Defining art has been one of the most persistent problems of aesthetics. Danto does not surrender under the Wittgnesteinian skepticism but tries to find the answer to the problem of definition from a different place. Danto emphasizes the relevance of context and historicality of art. The Brillo Box could not have been a work of art in 18th century France.

I think philosophers haven't still quite understood Danto completely. The main source of misunderstanding is that people seem to think that Danto supports the institutional theory of art, which he doesn't. This will become very apparent after reading this book. He barely mentions the word artworld in this book.

This book is a classic. It's fun to read and Danto's knowledge of the history of art is huge. I would like to translate this book into Finnish but unfortunately the title cannot be traslated fluently.

One of the best philosophical works of the latter 20th century. Ranks alongside Goodman's 'Fact, Fiction and Forecast'. Of interest not merely to philosophers of aesthetics but also to anyone interested in problems of representation and ontology. A must for any serious student of the arts.

For any scholar of aesthetics or modern art theory this book isa must. It only falls short in establishing a general theory of art that is applicable to all art forms (such as architecture and music), which Danto claims to be doing (but who has not?). Still, his insight remains crucial to understanding art forms and their meaning in the 20th century.

This is what a book on an artist should be, lots of nice big images, early to current work(presented chronologically) and not too much BS, except for an essay written by Steve Martin(yes the comedian).

.........But the more I look at the book, the more I think Fischl has quality control issues. The more I look at it, the more bad paintings I notice. Don't get me wrong, this is a great book and Fischl has done some great paintings, but the more you look at this book, the more you notice how bad he can be at times-quality control. Some of the paintings should have never left the studio except in a dumpster but when your getting as much money as he gets for work.................... I imagine its hard not to think everything you make is great, when you get the "status" he has as an artist.

but this isn't an art critique, this is a great book on a well know contemporary artist. If you like Fischl, this is the book to get and it may give you more insight then you want, if you have any asthetic sensibilities.

Integrading wireless data technology with assorted meats and cheeses.

During my first year of Graduate school towards earning my MFA I was asked if I had ever heard of Ida Appleboorg. I admitted that I had never heard of her and asked what she did. After a brief conversation ending with me writing down her name and promising I would look into her work I went to the university's library. They had a couple books and I spent hours pouring through them over and over until I knew I wanted to see more.

I ordered this book and have about worn it out. First it is a beautiful full color book with a beautiful format. It contains both installation and individual views of her work. I really was able to get a sense of the artist and how she paints. It is a beautiful book and a broad introduction to a great contemporary artist. What a role model for young female artists.

Beneath the facade of Art-talker, museum director and starving artist (in early years), Russell Connor has a wicked wit, a gifted mind and is a supreme painter. In "Masters in Pieces", a collection of his works, he juxtaposes magnificant copies of paintings by different artists, even different eras on the same canvas with glee. Imagine Manet and Goya on the same canvas, as "The Spanish Visitors," and you get the gist. Elements of Renoir's "Luncheon of the Boating Party" and Gauguin's "Tahitian Women with Mango Blossoms" appear to Connor's world as "Club Tahiti."

His is an exercise in intellect and art, asking us to override all the art cliches and art history in our mind, and look at things differently.

In addition to the more classical canvases, Connor has also created a number of shirts with messages for our times (an illustration from Picasso's "Guernica" on a Right-to-Life shirt or Raphael's "Madonna and Child" on a Planned Parenthood shirt.)

Iconoclast to many, Russell's hijacking of the masters tweaks our mind, tests our wit, always just short of "STOP THIEF!"

What shines thru is his "mastery of the artist." His are skilled reproductions of the Masters, albeit a bit rearranged. While he describes himself as a "pirate," he is truly "an artist of his own time."

This published collection is well worth owning and sharing; it will provoke lively discussion.

For those of you who are interested in philospohy in general, this book is an excellent collection of briefs from philosphers from Plato to Firestone. The most interesting aspect of this text is that it addresses the subject that most philosophy books refuse to touch upon - LOVE. Most often, philosophers are associated with their views on religion, politics, or the basic human existence. This book is such a great treat to read because of the subject matter. Love is a subject in which we can all relate. The book is approximately 3 inches thick, with excerpts from many different philosophers, but the great thing is that you can pick it up at your leisure, read a few different excerpts, ponder the subject of love, and put the book back down. It is not a book that you read cover to cover. Another interesting aspect of the book is that no matter what your views on love or romantic love are, you will find essays that will either reinforce your views of the matter, or challenge your present thinking of the subject of love. It covers topics such as misogyny, feminism, romantic love, marriage as more of a friendship than a romantic love, etc. I have been tickled, angered, saddened, pleased, and intrigued by this book. SO much so , that I have recommended it to friend after friend, and all have enjoyed it. It is not necessary that you be a student of philosophy to understand this book. You just need to misunderstand love to gain from it's teachings. I believe you will enjoy this book for years to come. I know I have.

The three essays here, along with 29 of Mapplethorpe's photographs, provide an invaluable opportunity to address the work in a reasoned and engaged manner. In some important sense, it is no longer possible to experience the work of Robert Mapplethorpe as directly as one might have in 1988, for now "the images have become celebrities," made notorious, even, by the legal and moral controversies that have so prominently surrounded the work. (5) More importantly, however, Danto attempts to answer the question of how to look at art, particularly difficult or "awkward" art such as Mapplethorpe's, without oversimplifying what is seen. (93)

In the main body of the book, the critical essay of the same title, Danto's seriousness avoids no questions, but thankfully acknowledges the ultimate futility of asking whether such work is art or pornography. This false disjunction results from the failure to hold together both form and content when looking at art. For Danto, art is the transcendence of form and content; it is both and neither, for it moves beyond both while in some sense preserving them in the work. Although Danto needlessly complicates matters with his use of the terminology of Hegel's dialectic to articulate this transcendence, his discussion is clear enough otherwise. This is best seen in his analysis of the respective testimonies of the legislators and the experts at the Cincinnati trial in which the Contemporary Arts Center and its director, Dennis Barrie, were ultimately acquitted of pandering obscenity and child pornography. Danto shows that while the legislators saw the content and ignored the form, the art experts for the defence saw the form and ignored the content. Though this resulted in the acquittal, Danto rightly emphasizes that for Mapplethorpe, the work was all about making pornography that was art; he "literally became a pornographer with high artistic aims." (78) In Mapplethorpe's words, a work can "be pornography and still have redeeming social value. It can be both, which is my whole point in doing it-to have all the elements of pornography and yet have a structure of lighting that makes it go beyond what it is." (89-90) This attempt to "go beyond what it is" both illustrates Danto's conception of art as transcendence and defines Mapplethorpe's work in particular as a "playing with the edge." (77)

Danto identifies trust as the constant attribute of Mapplethorpe's work which allows the form and content to remain together. "The moral relationship between subject and artist was a condition for the artistic form the images took. The formalism was connected to the content through the mediation of that moral relationship." (79) This trust is attested to by the formal quality of the images, in that they are titled with the subjects' names, posed and lighted in formal abstraction, and clearly constitute something the subjects have allowed, thus presenting the subjects as themselves, but not candidly, rather as they have agreed to be presented. (39) This is why acts of sex are themselves generally not depicted, for here the formalism cannot be maintained. In Mapplethorpe's work, however, there is always the danger of losing this formal control and going "over the edge." (79) It is not just a question of sex and the vulnerability inherent therein, but of danger and violence. For Danto, "a presumption that one's partner could be trusted . . . is the basic connection between sex and love." (41) He ties this trust to "the spontaneous human appetite for feeling danger and being protected at once . . ." (42) The combination of sex, danger, and violence, when contained by formalism through trust, is evident not only in the overtly sexual or violent works. Indeed, Danto is perhaps at his literary best in his discussion of these elements in relation to Mapplethorpe's flowers, fruits, vegetables, and finally the portraits of statues.

Danto's discussion of Mapplethorpe's work is frank, clear, and engaged. In neither oversimplifying the seriousness of the issues nor avoiding the questions raised by the work, he nonetheless leaves open its moral status. This is a great benefit. When it is a matter of "playing with the edge," different people will ultimately experience such an encounter differently. Indeed, this frames what may be the most problematic aspect of looking at Mapplethorpe's work: "It is supposed to be shocking. When morality changes so that it is no longer shocking, Mapplethorpe's intentions will fall away into incomprehensibility." (112) Although his assessment of the historical importance of this work--and that of the seventies in America generally--will surely not persuade everyone, the main achievement here is that Danto gives the reader solid handles by which to grapple with a difficult body of work.

this book, published in conjunction with the show at the hirshhorn museum, digs well into the current controversy of beauty in art. it undertakes this risky proposition and manages to develop and produce an elegant catalogue of that which is beautiful in contemporary art.

Tansy is the master in retorical depth.

From the first time I saw Tansey's "The Innocent Eye Test" at the Met, I have been fascinated with his work. The illustrations in this book, along with the fabulous essay by Arthur Danto make it a must have for Mark Tansey fans. I only wish there were more books about him and his work. He is a brilliant artist.

Checking the worn copy of this book from the library numerous times had made Mark Tansey one of my alltime favorite artists. Everytime I went into a bookstore, I looked for it. Never any luck, until I was in a used bookstore in Bellingham, Washington. I had already scoured the Art section as usual. When I was leaving, my eye happened to catch the spine in a stack of randomly placed books near the register. For a mere 16 bucks and in perfect condition! I was ecstatic. The reproductions are amazing and the text is insightful, illuminating Tansey's underlying themes and content. If you admire Mark Tansey's work, its simply a must have

I guess this book is meant as a real "intro" text, but if you do know something about this art, it seems pretty lite. Clearly, lots of people like it, but Weintraub seems to bend so far over to make complex work accessible that she really over-simplifines. And the "art" in the book is so scattered and uneven, you don't get any deeper sense of what is going on, what the historical context of any of this might be.

Granted, there aren't many intro texts on recent art. So if this is one of the "better" ones, it's mostly for lack of competition. I wish there was some accessible middle ground between pop/gossip texts and academic tomes. This feels like it's written from someone really distant to the work, who's not always that well-informed.

Anyone who wants to become familiar with intricacies of what can be the confusing world of post-modern art should read this book. The author does an excellent job of presenting an interesting cross-section of significant and fascinating collection of atypical artists. Pretty much every artist who is included has done their share of expanding the contemporary definition of Art in the Western and Non-western tradition. Over all, this compendium of essays does much to open the door to widen the reader's perspective on what art can do. The one aspect of this book that is troublesome is that the author often seems to focus on only one or two aspects of an artist's works, a habit that is frustrating at best and misleading at worst. While doing outside research on one of the artists included, Mel Chin, I was convinced there were two artists with the same name, as the perspective provided in the book did not prepare me for the artist's full range of activities. Still, this complaint should not stop an interested party from purchasing the book. I for one did not feel my money ill-spent.

as a MFA student thats currently being educated by "the institution" i find myself flip flopping between wanting to drop out or drop in...this book didn't save me but it sure put things in perspective, never before in a book have I seen cover such topics where you can find Barbara Kruger and James Luna and Joseph Beuys and Tomie Arai between the same cover's in a book. This book also addresses an important issue for me. race. The art world is racist and if you don't know that just look around, art is life and a reflection of society and if you dont know that its because your a white (sorry but its true). This book may not address it but it surely helps to have some artists of color represented (although they aren't near the best art makers).

This book is LARGE! Very large. It is approximately 12" square, like a vinyl LP record, and comes in a tough card outer sleeve or box, thus keeping the actual book itself free from damage. I don't know exactly how much it weighs, but I suspect that it must be 3-4 Kg, so if you order it warn your postman! The images are all B&W.

It is also large in terms of content, there being some 600-odd images presented. There is an intoxicating range of photographs spreading over many years of Mapplethorpe's work and many genres. I have always found his flower portraits the most inspiring and they are here in plenty although regrettably none in colour. Obviously there also the formal portraits, the pictures of large male genitalia, pictures of Patti Smith (who is she, anyway?), a large number of self portraits, and many others.

This is NOT a book of sex images although there are few that are 'close to the mark', rather a collection of more of Mapplethorpe's more artistic ventures. Of all, I was much struck by the simple (polaroid) image of a young man on page 25, simple called "Untitled, 1974".

There is a superb essay by Arthur C. Danto explaining much of the controversy surrounding this photographer, along with a very full catalogue of Mapplethorpe's work, his books, exhibitions, and a bibliography of those who have written about or included his works.

Very good value for money if you are a fan.

While this handsome, exceptionally made collection of Mapplethorpe photography is certainly worth its cost, the editors have done a disservice to the artist by eliminating the framing effects Mapplethorpe created to off-set his own work, and thus sometimes robbing individual images of their ultimately intended impact. Worse still, these particular reproductions generally eliminate the sepia, blue-ish, or silvery tones of the original works and consequently misrepresent the artist's intent. Those who are established admires of Mapplethorpe will be impressed by this book; those who have not previously seen his work, however, will probably wonder what all the artistic fuss was about.

Admitting that I've never seen any of Mapplethorpe's work up close and personal I'll none the less say that the prints are beautiful. The huge format gives the photos plenty of room to breathe, as is sometimes a problem in art books. I spent a good while seeking a collection that included all of his favorite subject matter, both the pretty and the disturbing, and this one didn't disappoint. If you are too weak of stomach for some of the admittedly harsh erotic stuff (which includes mostly that of the "homo-" variety) then buy a collection of his flowers and women, but all of his work makes much more sense in context.