Art versus Nonart: Art out of Mind

by Tsion Avital, John G. Harries

Overview

Tsion Avital poses the question: "Is modern art—art at all?" He argues that the nonrepresentational art produced in the twentieth century was not actually art, but rather the debris of the visual tradition it replaced. Modern art has thrived on the state of total confusion existing 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.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780521154802
Publisher:	Cambridge University Press
Publication date:	04/14/2011
Series:	Contemporary Artists and their Critics
Edition description:	Reissue
Pages:	462
Product dimensions:	6.69(w) x 9.61(h) x 0.94(d)

Table of Contents

Preface; Introduction: the twentieth century: the era of nonart; Part I. Disillusionment: 1. Art in a paradigmatic crisis; 2. Modern art and the logic of pretense; 3. Is there abstraction in abstract art?; 4. Aesthetics in the service of the new barbarism; Part II. Mind and Art: 5. Mindprints: the structural shadows of mind-reality?; 6. The breakdown of hierarchy in twentieth-century art and its implications for present and future art; 7. Is figurative representation arbitrary? A reexamination of the Conventionalist view of art and its implications for nonfigurative art; 8. Symmetry: the connectivity principle of art; Epilog: ashes to ashes and beyond; Appendix; Notes; References; Index.