Marcus Hurwitz is a philosopher, art critic, and writer whose work engages with the historical avant-garde, Moscow Conceptualism, and installation art alongside contemporary French, German, and Russian philosophy.
Why is the internet like the spirit of Napoleon? What do Facebook posts share with Christian icons? Why have we swerved so quickly from neoliberalism to neofascism? And what does Lenin’s mausoleum have to do with the readymade? Like an anthropologist tourguide from a distant planet, Boris Groys answers these questions (and more) with calm detachment—guiding us through cultures of the museum, art history, the internet, and Russia. His counterintuitive connections brilliantly puncture received wisdom, and disrupt canonical truisms with dark and delightful irony. This is cultural critique as pure creativity and philosophical imagination. Reading Groys is a mindblowing trip. * Claire Bishop, artist, critic, Presidential Professor of Art History and Faculty Director of the James Gallery, CUNY Graduate Center *