Synopses & Reviews
In this strongly argued and characteristically original book, Michael Fried considers the work of four contemporary artists--video artist and photographer Anri Sala, sculptor Charles Ray, painter Joseph Marioni, and video artist and intervener in movies Douglas Gordon. He shows how their respective projects are best understood as engaging in a variety of ways with some of the core themes and issues associated with high modernism, and indeed with its prehistory in French painting and art criticism from Diderot on.
Four Honest Outlaws thus continues the author's exploration of the critical and philosophical territory opened up by his earlier book, the magisterial
Why Photography Matters as Art as Never Before. It presents a vision of the most important contemporary art as not only not repudiating modernism in the name of postmodernism in any of the latter's many forms and manifestations, but also actually as committed to dialectically renewing certain crucial qualities and values that modernism and premodernism brought to the fore, above all those of presentness and anti-theatricality.
Four Honest Outlaws takes its title from a line in a Bob Dylan song, "To live outside the law you must be honest," meaning in this case that each of the four artists has found his own unsanctioned path to extraordinary accomplishment, in part by defying the ordinary norms and expectations of the contemporary art world. Filled with stunning images throughout and accompanied by a DVD illustrating works by Sala and Gordon discussed in its pages, Four Honest Outlaws is sure to provoke controversy even as it makes a dramatic bid to further transform the terms in which the art of the present should be understood.
Review
"Fried's style is sprightly and displays an unquenchable curiosity that makes him seemand#8212;in the best possible wayand#8212;more like a tour guide than the author of a 245-page work of criticism. Though his theories can be controversial, the fact that he heartily opens himself up to disagreement shows that he, a true modernist, practices what he preaches."and#8212;Sarah E. Fensom, Art and Antiques
Review
and#8220;Mr. Friedand#8217;s accounts of works by these artists are excellent, sometimes inspiring models for close looking and finely grained analysis.and#8221;and#8212;Ken Johnson, New York Times
Review
and#8220;Fried at his best [is] sober, responsive to particular features of the work, and, best of all, deeply serious about the philosophical significance of the arts.and#8221;and#8212;Brendan Boyle, Los Angeles Review of Books
Review
and#8220;Original and thought provoking . . . a fascinating study.and#8221;and#8212;C. B. Kerr,and#160;
ChoiceReview
"Fried . . . selects particular pictures to address and teases out the ways in which their meanings are created and transmitted. In these cases his writing is engaging, intriguing, and often delightfully paradoxical."and#8212;Andy Grundberg, American Scholar
Review
"Fried's bookand#8212;more than any other I have readand#8212;challenges its readers to interpret more cogently the resurgence of the tableau in photographic form. The gauntlet has been tossed."and#8212;Robin Kelsey, Artforum
Review
and#8220;A powerfully argued book, this is the new benchmark against which future discussions of photography must stand.and#8221;and#8212;Ottawa XPress
Review
Chosen as an Outstanding Academic Title for 2009 by Choice Magazine
Synopsis
A revelatory study of a school of remarkable painters from one of the great art historians of the 20th century
During the twenty years following Caravaggio's death, his revolutionary precedent inspired the creation of a remarkable body of paintings. Drawing together works by Bartolomeo Manfredi, Valentin de Boulogne, Nicolas Tournier, Nicolas Regnier, Cecco del Caravaggio, and the young Jusepe de Ribera, Michael Fried examines the nature of this later generation's engagement with Caravaggio. The magnitude and interest of their achievements have long been recognized, but existing scholarship has touched only the surface. Fried approaches his topic with seriousness and sophistication, revealing the density of meaning and sheer pictorial ambition in the works of the painters known as the Caravaggisti.
Accessibly written, this beautifully illustrated book combines an account of works by Manfredi, Valentin, Tournier, Regnier, and Ribera with a detailed case study of Cecco del Caravaggio's Resurrection (1619-20), and concludes by surveying a group of paintings by Guercino, a painter not counted among the Caravaggisti, but whose strategies in relation to the viewer aligned him with their interests. Fried moves with agility between broad and focused fields of vision. In his final remarks, he makes a compelling case for understanding these paintings in relation to the thought of Rene Descartes.
Synopsis
Renowned art historian Michael Fried explores the nature and meaning of artistic influence and brings to light the extraordinary achievements of a generation of Italian Baroque painters inspired by the example of Caravaggio.
Synopsis
A leading art critic and historian offers a new and revolutionary analysis of Flaubertand#8217;s literary style
Synopsis
Gustave Flaubert, one of the key figures in literary modernism, is famous for his determined pursuit of stylistic perfection. This notably involved the attempt to eliminate from his prose all sorts of assonances, consonances, and repetitions, in large measure by reading his sentences in a loud voiceand#8212;the test of what he called the
gueuloir (from
gueuler, to yell). And yet when one examines closely the prose in his first novel,
Madame Bovary, one becomes aware of a host of repetitions that appear to go directly against his stylistic ideal, revealing a level of and#8220;resistanceand#8221; to that ideal at the very heart of his writing process.
In this book Michael Fried presents two long essays: the first on Madame Bovary, in which the problem of critical understanding posed by this discovery is explored in depth; and the second on Flaubertand#8217;s remarkable second novel, Salammband#244;, in which the conflict between the drive for perfection and certain automatistic tendencies in Madame Bovary is replaced by a determination to extend the rule of authorial will throughout every aspect and level of the text. Furthermore, drawing on his wide knowledge of nineteenth-century French painting and criticism, Fried suggests that there exist strong analogies between what goes on in Flaubert's writing and what can be seen to take place in the art of Courbet, Manet, and Legros.
Synopsis
A compilation of fascinating and original essays by one of today's most important art historians
Synopsis
This book gathers eight major essaysand#151;three virtually unknownand#151;by one of the worldand#8217;s most influential art historians into a remarkable commentary on 19th- , 20th-, and 21st-century art.
Synopsis
In this richly illustrated book, Michael Friedand#151;one of the most esteemed and influential art critics and art historians working todayand#151;has gathered eight major essays written between 1993 and 2013, on topics ranging from Jacques-Louis David, Thand#233;odore Gand#233;ricault, and Caspar David Friedrich through Gustave Caillebotte and Roger Fry to recent films by Douglas Gordon and Thomas Demand.and#160;Gustave Courbet and Edouard Manet, too, are distinct presences along with,and#160;in the background, the great art critic Denis Diderot and, in the case of Friedrich, the philosopher Immanuel Kant.and#160;As always in Friedand#8217;s writing, the emphasis falls equally on observation and argument: never have these artists (and one critic, Fry) been subjected to so searching a gaze, and never has the meaning of their respective enterprises been laid bare with comparable clarity and force.and#160;Another hallmark of Friedand#8217;s work is its extraordinary originality, and that too is fully in evidence throughout this remarkable book, which will add to his reputation as one of the indispensable thinkers of our time.
Synopsis
From the late 1970s onward, serious art photography began to be made at large scale and for the wall. Michael Fried argues that this immediately compelled photographers to grapple with issues centering on the relationship between the photograph and the viewer standing before it that until then had been the province only of painting. Fried further demonstrates that certain philosophically deep problemsand#151;associated with notions ofand#160; theatricality, literalness, and objecthood, and touching on the role of original intention in artistic production, first discussed in his controandshy;versial essay and#147;Art and Objecthoodand#8221; (1967)and#151;have come to the fore once again in recent photography.and#160;This means that the photoandshy;graphic and#147;ghettoand#8221; no longer exists; instead photography is at the cutting edge of contemporary art as never before.
and#160;
Among the photographers and video-makers whose work receives serious attention in this powerfully argued book are Jeff Wall, Hiroshi Sugimoto, Cindy Sherman, Thomas Struth, Thomas Ruff, Andreas Gursky, Luc Delahaye, Rineke Dijkstra, Patrick Faigenbaum, Roland Fischer, Thomas Demand, Candida Hand#246;fer, Beat Streuli, Philip-Lorca diCorcia, Douglas Gordon and Philippe Parreno, James Welling, and Bernd and Hilla Becher. Future discussions of the new art photography will have no choice but to take a stand for or against Friedand#8217;s conclusions.and#160;and#160;and#160;
About the Author
Michael Fried is J. R. Herbert Boone Professor of Humanities and the History of Art, Johns Hopkins University. His many books of art criticism, art history, literary criticism, and poetry include Absorption and Theatricality; Realism, Writing, Disfiguration; Courbet's Realism; and Art and Objecthood.