Our friends at Manifesto Press Co-op have released Hans Hess: Selected Writings as a new series of audiobooks — a landmark moment bringing Marxist art criticism vividly to life in sound.
Narrated and produced by Rochelle Swanson with readings from popular broadcaster Natasha Raskin Sharp (host of Bargain Hunt and Antiques Road Trip), this audio edition of Hans Hess’s ‘Art in the Nineteenth Century’ brings a Marxist critique of culture to life.
To mark this launch, we are offering a free download of Hess’s famous lecture ‘Modern Art in One Hour’ from the upcoming second volume. It is a direct challenge to the closed world of corporate audio publishing and an invitation to see art not as a gentle gallery stroll, but as a Molotov cocktail thrown at the foundations of bourgeois ideology.
Modern Art in One Hour (taken from Hans Hess Selected Writings: Volume Two – Art in the Twentieth Century)
In this audiobook chapter, the acclaimed Marxist art historian Hans Hess, an antifascist exile from Nazi Germany of Jewish heritage, tackles the problem of modern art, which he argues is the problem of our very attitude towards the world.
What is the nature of reality and its relationship to art? Hess clarifies the artist’s role in the process of producing, collecting and selling art in an exceptionally sharp and scholarly interpretation.
Hess wrote in the 1960s and used ‘man’ throughout this volume to mean ‘people’, you and me. But today’s use of the word ‘man’ is almost never gender-neutral, and it now reads terribly exclusive.
Narrated by Rochelle Anne Swanson, with Natasha Raskin Sharp and Adele Allen, this is not just a lecture; it’s a profound exploration from a vital thinker who was a museologist and teacher of lasting influence.
Listen and join the debate.
You can download the free audiobook of Modern Art in One Hour here
Hans Hess Selected Writings: Volume 1 – Art in the Nineteenth Century
Experience Hess’s Marxist interpretation of the nineteenth-century art world in the first volume of the series. You can find the audiobook here.
You can learn more about the newly launched foundation dedicated to preserving and promoting Hess’s legacy at the Hans Hess Foundation.
If you want to learn more about Hans Hess’s life and ideas, watch this conversation with his daughter Anita Halpin and Dr. Lucy Burke of the Hans Hess Foundation for the Insiders/Outsiders Festival.
Watch the interview here.
