- Paperback: 121 pages
- Publisher: Bantam Doubleday Dell Publishing Group (31 Dec 1976)
- ISBN-10: 0553225618
- ISBN-13: 978-0553225617
- Product Dimensions: 16.8 x 10.4 x 1 cm
- Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (1 customer review)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 1,598,100 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
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Product Description
Synopsis
The author derails the great American myth of modern art in a scathing, witty, uncompromising critique of American art from the 1950s through the 1970s. Reprint. NYT.
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
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Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
14 of 18 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover
I picked up this book as I had nothing left to read. I picked it up and with trepidation began absorbing the first few words and when I looked up again realised that I was thoroughly absorbed and was half way through his diatribe. Tom Wolfe is just plain and simple a masterful writer with intelligence. He speaks of his epiphany (if you will) of when he read an article and it basically summed up that art is not art unless you believe in the theory in it's meaning and thus you see through this to the art. All very pompous really - gone are the days of art being just a painting - no, it's all mish mashed and made literary. And so begins his book, on how modern art became thus and on the le monde and the people behind stating the current frame of mind, the people being the artist the critics the le monde set - not you or I or the average joe - we are told, we are not a part of selecting. He manages to show the hypocrisy of some artists of their bohemian flare, their lament in their work but as fame catapults them then so they take to the bourgeious state of being so easily that they were anti - that where their art came from.
It's thoroughly enjoyable, easy to read and basically shockingly gripping.
It's thoroughly enjoyable, easy to read and basically shockingly gripping.
Most Helpful Customer Reviews on Amazon.com (beta)
Amazon.com:
46 reviews
71 of 74 people found the following review helpful
Number One book in my top ten of all time art books
3 May 2003
Format:Paperback
Can I start by saying that this book "saved my art life"? Let me explain. In 1977 I started art school as a not so impressionable 21 year-old with a few years as a US Navy sailor under my belt. But in the world of art, there's a lot of moulding and impressions being made by a very galvanized world. And although I was a few years older than most in my class... I was probably as ready as any to swallow the whole line and sinker that the "modern art world" floats out there.
Then I read this book - it was given to me by Jacob Lawrence, a great painter and a great teacher --- although I didn't get along with him too well at the time. I read it (almost by accident and against my will --- it was a get-a-way "love weekend" with my then-girlfriend - it went sour. And this book OPENED my EYES!!! It was as if all of a sudden a "fog" had been listed about all the manure and fog that covers the whole art world.
I used it as a weapon.
I used it to defend how I wanted to paint and feel and write. And it allowed me to survive art school.
And then in 1991 - as I prepared to look around to start my own gallery - I found it again, in a gallery (of all places) in Alexandria, VA. I read it again, and to my surprise Wolfe was as topical and effervescent and eye-opening as ever!
Wolfe has a lot of bones to pick with the art world -- 25 years ago!!! He destroys the proliferation of art theory, and puts "art gods" like Harold Rosenberg, Clement Greenberg, and Leo Steinberg (who have ruined art criticism for all ages - by making critics think that they "lead" the arts rather than "follow the artists") into their proper place and perspective. He has a lot of fun, especially with Greenberg and the Washington Color School and their common stupidity about the flatness of the picture plane.
Here's my recommendation: If you are a young art student or a practicing artist: SAVE YOUR LIFE! Read this book!
37 of 40 people found the following review helpful
Satire? No --
26 Jan 2006
Format:Paperback
That would require some element of fiction. This is simply a straight telling (well, almost straight) of the taste-makers and -breakers in the New York art scene of the 1950s to mid-70s. It's already so ludicrous, so filled with poker-faced parodies of sane discussion, that fiction wouldn't be nearly as strange. It's the complete domination of analysis over analyte.
This short book (100 pages, including some amusing cartoons) lampoons the whole theory of art theory as it arose in the salons and saloons of that era. It briefly traces the never-ending search for the new, a Red Queen's race since whatever we have today isn't new enough. In a bizarrely involuted turn, he even describes the rise and fall of different tastes in taste-makers.
If you've ever groaned at the solemn silliness of the intellectoid analyses or nihilist (lazy?) "Conceptual" artists, you'll laugh out loud at Wolfe's descriptions. He runs through the artsy buzz-wording like a buzz-saw.
//wiredweird
This short book (100 pages, including some amusing cartoons) lampoons the whole theory of art theory as it arose in the salons and saloons of that era. It briefly traces the never-ending search for the new, a Red Queen's race since whatever we have today isn't new enough. In a bizarrely involuted turn, he even describes the rise and fall of different tastes in taste-makers.
If you've ever groaned at the solemn silliness of the intellectoid analyses or nihilist (lazy?) "Conceptual" artists, you'll laugh out loud at Wolfe's descriptions. He runs through the artsy buzz-wording like a buzz-saw.
//wiredweird
27 of 31 people found the following review helpful
Tom deliciously skewers the art world
5 Jan 1999
Format:Mass Market Paperback
I read both this book and Linda Weintraub's "Art on the Edge" at the same time. I liked both very much and highly recommend both of them to get a full picture of the modern art world.
Weintraub clearly explains the concepts and theories behind the avante garde art of the 70s-90s, including Jeff Koons, Serrano's (in)famous Piss Christ, etc. Tom Wolfe cries that art theory has taken over art (which necessitates people like Weintraub to explain what's going on), that art is controlled by a clique, that some artists just want to shock the masses and to please the clique, and that the masses need not apply. I think these are very valid points, after all, Vanessa Beecroft posed 20 nude or bikini-clad babes in the Guggenheim and Heilman-C showed actual people having sex (See the 1998 review article in the ArtNet website).
But Tom does not discuss the larger issues: "Is this art? What is art?" That, combined with the fact that Wolfe wrote the book more as an opinion piece rather than the more journalistic approach he took in Electric Kool-Aid, forced me to take a star off.
It should be noted that Tom criticizes the art world's need for something new, where he was the "new" thing in the journalistic world in the 50s and 60s, in the nonfiction world in the 60s and 70s, and in the fiction world in the 80s and 90s. It's like the pot calling the kettle black.
It should also be noted that Tom was part of the art world himself, as he has exhibited his caricatures in NYC galleries. Caricatures, of course, are downplayed in the fine arts world. Keep this possible bias in mind as you read this book.
Nonetheless, the Painted Word is a fun, quick read that should make even the most-hardened boho artist think.
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