archive

Art-world politics explained

Research finds the "cultural elite" brought up on opera and the higher arts, which supposedly turns up its nose at anything as vulgar as a pop song or mainstream television, does not exist. Art-world politics explained: A review of Visual Shock: A History of Art Controversies in American Culture by Michael Kammen. Is Cubism's revolution behind us? If you think Picasso's work didn't last, keep looking. More and more on A Life of Picasso by John Richardson. A review of Art of the Everyday: Dutch Painting and the Realist Novel by Bernard Yeazell. A review of Architecture of the Absurd: How "Genius" Disfigured a Practical Art by John Silber (and more). More and more on Peter Gay's Modernism. An interview with Umberto Eco on the value of charm over beauty.