Takedown, Farah Nayeri
Takedown, Farah Nayeri
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Takedown
Art and Power in the Digital Age

Author: Farah Nayeri

Narrator: Erica Sullivan

Unabridged: 8 hr 28 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 01/25/2022

Synopsis

Farah Nayeri addresses the difficult questions plaguing the art world, from the bad habits of Old Masters, to the current grappling with identity politics.For centuries, art censorship has been a top-down phenomenon—kings, popes, and one-party states decided what was considered obscene, blasphemous, or politically deviant in art.Today, censorship can also happen from the bottom-up, thanks to calls to action from organizers and social media campaigns. Artists and artworks are routinely taken to task for their insensitivity. In this new world order, artists, critics, philanthropists, galleries, and museums alike are recalibrating their efforts to increase the visibility of marginalized voices and respond to the people’s demands for better ethics in art.But what should we, the people, do with this newfound power?With exclusive interviews with Nan Goldin, Sam Durant, Faith Ringgold, and others, Nayeri tackles wide-ranging issues including sex, religion, gender, ethics, animal rights, and race.By asking and answering questions such as: Who gets to make art and who owns it? How do we correct the inequities of the past? What does authenticity, exploitation, and appropriation mean in art? Takedown provides the necessary tools to navigate the art world.

About Farah Nayeri

Farah Nayeri is an arts and culture writer for the New York Times and host of the podcast Cultureblast. Originally from Iran, she began her journalism career as a reporter for Time magazine in Paris, where she then joined Bloomberg. She went on to become Bloomberg’s Rome bureau chief and its European economics correspondent, before being assigned to Baghdad in 2003 to cover the US-led invasion of Iraq. Farah has also written for The Economist and the Wall Street Journal. She is a regular moderator at New York Times conferences, and has spoken at Sciences Po in Paris and the Royal Academy of Arts. She is a classical pianist and a member of the UK Critics’ Circle.

About Erica Sullivan

Erica Sullivan is a professional actress of both stage and screen and holds her MFA from the Yale School of Drama. She has spent over a decade as a Company Member at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival. She has been busy in both the stage and screen world, and has also narrated nearly one hundred audiobooks.

Reviews

Goodreads review by Madeline on February 01, 2022

This is a really approachable cultural history of power in the art world—who was able to create art, fund art, and view art. Nayeri's tone is inquisitive, conversational, and warm. I think this was essential to my enjoyment, since many art tomes seem intimidating and use complex verbiage that even a......more

Goodreads review by Lupita on April 25, 2022

Bien documentado y con un estilo ameno, Farah Nayeri nos sumerge en el mundo del arte y las crisis actuales (y no tan actuales) en relación con la censura. Lejos de tener un tono aleccionador, este recuento de eventos se nutre de la perspectiva de las personas involucradas y ofrece una amplia varied......more

Goodreads review by Matt on March 20, 2022

A fascinating book that covered a lot of movement in the art world that I was unaware of until this point. I was taken with this book initially because of the absolutely stunning cover and what I thought was going to be about how art was combating power structures in the digital age. However, it app......more

Goodreads review by Suzanne on January 25, 2022

I just finished a course on inclusiveness by ICOM (international museum association), and doing a course on women in art from 1900-now. Both already touched on some elements in this book, but Farah really got into it. It was fascinating to hear more about the different types of censorship in the past......more

Goodreads review by Carianne on July 19, 2022

This was a really interesting look at the change from political censorship in the US in the 1980s to crowd-sourced/public takes on art in the times of #MeToo, Black Lives Matter and more. Of particular interest were the new look at Paul Gauguin, and how the NEA funding cuts compared to museums turni......more

Quotes

“A timely book that is uniquely brilliant. The author, backed up by facts, maps out the crazy madness of our current art world which to a great degree reflects today’s extreme capitalism.” Ai Weiwei, contemporary artist and activist

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