Suzi Gablik's last book, "Has Modernism Failed?", won readers with its passionate, scathing critique of an enervated contemporary art scene. Now "The Reenchantment of Art" describes her hope for a new art, born out of a new cultural paradigm embracing a revitalized sense of community, an enlarged ecological perspective, and access to mythic and archetypal sources of spiritual life. In the course of her argument, Gablik introduces the reader to a number of figures for whom this paradigm offers a fresh approach to making art: artists such as Fern Shaffer, who performs empowerment rituals to mark the seasonal equinoxes; David T. Hanson, Andy Goldsworthy and Rachel Rosenthal, whose work attempts to heal our wounded planet; and others such as Tim Rollins, Suzanne Lacy and Mierle Laderman Ukeles who address the gravest social issues.
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From Kirkus Reviews
One of the livelier critics of the contemporary art scene (Has Modernism Failed?, 1984--not reviewed) tries to trace the roots of the present crisis in aesthetics and to map out some ways of escape. Gablik's thesis is not original. ``Since the Enlightenment,'' she maintains, ``our view of what is real has been organized around the hegemony of a technological and materialist world view...we no longer have any sense of having a soul.'' Spirituality and ritual have been the first casualties of this attitude, but the most profound reordering, Gablick says, has occurred in the area of social relations, as the spread of individualistic philosophies has weakened or destroyed the cohesion of traditional communal structures--leading to the modern artist understanding his or her vocation in terms of the objects created rather than the audience addressed. If the artist has any awareness of the audience at all, it is usually seen as a hostile force to be either ignored or shocked (this is the lesson Gablik draws from Richard Serra's Tilted Arc controversy). What is needed, we are told, is an aesthetics of ``interaction and connection,'' in which the artist works to restore the lost harmony between humanity and earth, and to override the alienation of race, sex, and class. At this point Gablik's argument falls into New Age obscurantism and is weakened further in that most of the exemplars of her approach (sculptors who design carts for the homeless, photographers who document toxic-waste dumping, etc.) sound more like social workers or advocacy lawyers than artists. A valuable analysis that brings forth incredible conclusions. Gablick has apparently fallen into a deconstructionist vocabulary that allows her to play fast-and-loose with concepts of ``art'' and ``creation,'' resulting in a confusion little better than the one she set out to overcome. (Thirty-two illustrations.) -- Copyright ©1991, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
25 of 27 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Art for ecological action.,
By Luke Deacon (Osaka, Japan) - See all my reviews
This review is from: The Reenchantment of Art (Paperback)
The Reenchantment of Art is a passionate plea for artists to reacess the thought and practice of a century of modernism. Gablick`s earlier book, 'Conversations before the end of time' was a collection on interviews and discussions with critical thinkers on environmental issues. The Reenchantment of Art refines the issues raised in the interviews of the earlier book toward a contemporary art focus. It speaks against individualist thought in art making, pointing artists toward new possibilties in art practice.Using examples of environmental artists, Gablick provides insights into new working methods of important contemporary artists. These artists are using their creative abilty to ammend the destruction of modern society by engaging in art practices that give 'something worthwhile' back to the earth and its people. Environmental art is of critical importance in this next century. Gablick`s book shapes the foundation of perhaps the most important movement in contemporary art theory.
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
hmm,
By
This review is from: The Reenchantment of Art (Paperback)
This book is definitely not a light read, but if you're looking for a good book about art that will make you think, then this a good one for you. I also felt like the author gives a lot of strong opinions in this book, so watch out for that, but I do agree with some of those opinions, and they do give one something to think about. This is a book for those who are serious about art and where the art world is going.
5.0 out of 5 stars
Helps re-establish the web of interdependence upon which our lives hinge,
By D. Riverblue Cloudwalker "Riverblue" (California) - See all my reviews
Amazon Verified Purchase(What's this?)
This review is from: The Reenchantment of Art (Paperback)
Those with eyes to see and hearts that can still feel, can readily see that the one thing we need most, if we are to save ourselves and our planet from collapse under our appalling and arrogant abuse of nature, is to re-establish ourselves in the web of interdependent relationships with each other, the earth, and all natural and spiritual beings. Suzi Gablik's vision in this book is in line with this healing vision, which after all, represents art as it was at the dawn of time: ancient art was healing art, magical art, connected art, folk and naive art.
With increasing "civilization" , Gablik points out, art has lost its magical, mythical and earth-derived power: its power to enchant. Any person with "common" sense, which is an earthy sense, can see that where the art world stands now is often so idiotic: as Gablik points out so well, art has capitulated to the forces of the marketplace, and idiots gleefully delight in the way their commodity-art provides a nice income for them, because the who's-who's of the capitalist corporate marketplace just love that art too has become a prostitute to their greed and lust for power and wealth. Those who want to do meaningful art need not to become prostitutes, and Gablik's book points the way to the older ways of art, which, just like the older, Pagan ways of religion, ironically emerge as part of the vision of the needed way forward. Two areas where Gablik's vision for art could be expanded, areas she didn't explore as fully as might be explored: the benefits that can be gained from viewing the role art played in the most ancient societies, the Paleolithic Goddess statuary and cave paintings, the shamanic aspect of art, and thus the link of art with various "Pagan" religious/spiritual orientations. Here lies enormous meaning. In this direction too, we can contemplate that as art returns to its archaic roots in search of meaning, the distinction between "professional" artists and folk or naive artists, will very likely diminish, and this is something Gablik makes no mention of. It is evidence of a lack of both social and psychological integration, that any society, rather than viewing EVERYONE as capable of creative work, and calling us to it, prefers to "project" its own creativity onto an "elite" group, which performs this necessary function, presumably for others, though this elite has done so since the early 20th century with varying degrees of contempt for and disengagement from those others. An astute observer could read behind this contempt, the natural result of psychological splitting. No one in their depth is really satisfied with a situation where "we" create for "you", because you all refuse to take the responsibility to awaken to your own creativity. If you shove off your creativity onto us, naturally we will eventually become contemptous of you. Thus we can understand the contempt and arrogance of modern art as a predictable result of an unhealthy psychological and social situation. In ancient times, art was not the exclusive province of some highly trained elite corps. It was done by the plain "folk." The value of one simple, untrained individual now striving, against all cultural programming, to create something with pen or paint or clay out of a vital and real NEED, is an act of a far more profound significance and touching pathos than 99% of the idiot trash created by a self-indulgent and cynical, snobby and increasingly irrelevant "art elite." Many have written on the spiritual and psychological significance of the PROCESS of art, wholly apart from the PRODUCT that may be produced: MIchell Cassou, Pat Allen, and Joanna Field and many others. The emergence of a new vision of art which is inclusive of the efforts of plain common people to paint their world out of a vital psychological and/or social need, is of enormous value for the future.
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