Let's Entertain: Life's Guilty Pleasure

For new millenium ArtSpeak, bow to the demons of consumerism with "Let's Entertain: Life's Guilty Pleasures" edited by Phillip Vergne. Walker Art Center Director Kathy Halbreich mentions that artists adroitly adapt corporate techniques to 'create a spectacle of quotidian experience' with various intentions. Here's some of those, from their biographies: "investigate the global landscape" | "attempt to discuss and understand" | "sidestep precise categorization" | "appropriate and deconstruct television imagery" | "cool analysis of an aesthetic of everyday America" | "analysis of American celebrity and excess" | "examine issues of present day art production" | "metaphysical reflection on our collective consciousness" | "sculptures that incorporate decaying fish" | "humorous and at times aesthetically subversive interventions" | "commentary on contemporary reliance on tchnological and consumerist promise" | "address issues of colonial hangovers" | "large scale spectacle of the ordinary" | "hold up a mirror to the viewers dysfunction" | "mix conceptual rigor with socio cultural investigation" | "re-imagine themselves as figures of popular culture" | "seemingly banal readymades" | "sound installation of songs popular" | "reflect on the artistic system" | "attempt to bridge the rift between man and nature" | "raise larger questions about the definition of art and authorship" | "collage media reports" | "react against the legacy of Joseph Beuys" | "the hand of the artist is not the important issue" | "use video camera to record own failure, again and again" | "intimations of bodily functions play an important role" | "witty use of diverse clichés" | "artistic nomadism" | "belonging to a humanistic philosophy of proximity" | "invesigate the sense of seduction in society dominated by spectacle" | "fascination with cliché" | "making the commonplace strange" | "blur lines between artifice and nature" | "use sound sculpturally to create aural landscapes" | "use pop culture as a ready made artistic vocabulary" | "cute doodles, friendly words, pointing arrows" | "disruption of games like rugby" | "involve audience in environment" | "purvey the glamorous celebrity lifestyle" | "create a sense of unease by odd juxtapositions" That's gotta be inspirational! An effort is made to keep the scholarly parts short enough to skip over comfortably, and some interesting points are made convincingly, if somewhat dispiritedly. This book will help you grapple with the mysteries of modern art practices and is a good overview of the work and motivations of artists who are numbered among the top of the generation born since the 60's. Painters especially will be pleased that oil on canvas was not represented among this company. Certainly the future beckons ever more brightly!

This book is an excellent companion to the great exhibit, but also good on its own. It is bound well and has glossy pics of the art as well as explanations and commentary by the artists. A wonderful book