Customer Reviews

The End of Art

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Donald Kuspit submits an astute assessment of the current state of contemporary cognitive expression which many people erroneously call "art". He has accurately identified that most of today's contemporary "art" is preoccupied with joyless ideological and intellectual concepts which fail to provide an aesthetic experience. He clearly describes how the product of the intellect clearly differs from expressions that emanate from the depths of ones subconscious mind, ones psyche or one's soul. Mr. Kuspit thoroughly examines, in what is sometimes a difficult read (for that which is clearly non-trivial subject matter), the origins of post-art, the departure from an aesthetic orientation and why so much of today's work is simply the banal placed on a pedestal by those who have taken their identity from the crowd. While some of this book may be difficult to comprehend initially, or all in one reading, it is not simply a restatement of conventional understanding about the subject. There is much original thought backed up by very thorough construction of its thesis. While it must have been extremely tempting, I don't believe Mr. Kuspit ever used the word "junk", one time. This book is very much a level above common discourse on this subject and deserving of consideration by those who wish to consider what constitutes a truly aesthetic experience.

I don't think that a criticism of postmodern art should be automatically classified as right-wing propaganda, the way my fellow reviewer has done. If the reader can temper a knee-jerk defense reaction to having some sacred contemporary-art cows interrogated, this is a very interesting analysis, one I haven't fully digested yet because it's complex and well-thought out.

I am an artist puzzling with how little food for the soul can be found in contemporary galleries, and how little actual insight they hide beneath the veneer of polysyllabic mental smog. Soiled mattresses and sliced-up cows leave me disappointed in way I want to understand. I found this book a good stepping stone in trying to sort out both what "post-art" is lacking and where to take my own art practice.

This is a fabulous book, explaining in a clear but philosophical manner the crisis modern art finds itself in.
If you've ever wondered WHY so much of modern art is ugly, offensive, boring, text-and-technology driven, then here's the book for you. If you worship at the altar of Pop Art, then you shall be discomfitted. And you shall squirm as the author analyzes the core meaning behind the art of icons like Duchamp (even Courbet), and what this anti-art-street-art-spectacle-art has led to(it all seemed marvelous at the time). But never fear, there seems to be hope at the end of the tunnel (end of book), though the examples of paintings by the New Old Masters left me a bit cold....(if this is our hope, then.....). Kuspit is fair, and generous in his list of what he considers "good" art to be. He gives Abstract Expressionism its due, as well as speaking the very word "beauty." I applaud Donald Kuspit for laying it on the line - the Emperor Has No Clothes. We have observed for years that modern painting, more than any of the other art forms (music, poetry, dance, literature) has painted itself into a strange, dull corner. It seems, for a host of traumas and reasons, unable to address the spiritual.

I wonder if,'The End Of Art' signals the end of Don Kuspit's tirade against post-modernism. He's not the first to decry the cynicism, the anti-aestheticism, and material poverty of art since the Second World War. However,he is a particularly coherent and vehement spokesman for the return of' New old Masters' and the wall of art market hogwash in which they are embattled. Kuspit's brush is broad. To set his agenda,he summons Baudelaire's famous descriptions of incipient modernism from 'The Salon of 1846', which I first encountered courtesy of the enthralling Peter Schjeldahl. The worm was in the wood with the rise of new capitalism. Manet and Courbet's'slice of life' paintings paved the way for a levelling out of subject matter and the skills to depict it. Apart from his repetitive depreciation of(borrowing from 'Happening's master, Alan Kaprow)'postart', there are cogent summaries of several luminaries who highlight contemporary art's dilemna. Concurrent with Nietzsche's declaration that God was dead, Van Gogh endowed art with human purpose transforming it into the living religion of god. He is the foil to postart's, vaccuuous Warhol who assimilated art into money, diminishing its spirituality and integrity. Schjeldahl would never decry Andy! Duchamp's nihilistic pessimism, confusing banality of mundane objects with art, has robbed art these subsequent 90 years of its transformative values, to place us'in a radically different emotional place than we are in everyday life - a place that seems beyond life, however lifelike. This is as much liberation from life as it is possible to have while living.' Kuspit does report on the return to the studio of the New old Masters, though I'm wary of some of his nominations. Lucien Freud is indisputable. And I've experienced Richard Este's realism to induce a proximity 'to the human heart for seeming to be more material' than the material world. But no Kiefer while Eric Fischl gets a guernsey? I was fascinated by his courageous portrayals of middle America in the 1980s, but as he's become more suave, an entropy has cursed both his medium and message: his images packing more wallop in reproduction than in life.In Australia,I'd nominate a single New Old Master, Melbournian, John Anderson. It's inappropriate to be cheap here, but Kuspit's on the money with his courageous manifesto, attempting to rid the Temple of its Moneylenders. For more on art visit>rodmoss.com

Those who say that Donald Kuspit is a neoconservative reactionary are missing the point of his critical project. His project is far more radical in its aim and scope. Like Adorno (his Doktorvater), Kuspit attempts to understand the historical position of the present as a period of crisis and decline. As a thinker who values the seriousness and purposeviness of modernist art, Kuspit wants not a nostalgic return to the past, but a reevaluation of the aims of the present. In our postmodern amnesia, we have forgotten what once made art important, however marginalized it was. The radical aesthetic project of the early twentieth century avant-gardes has been replaced by the endless reproduction of banality and vapid political ideology masquerading as post-punk minimalism (when it is merely minimal, in effort and effect). While some of us might not agree with Dr. Kuspit, his lonely ideas matter, lest we toss out the baby with the dirty bathwater of modernism.

Kuspit's thesis: fine art is mostly dead, replaced by "post-art" that either 1) offers the viewer little or no aesthetic experience (as in conceptual art), or 2) simply elevates the banal into nihilstic entertainment for the over-educated (Koons, Currin, Hirst, etc.). So far, so good. But the artists he posits as harbingers of hope are a curious bunch (Lucien Freud, Julie Heffernan, Odd Nerdrum) and his prose remains humorless throughout. Still, this is a brave statement - probably worth more in the long run than a decade's worth of ArtForums (cheaper too!).

If art is the canary in the mineshaft, this book shows why artists since Dada have been saying You can't fire me -- I quit. Kuspit's passionate about the reduction to banality, but sympathetic to the artists' plight with good insights, even if you still hate their anti-art. Kuspit cares, very much. It may be old-fashioned but that's art: something that matters.

Donald Kuspit is one of the most annoying characters in the word of art criticism today. Tirades and jeremiads can be hard to take, especially in the sky-is-the-limit, nothing's sacred atmosphere of the moment. Here's someone saying that art is important, and something's wrong with the bulk of what is passing for art at this point in time. A lot of people are bound to resent having to hear that.

I'll admit that Kuspit's inflated and sometimes inflammatory prose style might make this book tough going even for those who agree with him. However, if you're somehow not satisfied with art that has about all the emotional depth of Rubik's Cube, and want to know why there's so much of it around these days, here's a good place to start.

I'll only add that though I'm getting pretty fond of the term, "postart," I'm pretty unhappy with this "new old masters" business. It's not a label I'd want applied to my own work, ever, and some of the examples of it that he gives, such as Michael David's version of a Manet painting, are strangely indistinguishable from classic post-mod appropriation. But these and other flaws are minor. Read this book.

Mr.Kuspit has made a thorough assessment of the state of art today, its history, influences and underlying assumptions. The "end of art" would be a totally discouraging read if Kuspit did not also provide an overview of artists who are offering a new,aesthetically rich insight into the human condition.

This text is torturous! Kuspit writes in circles, issuing complaints towards modern and postmodern art and denouncing artistic interest in conceptualism, anti-aesthetics, the merge of art and life, and the social system that supports art.

If you want to read about the "End of Art" discourse I would suggest going to Hegel's "Aesthetics" which serves as a primary source to the topic, and then read Eva Geulen's "The End of Art: Readings in a Rumor after Hegel".