The End of Art

In The End of Art, Donald Kuspit argues 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 Art has been replaced by ‘postart’, a term invented by Alan Kaprow, as a new visual category that elevates the banal over the enigmatic, the scatological over the sacred, cleverness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 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 New Old Masters. The End of Art points the way to the future for the visual arts.

• Argues that art has been replaced by postart • Critiques the devaluation of the aesthetic • Argues that there are New Old Masters on the horizon

Contents

1. The changing of the art guard; 2. The aesthetic maligned: Duchamp and Newman; 3. Seminal entropy: the paradox of modern art; 4. The decline of the cult of the unconscious: running on empty; 5. Mirror, mirror of the worldly wall, why is art no longer the truest religion of all?: the god that lost faith in itself; Postscript: Abandoning and rebuilding the studio.