Donald Kuspit - Böcker

Building-Art is an anthology of essays by noted critic Joseph Masheck. Considering topics in nineteenth- and twentieth-century architecture, its theory and practice, as well as selected achievements by such great modernists as Le Corbusier, Ludwig Mies van der Rohe and Louis Kahn, Masheck also analyses important monuments and architectural ideas of such artists as Giorgio di Chirico and Tony Smith. Contextualising and culturally speculative, these studies address such issues as the distinction between architecture and 'mere' building, and architecture and engineering, frequently drawing the reader into architectural problems that have persisted for at least two centuries. Demonstrating a concern with on-going modernism, Masheck's essays guide the reader through the anti-modernist polemics of the 1970s and 1980s, which are particularly relevant in the light of postmodernism's demise.

The Cult of the Avant-Garde Artist examines the philosophical, psychological and aesthetic premises for avant-garde art and its subsequent evolution and corruption in the late twentieth century. Arguing that modernist art is essentially therapeutic in intention, both towards self and society, Donald Kuspit further posits that neo-avant-garde, or post-modern art, at once mocks and denies the possibility of therapeutic change. As such, it accommodates the status quo of capitalist society, in which fame and fortune are valued above anything else. Stripping avant-garde art of its missionary, therapeutic intention, neo-avant-garde art instead converts it into a cliché of creative novelty or ironical value for its fashionable look. Moreover, it destroys the precarious balance of artistic narcissism and social empathy that characterizes modern art, tilting it cynically towards the former. Incorporating psychoanalytic ideas, particularly those concerned with narcissism, The Cult of the Avant-Garde Artist offers a reinterpretation of modern art history. Donald Kuspit, one of America's foremost art critics, is a contributing editor to Artforum and the author of many books.

In The End of Art, Donald Kuspit argues that art is over because it has lost its aesthetic import. Art has been replaced by 'postart', a term invented by Alan Kaprow, as a new visual category that elevates the banal over the enigmatic, the scatological over the sacred, cleverness over creativity. Tracing the demise of aesthetic experience to the works and theory of Marcel Duchamp and Barnett Newman, Kuspit argues that devaluation is inseparable from the entropic character of modern art, and that anti-aesthetic postmodern art is its final state. In contrast to modern art, which expressed the universal human unconscious, postmodern art degenerates into an expression of narrow ideological interests. In reaction to the emptiness and stagnancy of postart, Kuspit signals the aesthetic and human future that lies with the New Old Masters. The End of Art points the way to the future for the visual arts.

This selection of essays, first published in 1998 by a prominent art historian, critic, and curator of modern art, examines the art and artists of the twentieth century who have operated outside the established art world. In lucid and accessible prose, Peter Selz explores modern art as it reflects, and has had an impact on, the tremendous transformation of politics and culture, both in the United States and Europe. An authoritative overview of a neglected phenomenon, his essays explore the complex relationship between art at the periphery and art at the putative centre, and how marginal art has affected that of the mainstream.

In this collection of critical essays, Barry Schwabsky re-examines the art produced since the 1960s, demonstrating how the achievements of 'high modernism' remain consequential to it, through tensions between representation, abstraction, and pictorial language. Offering close readings of works produced by several generations of European and American artists, he begins with an analysis of the late period of two Abstract Expressionists, Philip Guston and Mark Rothko, who saw their own success as a failure of reception and who came to question radically their own work. With the core of the book focused on Michelangelo Pistoletto and Mel Bochner, major figures of arte povera and conceptual art whose works in a variety of media demonstrate a continuing critical engagement with modernism, Schwabsky also studies the work of artists, such as L. C. Armstrong and Rainer Ganahl, who also continued to examine modernism's legacies.

This book, first published in 1999, studies the work of a generation of 'respondents' to the New York School, including Robert Rauschenberg, Jasper Johns and Cy Twombly, who reintroduced pictorialism and verbal content in their paintings and assemblages. Their work, Marjorie Welish argues, often alludes to the history of art and culture. Also examined are the work of Minimal and Conceptual artists, particularly Donald Judd and Sol Le Witt, who sought to make objective and theoretical artefacts in response to the subjectivity that Abstract Expressionism had promoted. By interpreting the work of these artists in the light of contemporary issues, Welish offers a fresh re-evaluation of some of the major trends and production of post-war American painting.

This book, first published in 1999, studies the work of a generation of 'respondents' to the New York School, including Robert Rauschenberg, Jasper Johns and Cy Twombly, who reintroduced pictorialism and verbal content in their paintings and assemblages. Their work, Marjorie Welish argues, often alludes to the history of art and culture. Also examined are the work of Minimal and Conceptual artists, particularly Donald Judd and Sol Le Witt, who sought to make objective and theoretical artefacts in response to the subjectivity that Abstract Expressionism had promoted. By interpreting the work of these artists in the light of contemporary issues, Welish offers a fresh re-evaluation of some of the major trends and production of post-war American painting.

This volume brings together a selection of essays by one of the leading scholars of American art. Matthew Baigell examines the work of a variety of artists, including Edward Hopper, Thomas Hart Benton, Ben Shahn, and Frank Stella, relating their art works closely to the social and cultural contexts in which they were created. Identifying important and recurring themes in this body of art, such as the persistence of Emersonian values, the search for national and regional identity, aspects of alienation, and the loss of individuality, he also explores the personal and religious identities of artists as revealed in their works. Collectively, Baigell's work demonstrates the importance of America as the defining element in American art.

In Art versus Nonart, Tsion Avital poses the question: 'Is modern art art at all?' He argues that much, if not all, of the nonrepresentational art produced in the twentieth century was not art, but rather the debris of the visual tradition it replaced. Modern art has thrived on the total confusion between art and pseudo-art and the inability of many to distinguish between them. As Avital demonstrates, modern art has served as a critical intermediate stage between art of the past and the future. This book, first published in 2003, proposes a distinct way to define art, anchoring the nature of art in the nature of the mind, solving a major problem of art and aesthetics for which no solution has yet been provided. The definition of art proposed in this book paves the way for a fresh and promising paradigm for future art.

Where do we begin to talk about abstract art? This question depends on one’s worldview. From the point of view of the collection included in this book, the arc of abstraction is very broad, sweeping and multivalent. The essays included here take an open view of the story of abstraction, reflecting the variation and diversity of American art included in the holdings of the Newark Museum. The museum gave avant-garde abstraction an early American home, exhibiting the works of painter Max Weber in 1913. Yet abstraction’s American roots extend earlier as seen in indigenous objects as well.Donald Kuspit discusses America’s earliest abstract painter Arthur Dove and the innovations of Georgia O’Keefe, Joseph Stella, Morgan Russell, and Alexander Calder who all “convey abstraction’s ambivalent consciousness of nature and its unconscious attempt to recover the self.”The Arc of Abstraction is lavishly illustrated with over 80 full-color images of works by a broad array of abstract artists including Ad Reinhardt, Phillip K. Smith, III, Philip Guston, Isamu Noguchi, Romare Howard Bearden, Stuart Davis, Louise Nevelson, Arshile Gorky, Mark Rothko, Melvin Edwards, and JoaquÍn Torres-GarcÍa. Expert commentary by Ulysses Grant Dietz, Tricia Laughlin Bloom, Gabriel Dawe, Jalena Louise Jampolsky, Marela Zacarias, Tarin Fuller, William L. Coleman, Souleo, Tricia Laughlin Bloom, and Kay WalkingStick provides important insights to help readers understand the nature and significance of the artwork.Published by Newark Museum. Distributed worldwide by Rutgers University Press.

Per Fronth is one of Norway’s most distinctive contemporary artists, dynamically redefining the relationship between painting and photography in influential and innovative works. Painting with photography as his raw material, Fronth’s pictorial universe is captivating, bold, controversial, and seductive. Central to Fronth’s overall artistic practice are the challenging aspects of the human condition. Fronth produces large-format artworks in series and different disciplines that are politically, environmentally, socially, and highly emotionally charged: from the war zones in Afghanistan, to the indigenous peoples’ fight for their own land in the Amazonas region, and back to his own life, in native Norway, where he explores visual narratives of innocence and the coming of age. In his most recent project Fronth creates controversy by introducing paid product placement into his artworks already acquired by museums. In doing so he elevates the discussion as to what the value of art is.Text in English and Norwegian.