ART OF OUR OWN

Rating:
Summary: Excellent
Review: I picked up this wonderful book after seeing a recommendation in Arthur Danto's column, which noted that Lipsey is one of the few writers who can address the spiritual in modern art in a clear-cut way. I couldn't agree more. If more writers and critics had this facility perhaps the contempory artists whose work is most enriching (Brice Marden, Agnes Martin, Astrid Colomar, etc.) would be properly viewed those who are most related to the origiginal pioneers of modern painting. As Lipsey demonstrates, the primary impetus for these pioneers was metaphysiscal rather than formalist. Were it not for Lipsey and precious few others, this crucial element of the history of modern painting would be all but lost in the vast majority of contemporary scholarship.

Rating:
Summary: a very important chronicle of twentieth century art
Review: Lipsey describes the social and political scene that surrounded each of the major styles in art that have emerged in the twentieth century and describes the art forms and thinking of many of the well-known artists within each movement--Cezanne's relentless pursuit of the essence of nature, Kandinsky's definitions of the spiritual quality of color and form, the poetry of structure in Cubism, Dada and Duchamp in reaction to World War I, the Russian Avant- Garde and Malevich's Suprematism as integral to the Revolution of 1917, and the domination of abstract art after World War II. Lipsey's theme is that "Twentieth century art embodied a stronger and wiser spirituality than we have fully acknowledged," and his choice of artists is governed not by the degree of their fame, but by the degree to which they succeeded in embodying a contemporary spirituality. Modern art is a statement of philosophy that differs from previous eras, Lipsey posits, in part because "t! wentieth-century artists have for the most part worked individually and without formal adherence to religious or spiritual traditions." Lipsey's careful and thoughtful exploration of the spiritual in twentieth-century art has enormously enlarged this reader's ability to see abstract art and benefit from the experience.