Widely used art history textbooks such as Gardner’s Art through the Ages present a distorted narrative of visual art from the early twentieth century on. They focus on countless modernist and postmodernist inventions—from “abstract art” to “conceptual art” and “performance art”—at the expense of traditionally representational painting and sculpture. The result is an utterly incoherent […]
abstract art, Academic Questions (journal), avant-garde, conceptual art, Gardner's Art through the Ages, performance art, traditional art[July 3 Addendum] As a member of AICA-USA (the U.S. section of the International Association of Art Critics), I recently received an email message from the Board of Directors announcing: “AICA-USA has issued a statement of solidarity with the Movement for Black Lives [M4BL].”1 That statement—which had not been submitted to members for input or […]
"systemic racism", AICA-USA, art criticism, avant-garde, conceptual art, contemporary art, critical pedagogy, critical standards, critical thinking, Daniel Patrick Moynihan, de-skilling of art, Defund the Police, diversity, George Floyd, Goya's "Saturn Devouring His Children", Gregory Sholette, John Canaday, M4BL, Marilou Lemmens, Peter Schjeldahl, Richard Ibghy, Seattle's CHOP district, Shaun King, Susan Rothenberg, Trump Derangement SyndromeWhat’s wrong with today’s “protest art”—which occupies so much of our public space? Mainly this: it’s long on protest and virtually devoid of art. That sad fact has been vividly demonstrated of late by two New York exhibitions: Art and China after 1989: Theater of the World (closed January 7 at the Guggenheim) and An […]
Ai Weiwei, animal cruelty in "art", conceptual art, Dread Scott, Elizabeth Catlett, Guggenheim Museum, Henry Flynt, Liu Xiaodong, Marcel Duchamp, Martha Rosier, Melvin Edwards, Paul Cadmus, protest art, School of the Art Institute of Chicago, Wang Xingwei, Whitney MuseumIs the infamous urinal signed “R. Mutt” (featured as the centerpiece on the cover of Who Says That’s Art?) really the brainchild of Marcel Duchamp, as the artworld has long claimed? Or was it instead merely a copy by him of a piece originally created by a relatively obscure figure of the early twentieth-century avant-garde—a […]
conceptual art, contemporary art, Elsa von Freytag-Loringhoven, Fountain, Glyn Thompson, Julian Spalding, Marcel Duchamp, readymades, urinal
