Title: The revenge of the Philistines : art and culture, 1972-1984 /
Authors: Kramer, Hilton.
Publisher: Free Press,
Year: 1985
Subjects: Modernism (Art); Art, Modern History and criticism.
Abstract: "Kramer, former New York Times art critic, has assembled a collection of his reviews along with a smattering of essays. In his hymn to New York's renovated Museum of Modern Art, he notes that its "formalist outlook tends ... to lead to a false sense of orthodoxy." Yet these reviews, which rigorously apply his own formalist standards of what constitutes modern art, miss out on much of what is vital and meaningful in today's highly variegated art scene. Kramer is appalled by political art, most of which, he argues, lacks artistic merit; he doubts whether any great art can be political. In surveying the '80s' rebirth of realism, he reassures us that many new realists are not antimodernist or antiabstractionist. One piece agonizes over whether Saul Steinberg should be considered an artist. A somewhat condescending essay on Max Ernst sets him above the "muddled narcissism" said to mar many other surrealists. Other subjects range from Rodin to Walker Evans; selections were culled from the New York Times, New Criterion (which Kramer edits), Commentary and elsewhere."--Publishers Weekly via amazon.com.
Contents: I. Revivals and revisionism -- Andre Meyer Galleries at the Met -- A Turner for the eighties -- Age of Revolution I & II -- Landseer : the Victorian paragon [Sir Edwin] -- The Natural Paradies -- Isolation of Thomas Eakins -- Gorky revised [Maxim] -- Rediscovering Stanley Spencer -- The Return of the Nativist : Grant Wood -- II. Modernist in retrospect -- Europeans -- Late Cezanne [Paul] ; the public and the private Rodin [Auguste] ; Picasso's rage [Pablo Picasso] ; Essential cubism in London; Bonnard [Pierre] ; De Stijl; Vantongerloo [Georges] ; Max Ernst; Miro and his critics [Jean] ; Sonia Delaunay; Giacometti's moral heroism [Alberto Giacometti] -- Americans: -- Marsden Harley; Florine Stettheimer; Elie Nadelman; Edward Hopper; Morton L. Schamberg; Precisionism revised; Morris Kantor; Abstract expressionism : the formative years; the Rothko Retrospective; the singularity of Clyfford Still -- III. Contemporary art: the Anatomy of Pluralism.