Customer Reviews

A Sculpture Reader: Contemporary Sculpture Since 1980 (Perspectives on Contemporary Sculpture)

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This collection is a work of astonishing intellectual insight and viscerally affecting beauty. The authors authoritatively, even brazenly, examine the way contemporary artists reconceptualized perceptual reality through sculpture. It is the contemporary sculptors who shattered the idea that sculpture must in some way represent the human body - an idea that persisted for millenia - and reimagined it as a mechanism to explore dearly-held cultural and social conventions. The works of contemporary sculptors as reflected within this book have accomplished no less than the dislimning of the traditional boundary separating art and sculpture. Thus they have been freed to deploy unexpected visual tools to implicate the viewer in a dismantling of the insidious constructs that shape our consensual experience. Plainly put, you will view the world differently after reading this book.

In short, this is a MUST READ both for intrepid explorers of the nature of perceptual reality and lovers of art. For all others, it is HIGHLY RECOMMENDED. For those who tenaciously cling to tradition - those conventional, orthodox, ideologically conservative readers, well, come on, take a walk on the wild side (it'll be our little secret).

Contrary to the relentless propaganda proffered in these essays, it seems to me that nearly all the sculpture, herein represented, is disconnected from life, from history, from the modes of inquiry and resolution that are the intellectual substance of civilization. The expositions are misleading in that there is no association between the explicators' claims and the "artifacts." The artifact, in this milieu, has been reduced to little more than an armature upon which to drape the apologist's presumptions. The verbal constructs supercede the reality of the artifact, rendering all such constructs baseless. Criticism, in this context, has degenerated into hyperbolic acclaim. Since this stuff has gained the support of wealthy individuals who are willing to pay dearly for the flattery of A-list purverors, it has a presence. As documentary, this book does a fine job of presenting the horizons and character of this era.

In the interest of balance, a book to read concurrently would be Don Thompson's THE TWELVE MILLION DOLLAR STUFFED SHARK: The Curious Economics of Contemporary Art, in which he examines the business practices of the Contemporary Art World's enablers and their role in its enfranchisemet.