Art of Cruelty a Reckoning

Today both reality and entertainment crowd our fields of vision with brutal imagery. The pervasiveness of images of torture, horror, and war has all but demolished the twentieth-century hope that such imagery might shock us into a less alienated state, or aid in the creation of a just social order. What to do now? When to look, when to turn away?Genre-busting author Maggie Nelson brilliantly navigates this contemporary predicament, with an eye to the question of whether or not focusing on representations of cruelty makes us cruel. In a journey through high and low culture (Kafka to reality TV), the visual to the verbal (Paul McCarthy to Brian Evenson), and the apolitical to the political (Francis Bacon to Kara Walker), Nelson offers a model of how one might balance strong ethical convictions with an equally strong appreciation for work that tests the limits of taste, taboo, and permissibility.

"An important and frequently surprising book... could be read as the foundation for a post-avant-garde aesthetics... Nelson, who is also a poet, is such a graceful writer that I...just sat back and enjoyed the show." Laura Kipnis

"[Nelson's] critiques of individual artists are delightfully fierce without being mean spirited... Fascinating and bracingly intelligent...'s prose is often gorgeous." New York Times Book Review

"A lean-forward experience, and in its most transcendent moments, reading it can feel like having the best conversation of your life." Troy Jollimore Boston Globe

"I hope that critics, and aspiring critics, and those who are interested in the relationship between art and ethics, read []." Rachel Syme NPR Books

Writing in the tradition of Susan Sontag and Elaine Scarry, Maggie Nelson has emerged as one of our foremost cultural critics with this landmark work about representations of cruelty and violence in art. From Sylvia Plath s poetry to Francis Bacon s paintings, from the Saw franchise to Yoko Ono s performance art, Nelson s nuanced exploration across the artistic landscape ultimately offers a model of how one might balance strong ethical convictions with an equally strong appreciation for work that tests the limits of taste, taboo, and permissibility.

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Maggie Nelson has established herself as one of our foremost cultural critics in this landmark work about representations of violence in art. "An important and frequently surprising book . . . could be read as the foundation for a post-avant-garde aesthetics. ?. . . Nelson, who is also a poet, is such a graceful writer that ?I . . . just sat back and enjoyed the show."--Laura Kipnis, , front-page review "[Nelson's] critiques of individual artists are delightfully fierce without being mean spirited. . . . Fascinating and bracingly intelligent. . . . 's prose is often gorgeous."--Troy Jollimore, "A lean-forward experience, and in its most transcendent moments, reading it can feel like having the best conversation of your life."--Rachel Syme, NPR Books "I hope that critics, and aspiring critics, and those who are interested in the relationship between art and ethics, read []."--Susie Linfield,

"A vibrant and engaged work from a writer and thinker who is worthy of our attention."--Carolyn Kellogg,

"This is criticism at its best."--Carolyn Kellogg,

Maggie Nelson is the author of several books, including Bluets and The Art of Cruelty. She teaches at CalArts and lives in Los Angeles, California.