Contemporary Spanish Culture

Paul Julian Smith is the Professor of Spanish at the University of Cambridge

"[Smith] touches on a multitude of areas of everyday life in Spain and, as an antidote to the pessimism of theorising about globalization, offers a passionate view of the distinctiveness of modern Spanish culture." Times Higher Education Supplement "Admirably clear, this book should attract interested general readers as well as the more obvious academic audience." British Bulletin of Publications on Latin america, the Caribbean, Portugal and Spain "Paul Julian Smith's work is indispensable to the fields of film studies andSpanish cultural studies. Impressive in its range and specificity, this bookweaves together cultural theory with detailed studies of Spanish television,male fashion, visual arts and film." Emilie L. Bergmann, University of California at Berkeley "This is an excellent volume, ranging widely but also deeply over many lively issues." Peter Evans, Queen Mary and Westfield, London "Paul Julian Smith’s new book extends the reach of Spanish cultural studies into uncharted territories: through and beyond cinema and the visual arts to fashion and network television. Steeped in Bourdieu’s studies of cultural distinction, Smith is more cosmopolitan ethnographer than armchair academic as he develops a method of thick, layered, and multidisciplinary description to explain and analyse the intersection of markets and aesthetics in the production and consumption of sucessful TV drama, independent Catalan cinema or classic masculine fashion." Kathleen M. Vernon, State University of New York at Stony Brook

• List of Illustrations. Acknowledgements.Introduction: Cultures of Distinction.Chapter 1: Quality TV?: the periodistas notebook.Chapter 2: Classic Fashion?: the Adolfo Domínguez sample book.Chapter 3: Pure Painting?: The Miguel Barceló sketch book.Chapter 4: Queer Conceptualism?: Basque artists on the borders.Chapter 5: Catalan Independence?: Ventura Pons's niche cinema.Chapter 6: Resurrecting the Art Movie?: Aldomodóvar's blue period.Index