Rating: 
Summary: the art world exposed...again!
Review: Artists: Are you tired of the gallery system? Tired of being told that your work won't sell, that realism is dead (killed by the camera)? Fight back -- read this book.Art lovers: Know what you like? Find out why you don't like a lot of the garbage that is currently on display as art in the galleries, especially in New York City. Read this book.
Rating: 
Summary: Number One book in my top ten of all time art books
Review: 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!
Rating:
Summary: Wolfe, again, to the rescue
Review: I like to think of myself as an intelligent, discriminating person with independent views. But I have gone along with style and said things like "Cubism is clearly in a progression from Impressionism and they from the great ones of the Rennaissance and beyond. You have to understand Rembrandt before you can understand Jasper Johns". What a lot of nonsense. It still ought to be possible to like Jackson Pollack and hold your head up, but please dispense with the balloney. Art History is both difficult and subtle; but it's also right in front of your face. Why do we need Tom Wolfe to explain to us what we ought to know already? (And how does he reatain any of his friends?) I don't know, but it's been true ever since The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test and it's true here. It won't take much of your time to read this book, but it will help to make you a better - or at least a more sensible - person.
Rating:
Summary: Wolfe, again, to the rescue
Review: I like to think of myself as an intelligent, discriminating person with independent views. But I have gone along with style and said things like "Cubism is clearly in a progression from Impressionism and they from the great ones of the Rennaissance and beyond. You have to understand Rembrandt before you can understand Jasper Johns". What a lot of nonsense. It still ought to be possible to like Jackson Pollack and hold your head up, but please dispense with the balloney. Art History is both difficult and subtle; but it's also right in front of your face. Why do we need Tom Wolfe to explain to us what we ought to know already? (And how does he reatain any of his friends?) I don't know, but it's been true ever since The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test and it's true here. It won't take much of your time to read this book, but it will help to make you a better - or at least a more sensible - person.
Rating:
Summary: Tom deliciously skewers the art world
Review: 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.
Rating:
Summary: What a hoot
Review: I was talking to an artist friend of mine about selling art versus creating art and she let me know about this little gem of a book. Tom Wolfe is a master at puncturing the pretentions of society and he clearly enjoyed himself immensely here. Given my lack of art background, I also learned something about the small community of artists and critics that dominate the fine arts sceen. Art of the expression of theory was a new idea to me. If you've ever seen a modern work and thought to yourself, "Huh!" this is the book for you.
Rating:
Summary: What a hoot
Review: I was talking to an artist friend of mine about selling art versus creating art and she let me know about this little gem of a book. Tom Wolfe is a master at puncturing the pretentions of society and he clearly enjoyed himself immensely here. Given my lack of art background, I also learned something about the small community of artists and critics that dominate the fine arts sceen. Art of the expression of theory was a new idea to me. If you've ever seen a modern work and thought to yourself, "Huh!" this is the book for you.
Rating:
Summary: Now I get it
Review: I've always had a fascination with highly creative people, enjoyed jazz that was ahead of its time, the things that broke the earlier bounds. But I never could understand fashionable contemporary art. Wolfe has explained to why this is so. It turns out that I'm not supposed to understand it; it's intended for an exclusive audience, and my lack of understanding is what validates it to the people for whom it is intended. Suddenly, it all makes perfect sense to me, and as I think about acquaintances who do immerse themselves in the contemporary art scene, my observations correlate directly with Wolfe's. Where the book falls short is that it fails to recognize that this remains art. It might be odiously exclusive, but it's still a communication between the artist and the intended audience. In fact, Wolfe has probably helped me understand this communication better than I ever did. A good thought-provoking read; I take some glee in the fact that art world snobs thought he was skewering them (and perhaps Wolfe thought he was, too), but really, he's just explaining the mechanisms at work. And of course, it has some classic Wolfe lines, especially a laugh-out-loud description of young female admirers doing "Culture pouts through their Little Egypt eyes." Worth it for that line alone.
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Summary: Artistis and Aristocrats are Amply, Ably Abused
Review: The Painted Word is part of a pleasant little triptych of social commentary produced by Tom Wolfe in the 70s (more or less) of which Radical Chic and From Bauhaus to Our House make up the other titles. Even with lots of pictures, whitespace and margin, Painted Word only runs to 99 pages. I bought all three and read them over the course of a weekend, what with travel time and all. Tom Wolfe very devastatingly takes a prominent Modern Art critic's unwittingly accurate sentence and elaborates it into a social, cultural and intellectual critique of the prentensions and foibles of this tiny self-referntial world. This is a send-up, a satire, and a de-bunking. And a field for which such a come-uppance, if not long overdue, was at the least fully due for just this particular sort of biting insightful up-comeance. Wolfe takes us through the motives and psychological drama of the three actors in this story - the Artist, the Patron, and the Critic. The Artist has undergone a change as his role evolved from the glorification of the royals in the Old World to the affliction of the middle class in the New: "The modern picture of The Artist began to form: the poor but free spirit, plebian but aspiring only to be classless, to cut himself forever free from the bonds of the greedy and hypocritical bourgeoisie, to be whatever the fat burghers feared most, to cross the line wherever they drew it, to look at the world in a way they couldn't see, to be high, live low, stay young forever - in short, to be the bohemian." It is ultimately up to Warhol, of course, to perfect this stance Warholicly: "Warhol learned fast, however, and he soon knew how to take whatever he wanted. The bohemian, by definition, was one who did things the bourgeois didn't dare do. True enough, said Warhol, and he added an inspired refinement: nothing is more bourgeois than to be afraid to look bourgeois. True to his theory, he now goes about in button-down shirts, striped ties, and ill-cut tweed jackets, like a 1952 Holy Cross pre-med student." In the meantime, the idle, inherited rich have to cleanse their money: "That is why collecting contemporary art, the leading edge, the latest thing, warm and wet from the Loft, appeals specifically to those who feel most uneasy about their own commercial wealth." Yet they nonetheless, being humans and not theory processing machines, do find themselves drawn to things they can actually understand: "We may it as a principle at this point that collectors of contemporary art do not want to buy highly abstract art unless it's the only game in town. They will always prefer realistic art instead - as long as someone in authority assures them that it is (a) new, and (b) not realistic" This is Wolfe, not at his finest, for there is a certain sort of botanist's plodding categorization of the ecosystem at work here, but nonetheless at his sparkling-intermittent-burst best. The art `warm and wet from the Loft' is a delicious turn of phrase in so many ways and will be my favorite keepsake from this work. As for the Critic, that is Wolfe's primary topic in this piece, and, being a short piece, I won't ruin or summarize it for you. He does end with a bold prediction for the Year 2000, so you do have something to look forward to. This book is a good buy for Tom Wolfe lovers, modern art skeptics and free-thinkers, and the social and cultural commentariat. It's a bit less broad in its appeal than Wolfe's other works, including Radical Chic, so peruse the "Look Inside" pages first to make sure you like the style.
Rating: 
Summary: Come And Get Me!
Review: This short tract of a book sets out a single, streamlined argument: that twentieth-century art is really a series of art theories (such as Abstract Expressionism or Pop Art) as illustrated by certain works responsive to these theories: the theory, crucially, preceded and influenced - rather than reacted to - artistic experminent. Wolfe singles out Clement Greenberg, Harold Rosenberg and Leo Steinberg - critics rather artists themselves - who in this way exerted the real shaping influence on the development of art in the last century. How? Simply by determining the tastes of the purveying 'culturati' and thus the activites of the artists they patronized. The simplicity of the argument is both its strength and weakness. Strength because it facilitates a brisk, exclamatory, copious prose style capable of persuasive-seeming overviews. Weakness because potential objections and qualifications are skimmed over in silence. However, this is a popular polemic, not an academic treatise, and in this capacity it works extremely well: its basic premise is strong enough in itself not to look shaky and it is delivered with wit, panache and infectious enthusiasm. Successfully provocative.
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