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Sculpture in the Age of Doubt (Aesthetics Today)
Books: Text Books: Aesthetics: Item 1
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Sculpture in the Age of Doubt (Aesthetics Today)by Thomas McEvilley
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4 of 5 people found the following review helpful: Too Easy, September 5, 2002 Reviewer: A readerThis book has many fine insights and analyses of artworks, as has alreday been said in previous online reviews. But the theoretical construction of a "Modernism" as an "age of certainty" totally devoted to the dogmas og Kantian aesthetics is highly problematic. All interesting art since 1850 has posed questions and tread unknown ground. Scepticism and doubt is no new or postModern thing. This is one of several of McEvilley's theoretical constructions where he goes about important issues way too easily.
From Library Journal
In a series of dense, thoughtful essays on sculpture and sculptors from Duchamp to today, McEvilley (art history, Rice Univ.) argues that the dissolution of belief and trust in this century--the rise of skepticism and doubt about universal truth and common assumptions--is reflected in the interdependent development of sculpture and postmodern theory. He is at his best in showing this interdependence in the works of individual artists such as Jannis Kounellis, Lucas Samaras, and Louise Bourgeois, but the reading will be hard going at times for those not deeply immersed in postmodern critical theory. Still, McEvilley does look at the works of art, which ground his discussion, and the essays do reinforce one another in the end. Recommended for academic collections supporting graduate art studies.
-Jack Perry Brown, art Inst. of Chicago Lib.
Copyright 2000 Reed business Information, Inc.
Arthur C. Danto
"As painting was the paradigm for Modernist theory, sculpture is its counterpart for post-Modernist practice. But where the spirit of Modernism was reductive, post-Modernism's is expansive, radically opening the concept of sculpture up, and reinventing sculptural aesthetics. McEvilley has succeeded in seeing our present period of art history synoptically and at the same time in great detail. The book is an essay in speculative art history and in intensely focused critical concentrations on some of the major sculptural figures. That makes it a most valuable guide for the perplexed which means all of us who endeavor to make sense of the moment and its monuments."
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