Rosalind Krauss and American Philosophical Art Criticism: From Formalism to Beyond Postmodernism

(Hardback)

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Studies the work of the most original and influential present-day art critic, tracing her development from her formalist writings in the 1960s through the post-structuralism of the current academic climate. Rosalind Krauss is, without visible rival, the most influential American art writer since Clement Greenberg. Together with her colleagues at October, the journal she co-founded, she has played a key role in the introduction of French theory into the American art world. In the 1960s, though first a follower of Greenberg, she was inspired by her readings of French structuralist and post-structuralist materials, revolted against her mentor's formalism, and developed a succession of radically original styles of art history writing. Offering a complete survey of her career and work, Rosalind Krauss and American Philosophical Art Criticism: From Formalism to Beyond Postmodernism comprises the first book-length study of its subject. Written in the lucid style of analytic philosophy, this accessible commentary offers a consideration of her arguments as well as discussions of alternative positions. Tracing Krauss's development in this way provides the best method of understanding the changing styles of American art criticism from the 1960s through the present, and thus provides an invaluable source of historical and aesthetic knowledge for artists and art scholars alike.

Reviews

[C]arrier's careful and insightful analysis of Krauss's criticism has prompted me not only re-read Krauss's brilliant essay's but to re-read Carrier's as well.-Essay Reviews
This ambitious book will not satisfy those seeking either an admiring output or denouncement of her importance to art history. Rather, readers will find that the author has taken her career for a sprawling battlefield and attmpts to erect a surveying tower, allowing for somer perspective over the results of the critical combat of Krauss' postmodernism ...this engaing text gives one theortist's view. In trying to explain why critics are important and have influence, the author cuts thorugh the standard assertations about the power art reviews and the tastes of a select few have on the art market. While acknowledging this economic reality, Carriers analysis of art as writing in far more grand: if criticism has influence, it is in its ability to change our ways of thinking and seeing, our conception of nature. While perceiving flaws in much of her philosophy, the author admits that this is Krauss' legacy.-tema celeste
"Carrier's careful and insightful analysis of Krauss's criticism has prompted me not only re-read Krauss's brilliant essay's but to re-read Carrier's as well."-Essay Reviews
"[C]arrier's careful and insightful analysis of Krauss's criticism has prompted me not only re-read Krauss's brilliant essay's but to re-read Carrier's as well."-Essay Reviews
"This ambitious book will not satisfy those seeking either an admiring output or denouncement of her importance to art history. Rather, readers will find that the author has taken her career for a sprawling battlefield and attmpts to erect a surveying tower, allowing for somer perspective over the results of the critical combat of Krauss' postmodernism ...this engaing text gives one theortist's view. In trying to explain why critics are important and have influence, the author cuts thorugh the standard assertations about the power art reviews and the tastes of a select few have on the art market. While acknowledging this economic reality, Carriers analysis of art as writing in far more grand: if criticism has influence, it is in its ability to change our ways of thinking and seeing, our conception of nature. While perceiving flaws in much of her philosophy, the author admits that this is Krauss' legacy."-tema celeste

Author Bio

David Carrier is the Champney Family Professor at Case Western Reserve University/Cleveland Institute of Art. He has written numerous works including Principles of Art History Writing. The Aesthete in the City: The Philosophy and Practice of American Abstract Painting in the 1980s, and High Art: Charles Baudelaire and the Origins of Modernism.