionary impact of plastics.

Modern and contemporary art wouldn't exist without the invention of plastics. From sculpture to paint, and photography to film, plastics have shaped every major medium of art. In turn, plastics have revolutionised art conservation, transforming the possibilities of preservation but also producing new challenges for conservators struggling to preserve toxic and degrading material. Hailed as utopian in the twentieth century, plastics today are often understood as pollution and waste

a central cause of ecological crisis. Plastics is the first book to address the multifaceted history of plastics from the perspective of artists, art historians, conservators, and environmental scientists.

Plastics demonstrates that this material cannot easily be summarised as toxic or utopian, catastrophic or necessary. Instead, plastics define the modern world in both its possibility and failures. The book also reveals how artists have been a critical overlooked voice in debates about plastics, and how they have offered theories of the material through works that explore its potential and harmfulness.

Presenting a variety of perspectives on the world of plastics through the lens of art, artmaking, art history, and art conservation, Plastics shows why and how coming to terms with this material is critical to understanding not only modern and contemporary art and art conservation but also the crises of the twenty-first century.

By: Anne Gunnison, David Joselit
Contributions by: Kevin Beasley
Edited by: Caroline Fowler, Ittai Weinryb
Imprint: Miscellaneous
Country of Publication: United States
Dimensions: Height: 229mm, Width: 178mm,
ISBN: 9780691238821
ISBN 10: 0691238820
Series: ART/WORK
Pages: 160
Publication Date: 01 March 2026
Audience: College/higher education , Professional and scholarly , General/trade , Primary , Undergraduate
Format: Paperback
Publisher's Status: Forthcoming

Anne Gunnison is the Alan J. Dworsky Senior Associate Conservator of Objects at the Yale University Art Gallery. David Joselit is the Arthur Kingsley Porter Professor of Art, Film, and Visual Studies at Harvard University and the author of, among other books, Art's Properties and After Art (both Princeton).