An art critic confronts the current art milieu, characterizing it as being without purpose or moral authority, and questions whether allegedly radical artists now reflect the culture of consumerism more than they challenge it.
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Book Description
Editorial Reviews
Amazon.com Review
Twenty years ago, a noted art writer lobbed a hand grenade at the smug world of contemporary art. In Has Modernism Failed?, Suzi Gablik castigated a culture in which total submission to "the big, powerful machine" of the art market replaced the artist's independent moral authority. Modern art broke the old rules, creating subversive work intended to shock the viewer into a new way of seeing. But consumer culture eventually co-opted shock value. In Gablik's view, successful artists of the 1970s and early '80s traded their autonomy for the money and security of "institutionalized individuality" offered by aggressive art dealers and museums increasingly reliant on corporate support. Gablik argued that by losing its last vestige of belief in spiritual values, art also lost touch with society as a whole. While praising the "spiritual dignity" of work by Anselm Kiefer and Josef Beuys, she viewed spiritual imagery in neo-expressionist paintings with suspicion. How could artists who didn't actively believe in this imagery invest it with mythical power? In the revised edition of her book---which includes two new chapters---Gablik revisits the issue of moral vision in art. She divides the post-9/11 art world into artists whose work promotes the materialism of Western culture and those few who have found a "socially redeeming purpose" for art. Most controversially, she proposes that "the truly significant product of an artist is his life." Her highest praise goes to artists whose work consists of social service projects, whether attempting to feed the hungry or restore damaged ecosystems. Worthy as these projects may be, Gablik's failure to address the aesthetic component of art undermines her views. Her writing can be repetitive, and her arguments, too narrowly focused. But her passion, fearlessness and inclusion of the diverse viewpoints of artists, critics, dealers and others make her book compelling reading. —-Cathy Curtis
--This text refers to an alternate
Paperback
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Review
A thoughtful and sometimes scathing analysis of late-twentieth-century art. -- The New Yorker
An explosive indictment of modern art. This thought-provoking book should be read by everyone who browses in museums and galleries. -- Publishers Weekly --This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.
An explosive indictment of modern art. This thought-provoking book should be read by everyone who browses in museums and galleries. -- Publishers Weekly --This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
12 of 12 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
"A Mystical, Priestly, and Political Figure"?!?!?,
This review is from: Has Modernism Failed? (Paperback)
Gablik's book takes off with the question of whether art in the 1960s and 1970s actually has any social function. Gablik is of the opinion that, for the most part, modern art has become little more than a commodity in Western society and, hence, "the avant-garde, and its modes of protest and resistance, have become obsolete or irrelevant" - pg 70. Gablik maintains that a shift late in the century has "transformed the avant-garde from an ethical into an aesthetic movement" - pg 74. She makes little allowance for art objects whose aim is to challenge viewers through estrangement ("violently antisocial works intended to defy the ruling ideology" - pg 43), because these works (particularly during the 60s and 70s) were so often filtered through the gallery system to be bought and sold at astounding prices. "Art which lodges itself firmly in a world of superabundance and excess . . . can hardly serve as a model of cultural resistance" - pg 43. She quotes Carl Andre here: "As artists we have sold off inspiration to buy influence" - pg 46. These things all make sense, but Gablik's attempt to offer solutions didn't seem to me like any kind of improvement, which is where this book really stumbled for me. Gablik calls for reasonable things - social responsibility, goodness, anti-consumerism, etc. She continually glances past politics, instead suggesting again and again that what modernism really needs is a return to "soul." She argues for "reintroducing the artist in his role as shaman - a mystical, priestly, and political figure" - pg 126. This, she tells us, is useful because it will help define our culture's relationship to the cosmos. Huh. She holds up Neo-Expressionism's reversion to classic pictorialism as heroic in this manner, which to me is enormously ironic when you consider how much repetitious blue-chip painting spilled onto gallery floors throughout the 1980s under that way-too-much-lauded banner. Additionally, she seems to view Neo-Expressionism as the harkening of an end to experimentation in modernism, which to me seems quite beside the point. "Rebellion and freedom are not enough," she tells us. "Modernism has moved us too far in the direction of radical subjectivity and a destructive relativism. At this point we might do well to make the most of a few well-observed rules again" - pg 127. If this seems to you like a solution for a better modernism free from commerce, maybe this book is for you. Not so much to me. But to be fair, there is a lot of good information in this book, and I applaud her for questioning the validity of some of our most canonized modernists, hence the second star.
5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Really interesting,
By
This review is from: Has Modernism Failed? (Paperback)
This book was very interesting for me. I'm an artist and have always felt a bit uneasy about the marketing culture surrounding contemporary art. Gablik raises some very good points about the consumerism culture we live in and the its relationship to the art world. She also discusses the consequent loss of tradition, links to spiritual issues, and connection with the general public. Gablic is a very good writer; most of the time I can't make it through art criticism writing, but this is fairly easy to read.
It also helps that there are some good art history references in the essays and interesting philosophical references. My only issue with this book is that Goblik tends to focus solely on having more of a traditional/spiritual foundation and making a link to general society and making a difference. But she forgets that there is a lot of purely aestheticly beautiful art that makes peoples lives more pleasant just because they are "transcendent" in their beauty. You can't throw the baby out with the bathwater. I think it's good to focus on the spiritual and spur people and the general art community to take a look at how we can reach out, but we also need to value the strides taken on a purely aesthetic level and see how to meld the two somehow... It can't just be about fixing the environment and helping the poor; there's art that enriches people's lives just because it's awesome to look at.
3.0 out of 5 stars
Modernism vs. Modernism in Art,
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This review is from: Has Modernism Failed? (Paperback)
Gablik makes good points but needs an editor badly, as well as distinguishing from Early Modernism, Greenbergism, and Late Modernism. She simply throws the blanket term Modernism out far too much, and if you have read any philosophy about Modern Thought, well then you might be doing a double take here and there. In general though, it is useful, to introduce problems in the art world, while a little bit dated it is still relevant.
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