Overview

"In this book Thomas McEvilley proposes a new vision for the critical enterprise while confronting ideas which have exalted art above constructive involvement with the world for two centuries. The persistence of the Romantic idea of Self is discovered at the heart of Modernism, along with ideas of Spirit secretly enshrined in the distinction between abstraction and representation. Shedding new light on the roots of Modernism, the collapse of the idea of history, and the subsequent development of a global discourse, McEvilley brings to ""Art & Discontent"" a commanding knowledge of ancient Greek and Egyptian art, Western and non-Western philosophies, and the most avant garde of contemporary art. Explaining why our Modernism was not unique and is being superseded, he suggests the functions that art can perform in a post-Modern culture."

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9780929701318

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Each of the six essays offered here represents the author's ambitious attempt to demonstrate that contemporary criticism maintains a place in the continuum of the history of ideas. --Journal of Art McEvilley's argument [is] that the tension between what we call Modernism and post-Modernism is something that has been with us since ancient Greece and that it is impossible to understand the workings of formalism without tracing its roots back to Plato... A book of superior quality. --Arts The author's primary basis for post-Modernism has less to do with psychoanalysis or linguistics, and much more to do with philosophy and history. From an American standpoint this is immensely refreshing... The connections between the essays were brilliantly conceived. --M/E/A/N/I/N/G

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