Review
“Thierry de Duve’s is a crucial and utterly distinct voice in the field of modern art. Delightfully original and engaging, Sewn in the Sweatshops of Marx combines the author’s inimitably bold thinking with an unusual sensitivity to the ways that particular works articulate the convergence of aesthetics and economics. Its gorgeously constructed essays tell this art’s stories so well, they often read like the best biographical fiction.” ― Darby English, University of Chicago
“That Beuys, Warhol, Klein, and Duchamp were variously engaged in rewriting the terms of production, circulation, and consumption of art, and did so by creating new work which challenged the received nature of the artwork is an oft-mentioned, oft-theorized fact. No one has gone so far in thinking through the dramatic intentions and achievements of these artists as de Duve, who in this free radical of a book, maps categories of political economy found in the pages of Marx onto their projects. De Duve’s recruitment of Marx is of such originality as to return the reader to Marx’s own texts, whose astonishing insights into production, mechanization, price, money, exchange value, the creativity of labor, and the innovation of markets have been neglected in recent times but demand reawakening. Written with verve, intricacy, and narrative fluency, this book probes and proves that these are the parameters in which the avant-gardes transact, and through which they must be brought to speech.” ― Daniel Herwitz, University of Michigan
“The book is a success at creating a visual and textual cartography, as following the red thread proves that you can indeed get there (political economy) from here (modern art/aesthetics) and vice versa. Likewise, the author provides fresh new perspective where the four artists and Marx are concerned. While many critics and authors have attempted to view modern and postmodern art through a similar lens, none have achieved such an enthralling and vivid image.”
― Visual Studies
About the Author
Thierry de Duve is a Belgian art historian, critic, and curator, as well as Director of Studies at l’Ecole des Beaux-Arts, Paris. His publications in English include Kant After Duchamp and Pictorial Nominalism.
Rosalind E. Krauss is University Professor in the Department of Art History and Archaeology at Columbia University. 
