Cynthia Freeland

This is an excellent entry in the very short introductions series. Read this one instead of the art history one. It covers quite a bit of the same ground but provides more thoughtful and thought-provoking coverage.

The author provide clear and useful explanations of both classical, modern and post modern theories of art. I appreciate her ability to both give a fair presentation of ideas while challenging their validity.

While the theories presented are interesting and sometimes useful, show more personally I am more skeptical than her (and most of the theorists she discusses) of the “moral” or political value of art. Humans have and always will use art as a source of political power or economic exploitation or mass control. Trying to apply moral (good vs bad) or political (progressive vs fascist) categories is ultimately an exercise in futility and inevitably misleading. Nonetheless, human creativity is what defines our species, and authentic artistic expression will endure no matter what medium is used to express it. show less

This book was first published in 2001 and it shows. It starts off with a quick account of 1990s controversies about artworks. It then explains Hume's and Kant's ideas about art and assigns later thinkers to one camp or the other. It attempts a cross-cultural view and then ponders how museums and other collectors affect art. Next up is a chapter on gender and sexuality, and then a chapter each on cognitive psychology and art and digital art.

The book needed a lot more careful editing. show more Although there are a fair number of b/w illustrations, there are references to "Plates" which do not exist. The chapter on gender and sexuality in art has a line about Mapplethorpe's photographs and a line saying Schubert may or may not have been gay and that is all the author has to say about sexuality in art. Queerbaiting at its finest.

All in all a disappointment. show less

A very easy to read overview of a few art theories (bad on Kant; okay on Hume; good on feminism/ritual theory), and Freeland's chosen theory is a solid one as far as it goes. She has Dewey's idea that art is somehow metonymic of a 'culture' and can be understood cognitively as well as emotionally or aesthetically institutional art theory's point that art is just what a community says art is.

But she never deals with the obvious objection: institutional art theory can only exist in modern and show more post-modern contexts. This is difficult to express without self-contradiction, I apologize: if art isn't cut off from everyday life (e.g., stained glass windows are set in the context of prayer rather than a museum), it makes no sense to have an institutional art theory. Now consider the social and cultural requirements for a theory of this kind, and ask yourself if this is the kind of art theory you want. Maybe it is, but maybe we want a theory that's more aspirational.

For instance, I'm worried about the effect that institutional art theory has on the future production of art: it seems to damn us to endless cycles of critique and recuperation, of shocks that are shocking for about fifteen seconds before they get commodified by those who have the money to tell the rest of us what art might be (and that includes 'shocks' like performance art that supposedly resists commodification, but in much the same way that tie-died T-shirts resisted commodification, i.e., not much). In this situation, Dewey's art is metonymic of culture bit suggests very little about our culture other than the fact that it's decadent, unimaginative, backward looking and slightly pathetic. And I'm pretty sure there's more going on than that.

Anyway, this is a thought-provoking book that you can read after lunch and before afternoon tea. show less

I began this book with moderately high hopes. They were quickly dashed, but partially redeemed in later chapters.

The one thing that this book, like pretty much any book purporting to offer some sort of explanation of art, does not do is problematize art. That is, nowhere does it discuss what distinguishes art from not-art. It considers several suggestions put forth by others, and briefly discusses what all art must have in common; but it finally accepts an expansive definition of art show more dependent upon intention, which is great as long as you know who the artist was and what they were thinking, but problematic when you don't. The reason for this is it's the only definition that can accommodate everything that anyone has ever called art (although I think it doesn't work very well with respect to Dada). But in doing so, it accepts that anything anyone has ever called art actually is art: which makes it useless for distinguishing, theoretically, between art and not-art. This is an important point because the amount of variation accepted as art will strongly affect the relevance and significance of different art theories. It is also an ironic point to find at the beginning of a book entitled Art Theory.

Anyway.

In the first chapter's discussion of Andres Serrano's "Piss Christ," so much is made of what the work is not, that I was left without a clear idea of what it is. The subsequent attempt to situate it within a long-term artistic tradition is disingenuous. I'm not saying it's not a work of art, just that this book does not make a convincing case.

Chapter 3 is basically an introductory anthropology unit on why ethnocentrism is bad. Chapter 4 is basically a lament of the influence of money and markets on art, without doing much to consider it dispassionately as one of art's many influences. It leaves a distinct sense that art should be pure and unsullied by crass worldly concerns. Chapter 5 considers the influence of artists' life experiences on their work, primarily looking at sexuality. It concludes that sometimes it is an important influence, and sometimes it's not. The final two chapters are actually fairly decent: the first of them is the most philosophical chapter in the book, and the latter takes a look at electronic art.

The book refers occasionally to literature and music as well as painting and photography, but I do not recall any discussion of architecture. This is disappointing because architecture is the most public art form.

All in all, it's not bad, but it's not particularly good, either. It takes a strictly academic-art perspective, but academics are only a small part of the art world. If I knew of a better intro to art theory, I'd recommend it. But I don't know of any others, at least not now. I found that in attempting to simplify the subject it oversimplified, making it seem too simple, too easy in parts. show less