Art and advertising are often seen as potential enemies, with the one being free from commercial concerns and the other dependent upon them. In this clearly written and wide-ranging book, Joan Gibbons argues rather for a mutually enriching relationship between the two, showing how artists have reached a wider audience by embracing the tactics and mass media of advertising, and how advertising has employed issues and strategies of contemporary art. Charting key points of overlap and antagonism, she looks at the work of artists from Andy Warhol, Barbara Kruger and Victor Burgin to Sylvie...

Whether exploring the intimate recollections which make up the artist's own life history or questioning the way the gallery and museum present public memory, contemporary art, it would seem, is haunted by the past. "Contemporary Art and Memory" is the first accessible survey book to explore the subject of memory as it appears in its many guises in contemporary art. Looking at both personal and public memory, Gibbons explores art as autobiography, the memory as trace, the role of the archive, revisionist memory and postmemory, as well as the absence of memory in oblivion. Grounding her...