Customer Reviews

Theory in Contemporary Art since 1985

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Honestly there isn't much to say about this book. If you have ever wondered what happened to art after "modernism," this is the book to read. It's a must for any contemporary artist--contemporary as in present, not in the art sense, which would cut off around Warhol. This book can also be used to prove to anyone who thinks art doesn't require thinking that it requires quite a bit more thinking than they would expect.

If you find reading a normal book challenging, this isn't the book for you. Many of the ideas will escape you unless you have a good working knowledge of the concepts behind postmodern theory, such as semiotics and psychoanalytic theory (especially Freud and Lacan). I would recommend Visual Culture: The Reader (edited by Evans and Hall) to provide a basis for this background info.

This book contains several essential essays for anyone studying contemporary art theory. It is an extremely theoretical book, not to be undertaken lightly. It would help if you had a basic background in some theoretical discourse.
As a graduate student, I have used it in several of my theory classes, and it has proven to be extremely helpful in writing papers.

I am an honor student in Visual Art at UVIC. This is my text book!

On the back cover of this book it states, "... this book is a groundbreaking anthology...". This is absurd. One of the basic tenets of this book is that "aesthetics...have been submitted to a rethinking that challenges the criteria under which modern art was judged." It may have been submitted - but let there be no doubt - amongst reasonable intelligent people (outside of academe) it has most certainly not been accepted. Aesthetics means something. No matter how much it may have been submitted to a "rethinking", it has not been redefined by anyone since 1985. This entire book is little more than a collection of wishful thinking and meaningless intellectual aggrandizements about objects of the recent dark age in the history of "art". Most of the essays fail at face value because they attempt to elevate the banal to the level of aesthetic practice. Much of the "art" talked about in this book is not aesthetic by any means. Much of the "art" referred to in this entire book is nothing more than pageant or the practice of cognitive expression and there are no number of essays that can deny this fact. One cannot equate the era of attitude with anything resembling art. To miss this point and to go on and compose utter nonsense at great length, as if the emperor had any clothes, is intellectually dishonest. Art has historically provided a dimension of experience above and beyond that which can be explained by pseudo intellectual theories and the intellectual hokum that makes up the majority of this book. Art is not for contemplation by the mind. This collection of essays is a tedious assemblage of utter rubbish. I urge intelligent people concerned about aesthetics to consider the essays in this book as nothing other than an anthology of challenge to real meaning. That which our junk culture has produced since 1985 is not a worthy subject for academic exploration as art. It is absurd to develop theories about phenomena that are not art and call them theories about art. Now, if this book were called Theories in Contemporary Kitsch since 1985 - and it didn't matter how much blather was written about it - that would be another matter.