A little of this and a little of that

books:

	• Art on the Edge and Over: Searching for Art's Meaning in Contemporary Society, 1970s-1990s Linda Weintraub Art Insights, Inc., 1997 - 264 pages average customer review:based on 14 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

Out of the box art

Read this book for a non-traditional studio class and it was a great introduction to many contemporary artists I did not know.

An OK overview, but superficial

I guess this book is meant as a real "intro" text, but if you do know something about this art, it seems pretty lite. Clearly, lots of people like it, but Weintraub seems to bend so far over to make complex work accessible that she really over-simplifines. And the "art" in the book is so scattered and uneven, you don't get any deeper sense of what is going on, what the historical context of any of this might be.

Granted, there aren't many intro texts on recent art. So if this is one of the "better" ones, it's mostly for lack of competition. I wish there was some accessible middle ground between pop/gossip texts and academic tomes. This feels like it's written from someone really distant to the work, who's not always that well-informed.

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Great buy

The book is very informative on the artists,talks about their different pieces, I just wish it was in color instead of black and white because it takes away from the pieces meaning and depth

A little of this and a little of that

as a MFA student thats currently being educated by "the institution" i find myself flip flopping between wanting to drop out or drop in...this book didn't save me but it sure put things in perspective, never before in a book have I seen cover such topics where you can find Barbara Kruger and James Luna and Joseph Beuys and Tomie Arai between the same cover's in a book. This book also addresses an important issue for me. race. The art world is racist and if you don't know that just look around, art is life and a reflection of society and if you dont know that its because your a white (sorry but its true). This book may not address it but it surely helps to have some artists of color represented (although they aren't near the best art makers).

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reviews: page 1, 2, 3

Linda Weintraub recognizes that art at the end of the 20th century changes too quickly and is too multifaceted to be quickly and easily understood. Here she explains the intractably avant-garde art of the 1970s, 80s, and 90s by searching for art's meaning within the context of popular culture and the common trends that have led to new forms of artistic expression.

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