Beautiful Terrible Ruins: Detroit and the Anxiety of Decline

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Marc Notes: Includes bibliographical references and index.; Once the manufacturing powerhouse of the US, Detroit has become emblematic of failing cities everywhere and the epicentre of an explosive growth in images of urban decay. In 'Beautiful Terrible Ruins', art historian Dora Apel explores a wide array of these images. She shows how Detroit has become pivotal to an expanding network of ruin imagery, imagery ultimately driven by a growing cultural pessimism, a loss of faith in progress, and a fear that worse times are coming. Review Quotes: "Writing against the genre of ruin porn, Dora Apel's wonderful "Beautiful Terrible Ruins" reveals the way decay is inbuilt into capitalism at its creation. An excellent and penetrating study."--Greg Grandin"author of Fordlandia: The Rise and Fall of Henry Ford's Forgotten Jungle City" (09/24/2014) Review Quotes: "In the early twentieth century, Detroit was defined by Charles Sheeler's photos of the River Rouge plant and Diego Rivera's murals of work. Today, the hulking ruins of old industrial buildings and empty skyscrapers symbolize the city. In this provocative analysis, informed by urban geography, political economy, and art history, Dora Apel reflects on what images of ruined Detroit teach us about the city, popular culture, and American capitalism."--Thomas J. Sugrue "The Origins of the Urban Crisis: Race and Inequality in Postwar Detroit ""Biographical Note: DORA APEL is a professor of art history and visual culture and W. Hawkins Ferry Endowed Chair in Modern and Contemporary Art History at Wayne State University in Detroit. She is the author of "War Culture and the Contest of Images" (Rutgers University Press)."Review Quotes: "In her thoughtful and riveting take on the decline of Detroit, Dora Apel makes the case that 'ruin porn' images of urban decay say less about a specific city than about the grinding forces of globalism and political abandonment."--Scott Martelle"author of Detroit: A Biography" (02/19/2015) Publisher Marketing: Once the manufacturing powerhouse of the nation, Detroit has become emblematic of failing cities everywhere the paradigmatic city of ruins and the epicenter of an explosive growth in images of urban decay. In "Beautiful Terrible Ruins," art historian Dora Apel explores a wide array of these images, ranging from photography, advertising, and television, to documentaries, video games, and zombie and disaster films. Apel shows how Detroit has become pivotal to an expanding network of ruin imagery, imagery ultimately driven by a pervasive and growing cultural pessimism, a loss of faith in progress, and a deepening fear that worse times are coming. The images of Detroit s decay speak to the overarching anxieties of our era: increasing poverty, declining wages and social services, inadequate health care, unemployment, homelessness, and ecological disaster in short, the failure of capitalism. Apel reveals how, through the aesthetic distancing of representation, the haunted beauty and fascination of ruin imagery, embodied by Detroit s abandoned downtown skyscrapers, empty urban spaces, decaying factories, and derelict neighborhoods help us to cope with our fears. But Apel warns that these images, while pleasurable, have little explanatory power, lulling us into seeing Detroit s deterioration as either inevitable or the city s own fault, and absolving the real agents of decline corporate disinvestment and globalization. "Beautiful Terrible Ruins" helps us understand the ways that the pleasure and the horror of urban decay hold us in thrall."

Contributor Bio:  Apel, Dora Dora Apel is Associate Professor and W. Hawkins Ferry Chair in Modern and Contemporary Art at Wayne State University. She is the author of "Memory Effects: The Holocaust and the Art of Secondary Witnessing" (2002) and "Imagery of Lynching: Black Men, White Women, and the Mob" (2004). Shawn Michelle Smith is Associate Professor of Visual and Critical Studies at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. She is the author of "American Archives: Gender, Race, and Class in Visual Culture "(1999) and "Photography on the Color Line: W. E. B. DuBois, Race, and Visual Culture "(2004).