Everand Logo

Welcome to Everand!

  • Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

    Only $11.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

    Unavailable
    Who Says That's Art? A Commonsense View of the Visual Arts
    Unavailable
    Who Says That's Art? A Commonsense View of the Visual Arts
    Unavailable
    Who Says That's Art? A Commonsense View of the Visual Arts
    Ebook443 pages6 hours

    Who Says That's Art? A Commonsense View of the Visual Arts

    By Michelle Marder Kamhi

    5/5

    ()

    Currently unavailable

    Currently unavailable

    About this ebook

    Today's artworld experts accept virtually anything as "art"—from all-black paintings and facsimiles of supermarket cartons to dead animals preserved in formaldehyde. Many art lovers reject such things, arguing that they are not art. This book explains why those ordinary people are right and the presumed experts are wrong.

    Museums and galleries around the world are filled with "cutting-edge" contemporary work that art lovers largely detest, while painters and sculptors whose art the public would appreciate are ignored by the cultural establishment.

    How did this happen? What mistaken ideas have led to it? Who is responsible? And what can be done to reverse the situation? Who Says That's Art? answers such questions—in commonsense terms that non-specialists can readily understand.

    Many books have attempted to bridge the gap between the public and the contemporary artworld. What makes this book different? Other writers claim that people need to know the theories behind "advanced" work in order to appreciate it. Who Says That's Art? debunks those theories. Moreover, it reveals the cultural forces that collude to promote pseudo art in the contemporary artworld—from art educators and wealthy collectors to museum administrators and the media.

    Drawing on evidence ranging from cognitive science to cross-cultural studies, the book explains how and why the traditional arts of painting and sculpture profoundly move us. In contrast, it demonstrates the emptiness of the "installations" and "conceptual art" that dominate the postmodernist artworld. Further, it documents the shallowness of the collectors who pay huge sums for works of contemporary "art" such as a shark in a tank of formaldehyde. Surprisingly, however, the author—unlike most conservative critics—argues that the breakdown of the visual arts actually began with the invention of "abstract art" in the early twentieth century, because it rendered art unintelligible.

    In conclusion, Who Says That's Art? highlights the pleasures and rewards of genuine art, both old and new, and suggests how to restore sanity to the contemporary artworld.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherMichelle Marder Kamhi
    Release dateNov 14, 2014
    ISBN9780990605720
    Unavailable
    Who Says That's Art? A Commonsense View of the Visual Arts
    Author

    Michelle Marder Kamhi

    Michelle Marder Kamhi is an independent scholar and critic and co-editor of Aristos (an online review of the arts). She is the author of Who Says That's Art? A Commonsense View of the Visual Arts-lauded by Kirkus Reviews as "forceful and persuasive."Kamhi previously co-authored What Art Is: The Esthetic Theory of Ayn Rand (Open Court, 2000), which dealt with all the major arts and was praised by the American Library Association's Choice magazine for its "well-documented . . . debunking of twentieth-century art . . . and art theory."After graduating from Barnard College, Kamhi earned an M.A. in Art History at Hunter College of the City University of New York. Before joining Aristos in 1984, she had been an editor at Columbia University Press--where she worked on titles in its distinguished Records of Civilization series--and was active as a freelance writer and editor.Kamhi is a member of the American Society for Aesthetics, the National Art Education Association, the National Association of Scholars, and AICA-USA (the International Association of Art Critics - United States). Articles by her have appeared in the Wall Street Journal, Art Education, Arts Education Policy Review, and Epoch Times, among other publications.

    Related authors

    Related to Who Says That's Art? A Commonsense View of the Visual Arts

    Related ebooks

    Art For You

    View More
    View More

    Related podcast episodes

    Related articles

    • Article

      When The Art World Became The Art Market

      Sep 17, 2019

      Michael Shnayerson traces the shift toward big business in “Boom: Mad Money, Mega Dealers, and the Rise of Contemporary Art.”

      3 min read

    • Article

      Journey Of discovery

      Sep 1, 2020

      Journey Of discovery
      5 min read

    • Article

      No/20 Art Of The Home

      Jun 3, 2019

      No/20 Art Of The Home
      1 min read

    • Article

      The Abstract Expressionist

      Oct 25, 2018

      The Abstract Expressionist
      2 min read

    • Article

      Sigmund Freud And The Play On The Burden Of Representation

      Oct 25, 2018

      In 1989 American Conceptual artist Joseph Kosuth created the installation Zero & Not on occasion of the 50th anniversary of Sigmund Freud’s death. It marked the beginning of the Sigmund Freud Museum Contemporary Art Collection featuring outstanding i

      1 min read

    • Article

      Cult Of The Curator

      Mar 1, 2017

      Cult Of The Curator
      4 min read

    • Article

      Letter To Young Artists

      Jul 4, 2022

      Letter To Young Artists
      2 min read

    • Article

      Alice Neel: How to Persevere and Live the Artist’s Life

      Mar 8, 2017

      “Alice loved a wretch. She loved the wretch in the hero and the hero in the wretch. She saw that in all of us, I think.” –Ginny Neel “The self, we have it like an albatross around the neck.” –Alice Neel In the winter of 1931, a 30-year-old painter

      10 min read

    • Article

      Energetic Expressions

      Mar 1, 2020

      Energetic Expressions
      1 min read

    • Article

      Galleries Of The World

      Mar 5, 2018

      Galleries Of The World
      6 min read

    • Article

      AESTHETICS OF drawing

      Aug 7, 2020

      AESTHETICS OF drawing
      4 min read

    • Article

      The Art Of Clay

      Mar 31, 2020

      The Art Of Clay
      5 min read

    • Article

      Len Lye: Motion Composer

      Feb 28, 2020

      Len Lye: Motion Composer
      7 min read

    • Article

      Form And Feeling

      Jun 12, 2020

      Form And Feeling
      8 min read

    • Article

      David Hockney

      Apr 18, 2017

      David Hockney
      1 min read

    • Article

      Triptych by Sonia Delaunay

      May 6, 2020

      Triptych by Sonia Delaunay
      1 min read

    • Article

      Semi Formica

      Aug 13, 2021

      Semi Formica
      12 min read

    • Article

      We Must Become Idealists To Confront This World

      Oct 15, 2020

      Hans Ulrich Obrist April 2020 Serpentine Galleries, London Stefano Boeri Triennale, Milano Cornelia Lauf I thought we’d take the occasion of the world’s circumstances to use this as more than an interview and as a possible manifesto, since we are

      9 min read

    • Article

      The Importance Of A Light Source

      Feb 8, 2018

      The Importance Of A Light Source
      2 min read

    • Article

      COLOUR My Mood

      Jul 29, 2017

      COLOUR My Mood
      4 min read

    • Article

      Indigenous Inspiration

      Oct 16, 2018

      Indigenous Inspiration
      2 min read

    Reviews for Who Says That's Art? A Commonsense View of the Visual Arts

    5/5

    1 rating0 reviews

    What did you think?

    Tap to rate

    Review must be at least 10 words