Universal Prostitution and Modernist Abstraction

“Featuring brilliant ideas and sharp theoretical insights, Universal Prostitution and Modernist Abstraction makes a very important contribution to the understanding of key forms and genres in twentieth-century art in general as well as to the more pointed discussion of art’s relationship to the subsumption of life under capital. I know of no other book that traces painterly abstraction and other artistic approaches to abstraction in the broader sense of the term across the longer arc of modern and contemporary art.” - Ina Blom, author of Houses to Die In and Other Essays on Art

“Drawing on Marx’s passage on ‘universal prostitution,’ Jaleh Mansoor develops an astute analysis of the economic unconscious of modern and contemporary art. Focusing on the dialectics between aesthetic and social abstractions, Mansoor spans an arc from Seurat’s Models to Picabia’s and Tiqqun’s Young-Girls, referring to labor-reflective works by Hito Steyerl, Santiago Sierra, Hannah Black, and others. She guides us through the manifold ways art mediates the imperceptible totality of human life.” - Sabeth Buchmann, Professor of the History of Modern and Postmodern Art, Academy of Fine Arts, Vienna

"Universal Prostitution and Modernist Abstraction shows how artworks unmask the classed and gendered aspects of this topsy-turvy world in ways that other cultural objects cannot. The book will be an important touchpoint for future research into the historical entanglements of art, capital, and desire." - Thomas Waller, e-flux

"Jaleh Mansoor’s Universal Prostitution and Modernist Abstraction is a bracing reminder of what powers of insight art history and criticism can accomplish together. . . . The book offers a historically and theoretically grounded exit from current impasses in debates about the politics of representation, showing how we seek such politics in the wrong places and the wrong registers." - Natilee Harren, Artforum