Word: artful
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...Gist:Of all of the assorted manners of creative expression - cinema, literature, dance, theater, music, architecture - visual art is the most inscrutable. It is swaddled in layers of pretension, seemingly produced, discussed, and traded by a rare, elite few. Yet, as Thornton argues, more people seem to be buying and consuming art than ever before. Structured as a series of seven day-long dips into the community's various subcultures, Thornton's book explores (among other things) the floating jealousies at a high-end auction, the exhausting, freewheeling process of an art school critique session, and the machinations behind...
Highlight Reel:1. On Christie's chief auctioneer, Christopher Burge: "Many would die to get their hands on Burge's highly confidential 'book.' It's a sort of script for the sale. Tonight's contains sixty-four pages, one for each lot of art. A single page contains an annotated chart of where everyone is sitting, marked with who is expected to bid and whether that person is an aggressive buyer or a 'bottom-feeder' looking for a bargain. On each page Burge has also recorded the amounts left by absentee bidders, the seller's reserve (the price under which...
...asking "What is an artist?" to students at the California Institute of the Arts: "Reactions were so aggressive that I came to the conclusion that I must be violating some taboo. When I asked the students, they looked completely shocked. "That's not fair!" said one. "You can't ask that!" said another. An artist with a senior position in a university art department accused me of being "stupid," and a major curator said, "Ugh. All your questions are only answerable in a way that is almost tautological. I mean, for me, an artist is someone who makes art...
...Lowdown: By attacking the art world from all angles (artists, dealers, exhibitors, critics, students), Thornton gives us a one-stop tutorial on an often insular subculture. Accessible to even those who couldn't care less about art, Seven Days is light-hearted but sociologically acute, allowing us to both laugh at and empathize with those for whom "contemporary art has become a kind of alternative religion." As Thornton writes, "For many art world insiders...concept-driven art is a kind of existential channel through which they bring meaning to their lives. It demands leaps of faith, but it rewards...
...people out of power to criticize the ones in power. It's certainly the way of the American left. Whereas the right usually stays loyal to its public officials through thin and thinner, the left often creates a Platonic ideal that few politicians, schooled in the art of compromise, can satisfy...