Recent art theory, in my experience, is a garish lightbox sign set against the brink, usurping the view. Irrespective of the heights it presumes to define, by its endless sentences and outlandish vocabulary it evokes nothing so much as the definitionless nature of the abyss into which you will inevitably stumble if you stand there reading for long enough. In other words it’s largely just obfuscating balderdash. Really, an artist would be well advised to avoid it, afterall the view will still be there long after the texts have crumbled. Unfortunately, modern art education is somewhat fixated on the signage, and the art it has spawned is everywhere eroding the edge, along with the path that got us here. But despair is never as inevitable as it seems, and even in overextended metaphors like this can be returned from. With that in mind, the following links may perhaps be of service. Since it was theory that addled us, let theory provide the remedy. Now all that is needed is to take a few steps back, get a glimpse of the horizon, and all shall be well.
Please note the following links do not necessarily express my opinion, they are included here so that interested readers might form their own opinions. Which is not to say, however, that bias had no bearing on their selection.
- The Art Story – a handy, most elegant summary of the history of modern art, including its critics, theorists and practitioners. Its a WIP, and reads a bit like a suspect lineup.
- Postmodernism’s Assault on Western Culture, by Giles Auty
- The Life of the Mind – an interview with Roger Kimball
- The ARC Philosophy
- Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy – a handy resource worth the link if only for the slideshow of philosopher’s portraits on the homepage.
- Aristos
- Art Papers
- The Art of the Last Man by Miles Mathis
- The Painter of Modern Life, by Charles Baudelaire
- The Reluctant Death of Modernism, by Michael Pearce
- Hegel’s End of Art Thesis – Arthur C. Danto
- Is it Art? – Arthur C. Danto interview on Philosopher’s Zone, transcript
- Art is Dead – a short conversation. Phyliss Lui: ‘The danger, I suppose, of defining art has led to this ultimate demise and complete eradication of aesthetics in art’.
- A New International Surrealist’s Look at Progress, Overcoming and the Irreversibility of the Avante-garde, Massurrealism and The Death of Art by Terrance Lindall, Provocateur
- the heavy hitters: Jacques Maritain; Edmund Burke; Schiller; Kant; Hegel; someone stop me. Suggestions/missing personages welcome.
- The letter of His Holiness Pope John Paul II to artists, 1999 – an abyss of…light!
- Sign of the Times – Christopher Allen’s critique of Jenny Holzer at the Center for Contemporary Art in Melbourne
- The Philosophy of Kitsch – Richard T. Scott
- Geoform - A scholarly resource, curatorial project, and international forum whose focus is the use of geometric form and structure in contemporary abstract art
- The Way of Beauty – More on form, and other elements besides, in an approach to the theory of art that has a uniquely ‘Catholic’ eye – sharpened by living the liturgy and focused on the glory of God – by David Clayton
- A pertinent discussion of phds
