Art versus Non-Art

Art out of Mind

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by Tsion Avital

Cambridge University Press

Due/Published November 2003, 464 pages, cloth

ISBN 0521824656

In Art versus Non-Art, Tsion Avital poses the question: 'Is modern art art at all?' He argues that much, if not all, of the nonrepresentational art produced in the twentieth century was not art, but rather the debris of the visual tradition it replaced. Modern art has thrived on the total confusion between art and pseudo-art and the inability of many to distinguish between them. As Avital demonstrates, modern art has served as a critical intermediate stage between art of the past and the future. This book proposes a new way to define art, anchoring the nature of art in the nature of the mind, solving a major problem of art and aesthetics for which no solution has yet been provided. The new definition of art proposed in this book paves the way for a new paradigm for future art. 1 line diagram 9 half-tones 11 colour plates 5 tables

 Contents

Part I. Disillusionment: Introduction: the twentieth-century: the nonart era
1. Art in a paradigmatic crisis
2. Modern art and the logic of pretense
3. Is there abstraction in abstract art?
4. Aesthetics in the service of the new barbarism

Part II. Mind and Art
5. Mindprints: the structural shadows of mind-reality?
6. The breakdown of hierarchy in twentieth-century art and its implications for present and future art
7. Is figurative representation arbitrary?: a reexamination of the conventionalist view of art and its implications for nonfigurative art
8. Symmetry: the connectivity principle of art
9. Figurative art versus abstract art - summary table.