Synopses & Reviews
An incisive account of the bizarre, often bewildering art world of today. Arthur Danto's new collection finds him, and the art world, at a point when the art world has become pluralistic, even chaotic with one medium as good as the next when the moment for "next things" has passed.
Since 1984, when Danto already an eminent philosopher became The Nation's art critic, he has been one of the foremost theorists of contemporary art's history and evolution, and at the same time the most incisive and illuminating critic of new work. In his view, the historical development of art reached a kind of zenith in the pop period, most famously with Warhol's Brillo Boxes. Danto's five volumes of review essays (all published by FSG) form a kind of chronicle of the art world since the Brillo moment, and a running appraisal of the great variety of significant work made since then. In this new book, he shows how work that bridges the gap between art and life is now the definitive work of our time: Damien Hirst's arrays of skeletons and anatomical models, Barbara Kruger's tchotchke-ready slogans, Renee Cox's nude portrait of herself at the Last Supper. To the obvious question is this stuff really art? Danto replies with an enthusiastic yes, explaining, with a philosopher's clarity and an art lover's sense of delight, how these "unnatural wonders" show us who we are.
Review
Arthur C. Danto is arguably the most consequential art critic since Clement Greenberg.... If Greenberg was the oracle of the drip and stain, Danto is the evangelist of the sanguinary and excremental. New York Times
Review
Danto is an ideal critic for those who do not revel in mere paint....He's unbeatable at what he does....Danto offers a kind of access to art that few other critics do. New York Times Book Review
Synopsis
The celebrated art critic's appraisals of the art world today from Vermeer to Lucian Freud, from Richard Avedon to outsider art.
Arthur C. Danto's urbane, informed, searching essays about art and the art world are the best record we have of the life of the visual arts in the United States today. The Madonna of the Future, the fourth book of his essays to be published by FSG, finds Danto at the point where all the vectors of the contemporary art world intersect: those of traditional painting, pop art, mixed media, and installation art; those of art and philosophy; those of the specialist who comes to the work fully equipped with theory and the connoisseur who encounters it chiefly through the eyes. Through his reviews of major exhibitions and gallery shows, Danto reflects on the work of past masters (Vermeer, Tiepolo), the great painters of the modern period (Dali, de Kooning, Kline, Rothko, and Johns), and the pluralistic descendants of Andy Warhol who dominate the New York art scene today. Nietzsche, he points out, published an essay called How to Philosophize with a Hammer; Danto's own essays are lessons in how to criticize with a feather, so fine and considerate are his judgments of artists and of the nature of art in general.
About the Author
Arthur C. Danto is the Johnsonian Professor of Philosophy Emeritus at Columbia University, art critic for The Nation, and the author of many books about art and philosophy. He lives in Manhattan with his wife, the artist Barbara Westman.