Overview

The Black Album: Writings on Art and Culture is a collection of writing by painter and writer Bradley Rubenstein. There was once a time when art, technology, science, and poetry collided with politics. Zola and Cézanne. Fénéon and Seurat. Balzac and Rodin. Jean Arp and Hans Arp. Anarchy and beauty combined. In our current moment it seems that we might be well served to remember this past; when art and culture are driven underground, new ideas emerge. Taking Joan Didion's collection of criticism, The White Album, as a point of reference, Bradley Rubenstein creates a new vocabulary for critiquing an age where art has wed technology, fiction has become reality, and images, like words, are not always meant to be trusted. Like Robert Smithson, Rubenstein eschews a personal writing style, instead using screenplays, poetry, science fiction, satire, and other genres styles to create a continuously changing narrative.

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9781732221932

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Reviews

"""Art criticism was essentially boring ad copy designed to serve the art market's corporate overlords until Bradley Rubenstein came along to make it relevant for the rest of us. Grand visions, standup comedy, punk, death metal, art history, celebrity decadence, and cocaine. Rubenstein has invented a form of participatory art criticism whose observations actually make the art world of the twenty-first century sound like a fun place to be."" - Michael Lee Nirenberg, filmmaker and author of Earth A.D.: The Poisoning of the American Landscape and the Communities that Fought Back, Feral House/Process Media ""Rubenstein cultivates a delightful interplay between criticism and outrage. He can inject these feelings into writings that use the most eloquent language to point out an artist's ironies and inconsistencies. Usually art criticism involves staid language, whether it's calmly presented or passionate in nature. Rubenstein's voice is both analytical and gritty, often moving into the realm of candid street talk tempered by an intellectual overlay that is pointed, intriguing, and anything but dull."" - D. Donovan, Senior Reviewer, Midwest Book Review ""Rubenstein has a thing about art. He wants it woven into the plot line. He thinks art is best understood when it takes a back seat to the narrative, informs it, drives it."" - Liz Markus, artist ""It is rare to read art criticism that isn't either soured by its writer's failed art or self-aggrandizing, overbearing personality. [Rubenstein] is both kind and generous."" - Stuart Servetar, Artholes ""Bradley Rubenstein's writing opens up insights both haptic and 'meta.' It clears up our transitional ideal of the thing itself-guided like a post-Freudian notion, there exists a consciousness that includes the preconscious and unconscious mind. We are aware of the negotiated space of the creative mind and fiction of art. Rubenstein brings new ways into the constructed space of the thing we see. He is unafraid of the existence of a temporary and contemporary space that truth may exist within."" - Peter Williams, artist ""The Black Album is equal parts Rosalind Krauss, Michel Foucault, Charles Bukowski, and Cindy Adams. Bradley Rubenstein is the Deadpool of cultural criticism."" - Alex Thiel, filmmaker"

Art criticism was essentially boring ad copy designed to serve the art market's corporate overlords until Bradley Rubenstein came along to make it relevant for the rest of us. Grand visions, standup comedy, punk, death metal, art history, celebrity decadence, and cocaine. Rubenstein has invented a form of participatory art criticism whose observations actually make the art world of the twenty-first century sound like a fun place to be. - Michael Lee Nirenberg, filmmaker and author of Earth A.D.: The Poisoning of the American Landscape and the Communities that Fought Back, Feral House/Process Media Rubenstein cultivates a delightful interplay between criticism and outrage. He can inject these feelings into writings that use the most eloquent language to point out an artist's ironies and inconsistencies. Usually art criticism involves staid language, whether it's calmly presented or passionate in nature. Rubenstein's voice is both analytical and gritty, often moving into the realm of candid street talk tempered by an intellectual overlay that is pointed, intriguing, and anything but dull. - D. Donovan, Senior Reviewer, Midwest Book Review Rubenstein has a thing about art. He wants it woven into the plot line. He thinks art is best understood when it takes a back seat to the narrative, informs it, drives it. - Liz Markus, artist It is rare to read art criticism that isn't either soured by its writer's failed art or self-aggrandizing, overbearing personality. [Rubenstein] is both kind and generous. - Stuart Servetar, Artholes Bradley Rubenstein's writing opens up insights both haptic and 'meta.' It clears up our transitional ideal of the thing itself-guided like a post-Freudian notion, there exists a consciousness that includes the preconscious and unconscious mind. We are aware of the negotiated space of the creative mind and fiction of art. Rubenstein brings new ways into the constructed space of the thing we see. He is unafraid of the existence of a temporary and contemporary space that truth may exist within. - Peter Williams, artist The Black Album is equal parts Rosalind Krauss, Michel Foucault, Charles Bukowski, and Cindy Adams. Bradley Rubenstein is the Deadpool of cultural criticism. - Alex Thiel, filmmaker

Author Information

Bradley Rubenstein is a painter and writer who lives and works in Brooklyn, New York. His works are in the collections of The Metropolitan Museum of Art, The Detroit Institute of Arts, The Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, The Tang Teaching Museum, The Krannert Art Museum Teaching Collection at The University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, and The Teaching Collection at the Whitney Museum of American Art, among others. He has been the recipient of the National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship in Painting, the Pollock-Krasner Award, and a grant from the Emily Hall Tremaine Foundation. He has written extensively on art and art education. Rubenstein has been a contributing editor for ArtKrush magazine, New Observations, and Art Journal. He has contributed interviews, essays, and reviews to CultureCatch, Artforum, Artslant, Battery Journal, M/E/A/N/I/N/G, The Brooklyn Rail, Artholes, and Sharkforum.

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