Art Book recommendation:
I have reading this book on modern art for over 34 years. Although I have not always agreed with some of the critic of Norbert Lynton, he was without any doubt, the most gifted and intelligent writer on twentieth century of modern art.
The first issue was published in 1988 and was updated a year or two later. If you can lay your hands on a copy, new or second hand, I am sure you will find Norbert's writing as enlightening as I have and continue to do so and be woken with pure facts and interesting art theory together with logical and creative analysis.
Spike 2023
I find it agonisingly painful to accept the idea that Art has done very little to help change anything that is palpable in the world today. Art can offer some beauty and perhaps a diversion from reality, now and again, but has Art really changed anything positive for our society at all? For me, art, not unlike sex, had always represented a one on one personal experience, a spiritual connection to something bigger and far more important than the self. You could say a chance for a conversation between oneself, a private few minutes, where the balanced-mind gets to talk to the contemporary pressures of anoverly worked ego thats has been charged up by a consumer brainwashed state of existence. An isolated hour or two without interference from the pressures of modern life. Art is the ideal catalyst for this sort of private conversation and paintings in particular fulfils this function better than most other art forms. It is a singular experience of seeing with ones emotions and not with ones eyes.
Art is subjective, in the much the same way food is. Perhaps that has been the Achilles heel throughout the whole history of modern visual art. This train of thought has made me ponder on the present Art World.
Just how has the art status quo changed over the last fifty decades or so? I asked myself if the artists of the late twentieth century had really become so engrossed in self that they moved away from meditative art values to a far more nihilistic view of making art. It was perhaps “art is what I say it is, not what you think it is” sort of attitude popularised by official curators of National Art exhibition in both public and private galleries that has been perhaps responsible for a contemporary visual art stagnation?
I also wondered if the artist had become so totally self interested in money, fame or the lasting adoration that many creative ego's really yearn for (if they are really honest about why they do art). As if the act of creation became almost secondary.
Seen m
