15 Bytes

"In the wake of it I feel sick. Banksy steps back on stage, a bit sheepishly, with a "sorry about that," and the film closes. But Banksy couldn't have made a better 'exit.' Right as his fame and value rises to a peak, he shows us what a sham that value system is. If the next big thing after Banksy is a bumbling LA jerk who is rewarded for not paying his dues and making crap, what's the big deal with being a 'big thing?' . . .

Read the full review HERE.

COMMENT below.

Posted by Extra! Extra! at 02:37 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Becoming Pablo O'Higgins is a study of character that questions identity, integrity, authenticity and ultimately loyalty. This newly released biography by Susan Vogel, published to accompany the exhibit of O’Higgins work now at the Utah Museum of Fine Arts, gives us a compelling portrayal of Paul Higgins, a young Presbyterian bourgeois from Salt Lake City who would be known to history and legend as Pablo O’Higgins, a communist artist in post-revolutionary Mexico.

READ THE FULL REVIEW HERE.

Posted by Extra! Extra! at 08:52 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

The Art Instinct
Denis Dutton
Bloomsbury Press
2009

Reviewed by Steve Holladay

It has been a year since Denis Dutton published The Art Instinct: Beauty, Pleasure, and Human Evolution, and since that time the book has continued to receive attention, both by art specialists and the public at large. In Art Instinct Dutton, a professor of the philosophy of art at the University of Canterbury, in New Zealand, and founder and editor of the website, Arts & Letters Daily, attempts to explore art, its history and meaning, through the lens of evolutionary science. Dutton's basic thesis is that our natural artistic preferences are rooted in evolutionary developments of the Pleistocene age. Our preference for landscape comes from our survival instinct. Our delight in storytelling is a Darwinian adaptation. Our respect for language, a result of sexual selection.

Dutton's book is a well-considered and orderly development of his ideas. His knowledge of both evolutionary science and the history of aesthetics is evident and presented in a manner free of jargon, so that the lay reader will find herself able to follow his arguments with ease. Specialists in the arts, however, may find some of his arguments objectionable or underdeveloped. Dutton's account for the type of landscapes preferred by 8 year olds around the world seems reasonable enough, but his theories do little to take into account the vast majority of our visual art, which is not related to the landscape. Dutton sees his theory as placing an artist like Marcel Duchamp on the fringe of artistic experience, rather than at the center, where much of contemporary theory has him. As a piece of "art-theoretical gesture" Dutton calls Duchamp's Fountain "incandescent genius," but he does not consider it art. That is because it fails to fulfill many of the points in a list of criteria Dutton establishes for something to be art.

While you may not agree with Dutton's criteria, the fact that he provides them will be a relief. In far too many discussions of art, the word itself is never defined. It is always considered a given, an unspoken one that is then used to dismiss much "non-art." Art Instinct's thesis does much to dismantle a good portion of theory that developed in the twentieth-century. Arguing against cultural relativism, Dutton says that evolution teaches us that there are universals in regards to art. Understanding them will help us indentify what is praiseworthy and worthy of retention, and recognize what belongs on the fringe of our concept of art.

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The Forger's Spell
by Edward Dolnick

The Man Who Made Vermeers
by Jonathen Lopez

reviewed by Shawn Rossiter

Art forgers have frustrated and fascinated the art world for years. The critics whose reputations can be ruined by false attributions, and the collectors who find themselves holding a painting worth less than a tenth of what they paid for it, conjure up visions of public flogging or Bush-era modes of interrogation when they think of the charlatans. But to the general public, the forgers can be superstars, objects of fascination, and even praise. Eric Hebborn and Tom Keating both wrote books on their exploits as forgers. John Myatt was less proud of his own work, but his story has also been the subject of a popular book (Provenance -- see our review). These now famous forgers were preceeded by Han van Meegeren, who created one of the century's most famous fakes. Van Meegeren died before he could write his own expose -- and chances are he would have loved to do so -- but his story, in various permutations, has fascinated the public since it first came to light at the end of World War II. Two books published in 2008 keep his story alive.

To briefly tell van Meegeren's story is difficult, because it is hard to know which is the true and which a copy. The basic story goes something like this. After critics panned his own artwork, van Meegeren set about creating forgeries to prove his talents to the art world and take revenge on the critics. He was eventually exposed when one of his fake Vermeers ended up in the hands of Hermann Goering. After the War, the Allies discovered that van Meegeren had been the seller of the painting. Rather than be tried for treason (for selling national treasure to the occupying German forces) van Meegeren confessed to having forged the work. This brought to light a whole series of works thought to be by Vermeer that were painted by van Meegeren.

Edward Dolnick's The Forger's Spell follows this account fairly closely. His story concentrates on van Meegeren's "Christ at Emmaus," the fateful fake purchased by Goering, which at the time of van Meegeren's trial was the most famous Vermeer in the world. Dolnick likes to create a good narrative, but he can take too much time painting the lurid background of Nazi atrocities that appear in his frame while leaving the main figures only loosely rendered. He does explore in detail the physical process of forgery -- van Meegeren's breakthrough was the use of Bakelite (plastic) to mimic the effects of hardened oil paint -- and makes strong attempts at examining the psychological forces that drive a forger and also make possible his success in the larger world. In the end, though seriously flawed, Dolnick's van Meegeren still comes off as a sort of hero who pulled one over on the Nazis.

Jonathan Lopez' The Main Who Made Vermeers is a much more sober account of van Meegeren. Its subtitle -- "Unvarnishing the Legend of Master Forger Han van Meegeren" accurately portrays Lopez' in-depth historical analysis of van Meegeren's entire life and work as a forger. In Lopez' account van Meegeren still plays the masterful psychologist to pass off works that in hindsight look atrociously bad as real Vermeers. But he shows us a different character than either a heroic Dutchman putting one over on the Nazis or a spurned artist trying to get back at the art world that spurned him. Van Meegeren was actually an ardent fascist, and his growing fascination with the Nazis dovetails with his growing success as a forger. It was the easy money found in forgery, not the critics, that drove him to it. Along that path he lost his way as a painter. Lopez' book deals less with a lurid description of the atrocities of the Nazis, and more with the inner workings of the art world, from feuds between art historians to the workings of forgery rings.

Dolnick's book draws the outline for van Meegeren's success, but Lopez fills in the details. Van Meegeren's trick was to create plausible works, by taking advantage of gaps in the art historical knowledge and appealing to the sensibilities and bais of particular experts or the public at large. This is why he concentrated on religious Vermeers -- for many experts, the only surviving religious painting by Vermeer pointed to a larger, unknown oeuvre -- and why so many of the people in his paintings look like the screen idols of the thirties, and his compositions resemble Nazi Volkgeist. Van Meegeren was a conservative who did bristle against the opinions of more liberal painters and critics, but his career was by no means ruined by critics. He continued to paint and exhibit throughout the twenties and thirties, and even flourished as an artist under the Nazis. For Lopez, van Meegeren was not merely a hack artist. He says he was a conservative painter, developing talents and could have been the "Edward Hopper of the Netherlands." He just didn't have the vision.

Some people will tell you that the legend is better than the truth. But though the legend is always easier to tell the truth is usually far more interesting. The Forger's Spell will interest you in the story of one of this century's most famous forgers. But to understand more of the man and less of the myth, The Man Who Made Vermeers is the true article.

Posted by Extra! Extra! at 10:50 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Spiral Jetta: a road trip through the land art of the American West
by Erin Hogan
The University of Chicago Press, Chicago and London
2008

reviewed by Geoff Wichert

In the 1960s and 70s, artists were drawn to slogans. “Art is dead” was followed by “Museums are where art goes to die.” The rise of Theory meant no longer worrying if a work was good or bad. You could buy a rubber stamp that said “This is not art” and let it speak for you. In large part, this was the belated impact of Marcel Duchamp, who started out as an Impressionist but was still breaking new ground when he died in 1968. He argued that the lifespan of a work of art is no more than about 50 years, after which the work no longer enjoys the privileged relationship to the present that made it seem like it belonged in the future. Among Duchamp’s ‘children’ were alternates to painting and sculpture like Assemblage, Installation, Performance, and Earth Art.

One of the qualities of the last is that most Earth, or Land Art as some called it, was made in the vast empty spaces of the West, far away from the art centers of New York and Chicago. As a result, most of its audience has only known it through photographs. “Spiral Jetta,” a short, entertaining memoir (180 pages, including a four-page bibliography) is the story of Erin Hogan’s road trip to see some of this ‘monumental’ art for herself. It’s an engaging idea, but the reality is something of a bait-and-switch: there isn’t much of a personal encounter with the works she promises to visit, but by the time readers realize this, their hearts are likely to have been captured by her adventure in self-discovery and exploration.

Perhaps the first clue to this transfer of subject is the way Hogan, the Director of Public Affairs at the Art Institute of Chicago, avoids giving any indication of exactly when it was she made this trip. When she says that the Spiral Jetty now lies high and dry, half a mile of dry, salty lake bed from the hem of the Great Salt Lake, it seems careless of a sometime art historian that she doesn’t say if this is due to the time of year or something more permanent. (The lake is lowest in winter, but fills again in spring.) She quotes the major critical and theoretical essays that make the Jetty’s claim to significance, writing “No trip to Spiral Jetty should be attempted without poring over Robert Smithson: Spiral Jetty, edited by Lynne Cook and Karen Kelly,” then when on site compares the jetty she finds with the one in those books. But in the end her Jetty is little more than a mirror of that mental ideal, while she spends more time describing her reaction to solitude (it makes her feel lonely) than her response to the art.

What clearly charmed the academic publishers of her book and the big city papers that reviewed it enthusiastically is how entertainingly she exhibits a Woody Allen-like urban chauvinism that responds to and mirrors the cowboy elitism of Western mythology. Of the half-dozen works she sets out to visit, she fails to even locate two: Nancy Holt’s Sun Tunnels (a problem 15 Bytes’ Hikmet Sidney Loe doesn’t share -- see this month's edition) and James Turrell’s Rodin Crater. But her efforts to find them lead to some fine comedic writing at the expense of the desert denizens she meets along the way. We learn about the perils of seeking a motel on State Street in downtown Salt Lake, which comes off here as hardly less risky than Southside Chicago. Clearly, while you can take the girl out of the big city, it takes more than a couple of days to take the big city out of the girl.

Readers will have to decide a couple of things for themselves. Hogan’s first-person account of her journey may, in the end, be more interesting than the destination she started with. A more important question for our time, though, rises when she shows so little ability to see any of the works she visits through her own eyes. At each stop on her hajira she pulls out the art history and theory books, the better to see how well the actual trucked-and-dynamited rock lives up to the ink-and-paper version that was the only one available where she comes from. Hogan walked across the Spiral Jetty, seeing salty rocks on salty soil, and apparently didn’t see the way the horizon circles you as you walk it the way one does when, as Smithson intended when he built it in a lake, one stays on the path. So it may not be surprising that the only satisfying works for her are the ones made of aluminum or steel. It may be that what she implies is right: that art (some art?) should be viewed as a Neoplatonic exercise that primarily demonstrates a theory. If so, her larger implication that art as a stimulus to which there is only one proper response, dictated by some expert, may also be true.

But while the second half of the twentieth century saw a lot of that in the arts, there was a contrasting perspective lying low, awaiting a better day. Fortified by the idea that reality is what is still there after you stop believing in it, there were those who consider art to be less the record of someone else’s experience and more the occasion for one of your own. Paradoxically, that is the critical impulse that ignores Erin Hogan’s assertions that an artist can dictate exactly how his work is perceived in favor of her description of the cowboy bar in Montello or Hole in the Rock. Smithson and the current owners of the Spiral Jetty urge visitors to ignore the much larger mining jetty that lies nearby, but they can no more make you do it than Rembrandt could make you not think of your Dutch uncle when you look at his self-portrait. Art is just bigger than that.

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Photojojo!: Insanely Great Photo Projects and DIY Ideas By Amit Gupta and Kelly Jensen
reviewed by Amanda Moore

Photojojo! Is a great book for the flickr addict, scrap booker and diy enthusiast. The book is separated into two halves. The first half is all about unique crafts and presentations you can create with your photographs. The second half is about having fun with your camera. There are also some helpful hints in the beginning on printing better photographs and in the back on where to get photo supplies.

The first half of the book is perfect for anyone trying to come up with some unique gifts (sure it's a little late for Christmas, but people do have birthdays). Photo dolls, custom magnets, and a personalized Rubik's cube are just a few examples. There are over thirty individual projects in this section. The one weak point to this section is -- unlike Readymade magazine -- it does not rate the difficulty of the individual projects so I recommend you read through the instructions thoroughly before you take them on.

The second half has tons of ideas on how to get more out of your camera. There are lessons on taking better portraits, painting with light, and making a tripod out of a bottle cap. There are also fun ideas like how to photograph a spinning kid, make a doggie cam and dress up a baby that are great for getting your creative juices flowing. I recommend using a camera you care very little about if you decide to try the "camera toss" project. The tone of the book is knowledgeable and fun and perfect for any level of photographer.

Posted by Extra! Extra! at 07:12 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Provenance: How a Con Man and a Forger Rewrote the History of Modern Art
Laney Salisbury
Penguin Press
2009
352pp

You couldn't write a better story line if you were dealing with fiction. John Drewe, a working-class chameleon of a racconteur passes himself off as a posh nuclear scientist with big world connections and infiltrates the British art world establishment, not only passing on fake masterpieces, but adulterating the provenance system in order to do so. He is able to do this for an entire decade, flooding the market with fake works, only a minority of which were identified when he was finally arrested.

Then there's the supporting cast of characters. John Myatt, a down and out single father who at one time had tried to be a professional artist, copies a Raoul Dufy on a lark. He gets swept into Drewe's con and by the time he figures out that his works are being shown at the Tate and sold at Sothebys it is too late. By now he relies too heavily on the steady income. Besides, he derives some satisfaction that his work is being admired; he relishes the challenge of replicating the intense style of an artist like Giacometti; and he feels just a touch of disdain for an establishment so blinded by money it can't see what's being put over on it.

There's the American, Mary Lisa Palmer, who works tirelessly at the Giacometti Foundation to protect the reputation and legacy of the dead artist and won't budge in her judgment that a series of works coming her way are fakes -- despite their pristine provenances and pressure from dealers and collectors eager to snatch up or sell a "masterpiece."

There's Bat-Sheva Goudsmid, the con-man's suffering common-law wife who ends up losing her house and children to him but gets ultimate satisfaction when a chance and encounter with Drewe gives here the evidence that eventually convicts him.

There's the police, whose initial interest in Drewe is because of a homicide (a case of arson, which Drewe may have caused to cover his tracks). And a slew of others: the runners and middlemen who know nothing about art but are eager to make a buck; the auction house and gallery staff who care more about sales than scholarship; the lonely clerk at the archives where the provenances are first adulterated, who suspects Drewe is up to something but can't convince her boss that the man who is promising to donate millions to the organization isn't all he makes himself out to be; the New York collector, enchanted with the Giacometti he has found who can't bring himself to believe that it wasn't done by the Modernist master.

With the help of a repentant Myatt the police and prosecutor bring a conviction of fraud against Drewe, who claims throughout the trial and his two years served that he was the victim of a government conspiracy.

Salsibury does an excellent job of giving form to the various characters in this fascinating story, which reads like one of the spy novels Drewe based the story of his life on. Drewe and his witting and unwitting accomplices may not have, as the book's subtitle suggests, rewritten the history of modern art, but they have certainly inserted alternate chapters, some of which have yet to be expunged from the official narrative.

Posted by Extra! Extra! at 12:40 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Maggie Macnab, author of Decoding Design: Understanding and Using Symbols in Visual Communication will be speaking at SUU's Art Insights next week, on September 17 at 7 pm in the Centrum Arena at SUU. 

Macnab, whose book has been called this year’s hottest graphic design book, has been in the graphic design business for nearly 30 years and has her own design firm, Macnab Design Visual Communications. In her book, Macnab stresses the importance of creative and critical thinking in the graphic design process. She highlights the similarities in all symbols, whether they are used as art, marketing pieces or religious imagery. Macnab believes that understanding the universal language of symbols is imperative for graphic designers in order to communicate effectively with logos and commercial marketing pieces.

Art Insights is a weekly program hosted during the fall and spring semesters by SUU’s Art and Design faculty. Students and community members meet weekly to attend gallery openings and experience presentations and discussions by visiting artists and art educators from around the nation who share their work and insights. Admission is free, and the general public is invited to attend. For more information on the SUU College of Performing and Visual Arts events, please call the Arts Hotline at (435) 865-8800, or visit www.suu.edu/arts.

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Along with a number of other fabulous shows opening tonight in conjunction with the Salt Lake Gallery Stroll, Dave Hall's Moving Water will be unveiled at Phillips Gallery.

Hall is a consummate fly-fisherman and over the past few years has become increasingly well known for his atmospheric renderings of the landscapes he loves to fish in.

In conjunction with the exhibit Hall has recently published Moving Water: An Artist's Reflections on Fly Fishing and Friendship, a sparse memoir that pairs images of the artist's work with memories, reflections and anecdotes drawn from the lyrical reservoir of his lifelong experience of fishing with family and friends.

Hall will be on hand at the opening reception (tonight, 6 to 9 pm) and available to sign copies of the book.

Posted by Extra! Extra! at 10:58 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Local artist Alex Bigney, who teaches at Utah Valley University, has just published a book entitled Talking to Tesla. Over the past four years the painter has undergone  experiences that have profoundly impacted his art and changed his life. In a series of uncanny dreams the enigmatic and now largely forgotten scientist, Nikola Tesla, visited him. Ironically, the first of these experiences took place before the artist even knew who Tesla was. Talking to Tesla, An Artist’s Dream Journal, is the result of years of reflection and insight initiated by these experiences. It tells the remarkable story of Alex Bigney’s evolving and intimate connection with Nikola Tesla.

You can read chapters from the book and order it online by going to http://talkingtotesla.com. Look for a review in our upcoming edition of 15 Bytes.

Posted by Extra! Extra! at 01:48 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Behaviourables and Futuribles
A review of Telematic Embrace: Visionary Theories of Art, Technology, and Consciousness
Reviewed by Edward Bateman

In 1970, Roy Ascott wrote, "If writing about art has any value at all at a time when art works and processes are themselves polemical, it can only be to discuss alternative futures."  Ascott has always had his eye on the future with an interest in big ideas and bigger possibilities. As both an artist and especially as an educator, his influence has extended beyond his personal reputation.   
Telematic Embrace: Visionary Theories of Art, Technology and Consciousness is a highly academic collection of essays by Roy Ascott. His writing seems to always have been at the forefront of ideas in art whether in cybernetics, post-modern thought, or the twinned technologies of computers and telecommunications. Ascott isn't interested in using computers merely to make images; his interests lie in processes of interactivity and global communications and how they can be used to make a new kind of art.   

In this collection of writing extending from the early sixties through the year two thousand, Ascott explores the edges of not what is possible, but what might be possible. His early writings explore the theme of cybernetics. Long before the word cyber became a catch-phrase of digital technology, it was used to describe interactive systems that created order and purpose through feedback loops. He finds this analogous to the interactive process that artists have always sought (even if they were unaware of it), and is a key concept in his personal art.   

With terms like techno-qualia, cyberception, and post-biological, Ascott loves coining new words to express new possibilities; a hallmark of its time. His writings from the 90s are a reminder of the techno-utopianism that preceded the dot-com crash. They reflect a time when the (then) new and growing technologies seemed to hold the promise of all things being possible - a chance to reinvent the world with digital and communication tools that could reshape not just the world, but human consciousness itself. Instead, we found ourselves in a world of everyday commerce filled with the likes of ebay and amazon.com.   

Continue reading "Behaviourables and Futuribles" »

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Unmonumental: the object in the 21st century
reviewed by Geoff Wichert

Unmonumental is simultaneously the name of a book, a pioneering exhibition at the New Museum’s new home in the Bowery for which it functions as catalog, and a school of sculpture that the book argues is the leading edge of art right now. According to comments by Utah artists whose own aesthetic impulses, not surprisingly, are nothing like what’s on display in this book, “unmonumental” is an idea we will all need to become acquainted with. Whether or not you liked Cubism in 1912, Dada in 1922, or Surrealism in 1932, their influence on art everywhere made at least a passing acquaintance with them essential credentials for anyone seriously interested in contemporary culture. Comprehending Unmonumentalism is likely to prove equally indispensable to us today. Unmonumental, with essays that by turn demonstrate its principles and offer unusually lucid explanations of them, could be the essential introduction for those wishing to understand what this seismic shift in modern art is all about.

One thing that immediately stands out about unmonumental art is its unapologetic reference to the real world—the world outside art. According to the preface by Lisa Phillips, the arguably decrepit and less-than-substantial appearance of unmonumental art means to capture “the extreme delicacy and fragility of life in the twenty-first century.” Never mind that “delicacy” sounds the wrong note for an historical era that has set records for brutality. More important than how these critics characterize our moment, even as we live it, is the way their subject artists’ repudiation of formalism is becoming, in unmonumentalism and elsewhere, a worldwide trend in art.

Continue reading "Unmonumental: The object in the 21st century" »

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Continue reading "Dismantling Geneva Steel Catalogue" »

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The Art of Small Things by John Mack
 Reviewed by Laurel Hunter
 

It is no small thing to read through this book. Every time I picked up The Art of Small Things, I became totally absorbed in the beautiful color photographs that illustrate the book – the objects shown are incredibly varied and engaging, and the photography and printing exceptional. I found myself running to the internet to search for more pictures of ganjifa cards or historical chessmen, netsuke and brass weights. The text itself, of course, has information, but I needed more pictures to satisfy my curiosity. It is hardly a flaw for an art book to have pictures that are too beautiful. So perhaps it is a flaw of this reviewer that cannot resist miniature eye candy.
 
Another difficulty in finishing the book is the density of its prose. Written by the Professor of World Art Studies at the University of East Anglia, this is most definitely more academic text than page-turner. How did I read all that theory and criticism in graduate school? Discipline at last prevailed. I did not read the chapters in order, but I read them all!
 
Truthfully, the book is a bit dry. However, it is thick with knowledge of many, many cultures and their art and artifacts. It is no small feat to link figurative Aztec jade figures with Italian micro-mosaics with Japanese woodblock prints. However, I did find myself skimming, at times, the lengthy paragraphs that describe technical process. How the Ghanaians cast objects in brass or gold is not quite as interesting to me as the objects they chose and the way that they are arranged to imply meaning. Mack gets to all of this, of course, and the strength of this book lies in the incredible breadth and details of cultural information. For sure the prevailing message is the power of the miniature object to far outweigh its physical presence. Not just the intimacy that we often associate with small works of art, where one is required to move close to the work to engage with it fully. Mack takes on the secrecy of small objects and the power that comes from being hidden, ranging from the religious to the romantic.

Continue reading "The Art of Small Things by John Mack" »

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Artscience: Creativity in the post-Google Generation
by David Edwards

reviewed by Jim Frazer

I really want to like Artscience. I am totally in agreement with  its premise that artists and scientists can benefit by immersing themselves in the other’s discipline. The author David Edwards, a biomedical engineering professor at Harvard, is obviously excited by the idea, to the point of giddiness. The book indeed is a giddy collection of anecdotes recounting the experiences of various artists and scientists who have done just that.

Edwards tries to make it clear that the process he is talking about is different from artists who “borrow from science as your neighbor might borrow a tool.” He characterizes the process he is interested in as “idea translation.” The multi-step process the book describes has much in common with what all artists and scientists go through in creating their work; the exception being that artscience idea translators “study deeply and open themselves to invigorating new experience in science (if trained in the arts) or the arts (if trained in the sciences).”  Edwards talks about idea translation between areas of culture, industry, and academia. The central concept seems to be that an idea may arise in one sector, but needs to be “translated” in order to be implemented in another area. A common example of this is when an academic does some research which then needs to be translated to industry to become a product which may then in turn be translated into the cultural sector as it exerts a certain impact on society.

Continue reading "David Edwards' Artscience reviewed" »

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Artists in China by Philip Tinari and Mario Ciampi
reviewed by Aaron Moffett

Artists have been an important part of China’s history for thousands of years. Fine artists in porcelain and ceramics have existed all the way back to the Han Dynasty.  The Ming and Ching dynasties produced for the Emperors some of the finest ceramics the world has ever known. Now it appears that China is also producing some fine contemporary artists working in various mediums. Artists in China, published this fall by Verba Volant, explores some of these artists, their works and their working environment.

When I first skimmed the book I was slightly turned off by its format. Page after page of full page photographs show each artist – over fifty --  in his or her studio or living space with some of the artist’s works displayed as well. The following pages show additional works of art. Skimming through the photographs, I wanted to read something about each artist even if it was just a short blurb about why they chose to work in their particular medium or even what city they were from. I needed just a little something to chew on other than glossy photos. Later, when I perused the book more thoughtfully I decided that I liked the format. Maybe it was the way the author put the meat at the end of the book. After four hundred pages of glossy photos the editors inserted a series of essays, showing once again each page in thumb nail size and then giving the reader details about the artists. I thought the format was refreshing when I really looked closely at the book. Maybe I was growing stale from looking at so many art books about American western art and artists and I needed something to shake me up.

Artists in China does not cover all the artists in China, but I’ve never found an art book that has been able to cover every artist from a geographical location. It does a great job of giving the reader a good look at some of the current artists in China today. This would be a nice addition to any dealer or collector who’s interested in Chinese art.

Artists in China

Hardcover: 448 pages

Publisher: Verba Volant; English language edition (October 30, 2007)

Language: English

ISBN-10: 1905216041

ISBN-13: 978-1905216048

Product Dimensions: 13.2 x 9.8 x 1.6 inches

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Modernism: The Lure of Heresy by Peter Gay
reviewed by Tony Watson

In the opening line to his new book Modernism: The Lure of Heresy, National Book Award-winning author Peter Gay writes, “Modernism is far easier to exemplify than to define.” In the following five hundred plus pages (as well as a weighty section of notes and bibliographical essays) Gay attempts to define Modernism as well as exemplify it. Rather than “define,” it might be more accurate to say that Gay “classifies” Modernism or the Modernist as a species, characterized by two traits proposed by Gay. In this ground-breaking work that attempts to come to terms with all the facets of the fecund artistic period we call Modernism – painting, sculpture, prose, poetry, dance, music, film, architecture -- Gay chooses examples from each field and places them under his historical microscope. Though Gay’s system of classification can be helpful in considering disparate artistic temperaments and endeavors under the same broad umbrella, ultimately the complexity of the era subverts the structure Gay tries to place upon it.

Continue reading "Modernism: The Lure of Heresy" »

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 Recently Read: Vision, Reflection, & Desire in Western Painting

 reviewed by Shawn Rossiter

 

If the crass commercialism of the holiday season has you down, if the increasingly sophisticated and invasive methods of appealing to your innate narcissism as a means to convince you to purchase more gadgets and gizmos has you considering canceling Christmas next year, then you just might have Leon Battista Alberti to blame. Or so David Summers implies in his recently published book Vision, Reflection, & Desire in Western Painting.

Summers, William R. Kenan Jr. Professor of Art History at the University of Virginia, contends that the study of optics that fascinated Alberti and his fellow painters of the Renaissance resulted in a seismic shift in the Western philosophical paradigm, the shock waves of which still resonate today. The study and use of optical devices, and the formulation of the geometry of reflection, Summers demonstrates in this book, placed an emphasis on the “point of view” of the individual. This inaugurated an era of subjectivity unique to Western culture. The concept of perspective and point of view developed by these artists has so permeated our culture that the original idea has “overflowed its cultural banks.” “Alberti could hardly have foreseen narcissism as a condition of Western modernity, as the psychological basis for effective strategies in the vast institutions of consumer societies, or as the diagnostic basis for the criticism of these same institutions,” Summers writes. “Still, whether or not we are psychoanalysts, we have a pretty good idea of what is meant, for example, when someone says we all live in a ‘culture of narcissism,’ and Alberti – and the new painting of point of view and personal expression he helped initiate – may be legitimately paced near the beginnings of this new historical reality.” 

 

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