Joselit, David. After Art . Princeton University Press, 2012.

David Joselit’s After Art is a concise, provocative project that rethinks how we define and encounter art in the contemporary moment. Originally circulated in shorter essay form and later expanded in various formats, Joselit’s argument addresses the displacement of traditional art objects by flows—of images, capital, genres, and institutions—and proposes a new vocabulary for seeing and valuing art after modernist and institutional certainties have eroded.

: He suggests that the power of an image today comes not from its originality but from how widely and quickly it spreads.

If circulation is everything, does the physical object matter at all? Critics argue that Joselit undervalues what art historian Walter Benjamin called the "aura"—the unique presence of an original work in time and space. When you stand before a Rothko in a chapel, you are not engaging in viral circulation; you are having a silent, aesthetic experience. Joselit might reply that your silent experience is a luxury afforded by the 1% who don't have to produce content.