Best books on contemporary art?

Most people who read theory. None of those books are obscure

My name is Frank and I live in Seattle

I'm Josephine, I'm a french librarian who enjoys contemporary art, nice to meet you.

Post pussy

those are all canonical texts, friend

...

>written by a woman
>defends modern art

Into the trash it goes

Why is contemporary art so based, bros?

>jabs at art they couldn't make
>post about it on Veeky Forums

Into the trash it goes

I actually studied Art History modules in University. I've been to the Guggenheim, the Met, Tate modern.
I know my Warhols, my Rothko's and my Hirsts. I can talk the talk and could write an honors grade dissertation on any artist. But its all bullshit, its a self perpetuating pseudo-discourse which is ultimately founded on nothing. Barely above the status of high fashion in its absurdity and pantomime.
The only true artists of worth in the last half century were Lucien Freud and Francis Bacon. The rest in the visual canon are simply self conscious clowns at best or at worst cynical monsters (premier example Hirst)

protip: you're clueless

because it's next level shit

Not even Picasso?

>protip: you're clueless

The lowly charlatan, pressed into a corner, reverts to claiming secret knowledge he conveniently can't express

You're such a fucking pleb. I bet you aren't even from New York.

I've studied in a University. I've been in art galleries.

I was talking about postmodern art. I love Picasso

You just claimed to be able to write an honors grad dissertation on any artist.

Just reminding you.

Write something about Duchamp.

Yet you can't make an argument.
My biggest problem with post-modern art is discourse has completely superseded the immanent experience. Have you honestly ever viewed one of the recent greats and experienced their works remotely akin to their official narratives in academia? Its a ludicrous situation

'Duchamp in his seminal work spearheads the attempt to grapple with Europes crisis of consciousness following the first World War provokes a revolutionary upheavel in sculpture as he reverses the relationship between middle class industrial consumption and bourgeois art. In this essay I will be exploring the relationship between his work and the standardization of military munitions as reflected in French and English literature.'

God I would flunk you so hard.

You might and Id deserve it but the average examiner wouldn't. They're stupid as fuck

if this was still 2011 i'd post that picture with watch out we've got a badass over here written on it
having been to three art galleries and done a module on art history just so you can get some credits and gawp at the girls in the class doesn't make you an expert

Post modern

...

My believe is there are no experts in this area. I have a ton of respect for genuine art historians and critics who have an authentic engagement and knowledge of works but when it comes to post-modern pieces there just simply isn't anything there except a convenient vacuum to get a shot at tenure. Its all office politics

>My believe is there are no experts in this area
this is true. no one knows what's happening right now.

>not defending fontana
brainlet

You seem to actually think you're special because you figured out how to bullshit your way through essay form.

Essays aren't a tool for tricking people into thinking you have something of substance to say. People who write this way are huxters that lead anyone unfortunate enough to read them astray.

Matey if you don't change your attitude it's gonna be a hard, long life.

>Essays aren't a tool for tricking people into thinking you have something of substance to say. People who write this way are huxters that lead anyone unfortunate enough to read them astray.

Many people make lucrative careers from exactly this though. I don't respect it or want to be part of that game but its there.
It seems to be to be an economic fact that there's money to be made in telling people any piece of junk is valuable and there's nothing to be made in telling the truth.

The only thing that makes me curious is how the art world is going to learn to deal with internet imagery and memes. The current attitude seems to just be to act as if it doesn't exist but this can't last especially with how incredibly powerful image bases discourse has become.

Truth is the last fucking thing anyone on earth wants to hear.

>The current attitude seems to just be to act as if it doesn't exist
maybe it's because there's no money or fame in it

>The only thing that makes me curious is how the art world is going to learn to deal with internet imagery and memes.
it remains to be seen if it has any lasting importance. also, the most suitable repository for internet art is the internet itself, so it is unlike that e.g. giant prints of pepe the frog will reside next to turner seascapes on gallery walls. but i have seen a few exhibitions about "protest art" etc recently and some memes would possibly fit that description so who knows.
however recognition of digital art is growing. last year i went to the david hockney exhibition at the tate modern. hockney mainly works on an ipad now and they had large screens showing his ipad works.
there is also an ongoing project, project pericles. that looks at how to preserve "time based art" including digital media
and later this year at the v&a there will be an exhibition about the art of videogames

>modern art explained
>photograph depicts a piece by Lucio Fontana, a contemporary artist

giv books recs

On the Necessity of Art's Exit from Contemporary Art

>lasting importance
why the need for this criteria?

To me its less of a matter of technology as much as culture. Pepe the frog may not belong in a museum but there has to be some attempt to describe what the fuck is Pepe anyway. It not literally, in a parralel sense. I suppose that's what I mean about the role of art in this area, I want to see artists trying to elucidate or expand on these strange emerging ways we're communicating and identifying ourselves and our conflicts. Not the medium itself but why certain strange images and ideas are so provocative

i don't tend to read general books about modern art movements except the occasional one like which unfortunately seems to have drawn a few wilfully ignorant goons out of the woodwork like however will gompertz did a good overview book not long ago, pic related
usually i just read books about individual artists or exhibitions
but the best way to understand art is to go and see it. i live not far from london so i have some of the world's best galleries available to me. i'm a member at some of them and i go to all the exhibitions. i went to the modigliani exhibition a couple of weeks ago and i had mixed feelings about it.

>recommendation from the Guardian

internet art is what comes after postmodern art

God help us all

steve jobs is modern day picasso

and this is the future, boys. not hockney and his ipad, lol

for physical art, because the amount of art that has been created throughout history greatly exceeds the amount of space in the world's art galleries. not everything can be, or should be, preserved. there are many other reasons but as it is 3am here i don't really want to write a dissertation.

of course this does not necessarily apply if digital art is stored entirely digitally. but some criteria still need to be applied so that future generations can filter out stuff that has no importance. if i draw a cock and balls in windows paint and post it here, it may be preserved indefinitely one one of those weird archive sites that copy Veeky Forums threads but it doesn't mean it should have the same importance attached to it as say a steve mccurry photograph

it does make me wonder what future generations will think of all the billions of duckface selfies posted to instagram

u r a dum dum

>wilfully ignorant goons
the only one ignorant of the distinction between 'modern' and 'contemporary' seems to be you

Ew. This is why I ordered the blue cover even though I'm in Europe

Only sophomore pseuds get autistic about this. Knowledgeable people accept the ambigious common use of "modern"

'Modern' in that ambiguous sense is used solely in the domain of pop-criticism publications aimed at laymen, like the ones you posted.

I'm a different dude than who posted that. But yeah it looks like a dumbass book

please indicate in what way you are not a "layman"

he's an ipad artist

I'm fairly well-read in contemporary art theory and criticism. those books are written for those who are not

>I'm fairly well-read in contemporary art theory and criticism

why do you care for that shit?

What would be your recommendation?

you're still a layman
and goodness me you're an awful pseud too

sure thing, modernpleb

So what is not art?

Crisis of the modern world by Rene Guenon

>Barely above the status of high fashion in its absurdity and pantomime
Oh user we need to have a SERIOUS talk

It may still be art, but we will have finally lost the final remnants of imbuement of human soul and spirit, how sad. The last truly human art movements were the Abstract Expressionists and the School of London. The painting is a physical embodiment of pure human expression, motion, emotion. The painting is sculptural and powerful. Digital 'art' doesn't even begin to compare; It is emotionless and sterile.

kanye is that you?

Why is contemporary art so often "dude its like,,, [popular thing] but big/funny coloured/abstracted lmao"

>The only true artists of worth in the last half century were Lucien Freud and Francis Bacon.

Not even Euan Uglow or Jonathan Wateridge?

Video art and VR are the next step forward

whats the point on reading about visual art when it's so difficult to have some sort of tangible access to it? sure i can google the artists name and see .png of their work, but it just seems so... out of context. i live in nowhere. there are no galleries here. i wish i could read about all this shit but i sense my investment will signifiy venturing into a rather elusive world

My name is John and I live in Toronto, I study mathematics, and enjoy literature and promoting Marxism in my free time.

Hey, I kinda like Hirst

If you want something to watch for a bit there are three really good BBC series which you can find on YouTube on art.

Civilisation, it’s a 13 part series on the history of western culture, focusing at lot on art and architecture. It’s notable for its very conservative and traditional, extremely British point of view. It’s a not unreasonable primer to get up to the present.

The Shock of the New, is an 8 episode exploration of the history of Modern Art, from the birth of Impressionism to the end of pop art. Being the BBC it’s also pretty conservative in tone, but pretty widely regarded as being high quality.

Ways of Seeing, a Four Part series made with an explicitly Marxist point of view, with the goal of showing how various works of art embed ideology and structures of power in society.

All three of these are well regarded, and on YouTube so if you’ve got the time, watch them. All these have companion books also.

Not only interesting for beginners but also for those looking for comprehensible and well written contemporary art critique.

You should check out Arthur Danto. He’s written extensively to develop your main point there, but with a bit more positive disposition. His basic thesis is that art history ‘ended’, in the Hegelian sense, after art objects became indistinguishable from non-art objects, apart from the fact of being located in a gallery. He locates the last work of art in Art History of Andy Warhol’s Brillo Boxes. After this he sees art as having converged with philosophy, meaning that art IS academic discourse, and the creation of new aesthetic objects is basically just decoration.

cool cover. i saw that harrier and jaguar installation at tate britain a couple of years ago. it was incredible.

i like hirst too but you could have at least chosen the decomposing cow head

>a couple of years ago
i just looked it up and it was 2010-2011. fucking hell. time flies
also it turns out the planes were (probably) just sold for scrap afterwards. shame really

Alfons Schilling did it cooler

I have considered this idea but I find it frankly disgusting. The role of art is to transcend and shatter discourse. The situation you're speaking of says to me "The bad guys won"

georges didi-huberman oeuvre btfo danto amongst others so hard its not even funny

give me the basic gestalt

nice book retard

Defining Contemporary Art
25 Years in 200 Pivotal Artworks
Phaidon

i am you

drukqs

all my uncomfortable borderline nightmare dreams are about icycalm these days
I can't take this anymore

i'm with you
not sure i'd spare Freud or Bacon tho
try these OP:
The Invention of Art: A Cultural History (2001) Dr. Larry Shiner

The Mating Mind: How Sexual Choice Shaped the Evolution of Human Nature (2000)
Geoffrey F. Miller
ontherapyaspse.files.wordpress.com/2012/04/geoffrey-miller-the-mating-mind.pdf

ITT: Reasons why the West is falling. Cultural stagnation will be our downfall.

>the relationship between his work and the standardization of military munitions
????

true

does david hockney also post on /ic/?

>there has to be some attempt to describe what the fuck is Pepe anyway
i saw an exhibition called 'Hacktivism' in Paris in the 90's doing just that