Has Modernism Failed?
by Suzi Gablik

List Price: $15.95
Our Price: $3.75
You Save: $12.20 (76%)
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Buy Used: from $0.01 (click here)
Category: Book
See more book details and other editions

Book Summary Information

Book Reviews of Has Modernism Failed?

Book Review: "A Mystical, Priestly, and Political Figure"?!?!?
Summary: 2 Stars

These things all make sense, but Gablik's attempt to offer solutions didn't seem to me like any kind of improvement, which is where this book really stumbled for me. Gablik calls for reasonable things - social responsibility, goodness, anti-consumerism, etc. She continually glances past politics, instead suggesting again and again that what modernism really needs is a return to "soul." She argues for "reintroducing the artist in his role as shaman - a mystical, priestly, and political figure" - pg 126. This, she tells us, is useful because it will help define our culture's relationship to the cosmos. Huh. She holds up Neo-Expressionism's reversion to classic pictorialism as heroic in this manner, which to me is enormously ironic when you consider how much repetitious blue-chip painting spilled onto gallery floors throughout the 1980s under that way-too-much-lauded banner. Additionally, she seems to view Neo-Expressionism as the harkening of an end to experimentation in modernism, which to me seems quite beside the point. "Rebellion and freedom are not enough," she tells us. "Modernism has moved us too far in the direction of radical subjectivity and a destructive relativism. At this point we might do well to make the most of a few well-observed rules again" - pg 127. If this seems to you like a solution for a better modernism free from commerce, maybe this book is for you. Not so much to me. But to be fair, there is a lot of good information in this book, and I applaud her for questioning the validity of some of our most canonized modernists, hence the second star.

Art History Books

• Books > Subjects > Arts & Photography
• Schools, Periods & Styles > Modern
• New & Used Textbooks > Humanities