The Cult of the Avant-Garde Artist examines the philosophical, psychological and aesthetic premises for avant-garde art and its subsequent evolution and corruption in the late twentieth century. Arguing that modernist art is essentially therapeutic in intention, both towards self and society, Donald Kuspit further posits that neo-avant-garde, or post-modern art, at once mocks and denies the possibility of therapeutic change. As such, it accommodates the status quo of capitalist society, in which fame and fortune are valued above anything else. Stripping avant-garde art of its missionary, therapeutic intention, neo-avant-garde art instead converts it into a cliche of creative novelty or ironical value for its fashionable look. Moreover, it destroys the precarious balance of artistic narcissism and social empathy that characterizes modern art, tilting it cynically towards the former. Incorporating psychoanalytic ideas, particularly those concerned with narcissism, The Cult of the Avant-Garde Artist offers a reinterpretation of modern art history. Donald Kuspit, one of America's foremost art critics, is a contributing editor to Artforum and the author of many books.

Explores the 'lost kingdoms' with brush, ink and colour. A breathtakingly beautiful quest. In the age of mechanical reproduction, many fail to appreciate intricate drawings made by hand, hands having become mere obsolete instruments these days, compared to the fast precision of the digital camera. Christian Peltenburg-Brechneff's drawings capture what the camera can never capture: the spirit of the places he has rendered. Brechneff takes on the challenge of exploring and translating the architectural and spiritual wonders of the 'lost' kingdoms of the Himalayas with brush and ink and colour washes: Laddakh, Nepal, Sikkim, Bhutan, India, Burma, Cambodia and Laos. Brought to life through imaginative investment, Brechneff's subjects become more mysterious, and preciously exciting than ever. They sparkle with subjective life and become rapturously alive in a way that a photograph could never be. The ancient architecture of India - many old palaces and temples - and ageless mountains are already inspired creations, with archetypal import, emphasising that Brechneffs's journey to them is a spiritual journey. The intricate drawings form a visual diary of his travels. Each drawing is dated, and the place depicted named, indicating that the drawing is a documentary as well as personal journal. Peltenburg-Brechneff decodes and maps India's architecture and mountains with the hope of grasping the secret of their creative dynamic, rather than only preserving their dramatic appearance for posterity. Homage is a breathtakingly beautiful spiritual quest.

Over the past three decades, artist Christian Peltenburg-Brechneff has travelled around the world to visit some of the most glorious private gardens to paint en plein air. He has created a luscious visual record of 28 of them in this charming gift-sized book of watercolours and gouaches. With contacts among the international elite, the author has gained permission to enter some of the most exquisite and heretofore unrecorded gardens from Sri Lanka to Italy. With introductory texts by the distinguished art critic Donald Kuspit and the ever-influential interior architecture and garden designer Bunny Williams, Into the Garden chronicles this long-term pilgrimage of a visionary painter, opening the exquisite private gardens to the public for the very first time.

Donald Kuspit argues here that art is over because it has lost its aesthetic import. Art has been replaced by "postart," a term invented by Alan Kaprow, as a new visual category that elevates the banal over the enigmatic, the scatological over the sacred, cleverness over creativity. Tracing the demise of aesthetic experience to the works and theory of Marcel Duchamp and Barnett Newman, Kuspit argues that devaluation is inseparable from the entropic character of modern art, and that anti-aesthetic postmodern art is in its final state. In contrast to modern art, which expressed the universal human unconscious, postmodern art degenerates into an expression of narrow ideological interests. In reaction to the emptiness and stagnancy of postart, Kuspit signals the aesthetic and human future that lies with the old masters. The End of Art points the way to the future for the visual arts. Donald Kuspit is Professor of Art History at SUNY Stony Brook. A winner of the Frank Jewett Mather Award for Distinction in Art Criticism, Professor Kuspit is a Contributing Editor at Artforum, Sculpture and New Art Examiner. His most recent book is The Cult of the Avant-Garde (Cambridge, 1994).

En El fin del arte Donald Kuspit sostiene que el arte ha llegado a su termino porque ha perdido su carga estetica. El arte ha sido sustituido por el B+postarteB;, un termino inventado por Alan Kaprow como una nueva categoria visual que eleva lo banal por encima de lo enigmatico, lo escatologico por encima de lo sagrado, la inteligencia por encima de la creatividad. Remontando la desaparicion de la experiencia estetica hasta las obras y la teoria de Marcel Duchamp y Barnett Newman, Kuspit sostiene que la devaluacion es inseparable del caracter entropico del arte moderno y que el antiestetico arte posmoderno constituye su fase final. A diferencia del primero, que expresaba el inconsciente humano universal, este ultimo ha degenerado en una expresion de estrechos intereses ideologicos. Como reaccion a la vacuidad y el estancamiento del postarte, Kuspit senala el futuro estetico y humano que traen los Nuevos Viejos Maestros. Amplio e incisivo repaso del desarrollo del arte a lo largo del siglo XX, El fin del arte senala a las artes visuales el camino hacia el futuro.

Andrew Wyeth is one of the best loved and most widely recognized artists in American history, yet for much of his career he was reviled by the art world's critical elite. Rethinking Andrew Wyeth reevaluates Wyeth and his place in American art, trying to reconcile these two opposing images of the man and his work. In addition to surveying the American critical reception of Wyeth's art over the seven decades of his career, David Cateforis brings together a collection of essays featuring new critical and scholarly responses to the artist. Donald Kuspit's compelling psycho-philosophical interpretation of Wyeth exemplifies the possibility of new approaches to understanding his work that move beyond the Wyeth "curse," as do those of the other contributors to this volume - from the close analysis of Wyeth's technical means offered by Joyce Hill Stoner, to the adventuresome interpretive readings of individual Wyeth paintings advanced by Alexander Nemerov and Randall C. Griffin, the considerations of Wyeth's critical reception in historical context offered by Wanda M. Corn and Katie Robinson Edwards, and the connections of Wyeth to other canonical artists such as Francine Weiss' comparison of him to Robert Frost and Patricia Junker's linkage of Wyeth and Marcel Duchamp. Rethinking Andrew Wyeth includes an appendix with data from visitor surveys conducted at the Wyeth retrospectives in San Francisco in 1973 and Philadelphia in 2006. Illustrated throughout with both iconic and lesser-known examples of Wyeth's work, this book will appeal to academic, museum, and popular audiences seeking a deeper understanding and appreciation of Andrew Wyeth's art through its critical reception and interpretation. Edited by David Cateforis, with essays by David Cateforis, Wanda M. Corn, Katie Robinson Edwards, Randall C. Griffin, Patricia Junker, Donald Kuspit, Alexander Nemerov, Joyce Hill Stoner, and Francine Weiss. This volume's release coincides with an exhibition at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C. in 2014, Andrew Wyeth: Looking Out, Looking In.

This is the first monograph of the Indian artist Sohan Qadri, a modern Tantric painter. Born in 1932 in Punjab, India, Qadri began his quest for his true self through Tantric yoga and spent long periods of time silently meditating in remote temples in the Himalayas and Tibet. His isolation propelled his urge to paint. He received his MFA in 1960 from the Government College of Art in Simla, India, but soon discovered that academic trappings were not for him. Shortly after his first exhibition in 1965, he left India for the West. In Qadri's work, there is a tranquil coexistence of binary opposites male and female, known and unknown, physical and spiritual. Although he clearly has Western influences, such as Mark Rothko and Clyfford Still, his work is uniquely Eastern. His paintings are monochrome surfaces with structural effects that, in their repetition, convey the rhythmic expressions of colour energies. The vibrations created by these energies are endless and break the boundaries between the inner space of the image and the external space of the viewer. Heinrich Boll, the 1972 Nobel Prize winner in Literature, said that Qadri, with his painting liberates the word meditation from its fashionable taste and brings it back to its proper origin uninfluenced by Western propaganda, misunderstandings and corruptions.

Donald Kuspit argues here that art is over because it has lost its aesthetic import. Art has been replaced by "postart," a term invented by Alan Kaprow, as a new visual category that elevates the banal over the enigmatic, the scatological over the sacred, cleverness over creativity. Tracing the demise of aesthetic experience to the works and theory of Marcel Duchamp and Barnett Newman, Kuspit argues that devaluation is inseparable from the entropic character of modern art, and that anti-aesthetic postmodern art is in its final state. In contrast to modern art, which expressed the universal human unconscious, postmodern art degenerates into an expression of narrow ideological interests. In reaction to the emptiness and stagnancy of postart, Kuspit signals the aesthetic and human future that lies with the old masters. The End of Art points the way to the future for the visual arts. Donald Kuspit is Professor of Art History at SUNY Stony Brook. A winner of the Frank Jewett Mather Award for Distinction in Art Criticism, Professor Kuspit is a Contributing Editor at Artforum, Sculpture and New Art Examiner. His most recent book is The Cult of the Avant-Garde (Cambridge, 1994).

This overview of New York-based artist Michael Zansky (born 1947) surveys his paintings, drawings, sculptures and installations. It includes the monumental installation "Giants and Dwarfs," a series of complex drawings and sculptures burnt and carved into large plywood panels.