Idiosyncratic identities
Subtitle: artists at the end of the avant-garde
By: Donald Kuspit.
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Published: 1996
Place of publication: New York
Language: eng
Number of pages: 368
Subjects: Artists -- Psychology; Self-perception in art; Postmodernism
Description: Postmodernism has been described as a decadent and pluralistic period in which avant-garde art has been institutionalized, stereotyped, and effectively neutralized; and where models of art seem to stand in ironical, nihilistic relationship to each other.

In this study, Donald Kuspit argues that only the idiosyncratic artist remains credible and convincing in the postmodern era, he or she relentlessly pursuing a sense of artistic and human identity in a situation where there are no guidelines, art historically or socially. Idiosyncratic art, Kuspit posits, is a radically personal art that establishes unconscious communication between individuals in doubt of their identity.

Functioning as a medium of self-identification, it affords a sense of authentic selfhood and communicative intimacy in a postmodern society where authenticity and intimacy seem irrelevant and absurd.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references and index.