Artworld Prestige: Arguing Cultural Value
"In clear, lively prose, the authors have crafted an original and compelling field guide to the higher realms of contemporary art criticism and the way it confers or denies the halos of prestige.  The vantage point they take enables them to illuminate some startling values, dogmas, and blind spots that lie hidden within familiar art world discourse."--Carol Duncan, author ofCivilizing Rituals: Inside Public Art Museums"In a series of nicely described case studies, the authors show how understanding prestige involves analyzing the most obdurate terms of modernism and postmodernism: self-awareness, relevance, theory, difficulty, irony, pleasure, seriousness, professionalism, the instability of meaning, and the refusal of sense. This will be a very helpful book for anyone struggling to understand how the artworld produces its unpredictable judgments."--James Elkins, author ofWhat Painting Is