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Title: Art Objects : Essays on Ecstasy and Effrontery by Jeanette Winterson ISBN: 0-679-76820-3 Publisher: Vintage Pub. Date: 04 February, 1997 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $13.00 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.33 (9 reviews)
Rating: 4
Summary: Serious Talk About Art
Comment: This collection of essays on art and literature is wonderfully thought-provoking. Winterson's collection is a call for greater attention to art that makes a person think, that gives a person insight into a new level of reality - be it another culture or simply an alternative view of your own culture.
This book is great for writers, artists, and musicians in need of inspiration -- or a kick in the trousers. It defends the noble pursuit of art for art's sake, and challenges readers to demand more of their writers than purely story-driven plot. At times, Winterson admonishes those who read purely for escapist reasons with the excuse "oh, I don't want to have to think at the end of the day." Score one against television escapism, as well. There are severe consequences to the dumbing down of literature, as seen by the demise of independent book stores. As Winterson states in her essay "Writer, Reader, Words":
"If the reader wants the writer to be an extension of the leisure industry, or a product of the media, then the serious writer will be beaten back into an elitism beyond that necessary to maintain certain standards; it will be an elitism of survival and it is happening already . . . We seem to have returned to a place where play, pose and experiment are unwelcome and where the idea of art is debased. At the same time, there are a growing number of people (possibly even a representative number of people), who want to find something genuine in the literature of their own time and who are unconvinced by the glories of reproduction furniture."
While there are views expressed by Winterson that are even a bit too radical for me, she is always very logical and thorough in backing up her views. Anyone who enjoys reading serious literature or collecting original works of art (by either well-known or local artists), will be enthralled with this book. All others may find a serious "talking to", a tsk-tsk, and some food for thought.
Rating: 4
Summary: A Good Start...
Comment: Jeanette Winterson, writes in a very lucid manner on a topic that can quickly become an extremely nebulous and splintered subject. She begins with a story of her travels to Amsterdam, where she is haunted by a painting in a window. This never happened to her before, as Winterson was always a wordsmith. The unexpected discovery-the idea that a painting has the power to touch her so deeply and so powerfully-troubles her deeply and she cowers initially, as if she saw a ghost.
This anecdote serves to create the tone of the book, an intense and honest meditation into art and art making. Winterson, weaves us through her meditation through a very readable style and by using very general terms. She simultaneously addresses the novice, to those well versed in the concepts of art history and theory of art criticism. I say this because the questions, what is art?, what is the fuction of art?, why practice art?, are basic questions that can be addressed by all levels of understanding-and it is those questions Winterson addresses. Though she begins with visual art she reverts to her expertise in the form of literature. But, the concepts are easily translated into the other art forms.
However, in her opinions of what is beauty and what is art, Winterson can seem a bit idealistic in her views of art and art making. She professes to be a little out of sync with current society(her confession)-which could be taken as a person who revers the past and therefore is a bit 'old school' in her approach to the topic, however, she does not pretend to be a final authority on the topic either.
But,the 'beauty' of this book is it can be a starting point and a gentle guide for the novice into the ongoing conversation of art and art history as well as an eloquent reminder of fundemental concepts in a splintered conversation of art theory and criticsm.
Rating: 5
Summary: The title says it all, twice.
Comment: I should explain the title. As Jeanette will explain within the pages, art not only /objects/ with our safe notions of what we consider to be good or normal to our perceptions, but also art is also an /object/ to be handled, manipulated, and explored by our souls, with all the effort we would put into whatever coporeal object our hands might hold and seek to understand.
Having told you this, that the title encompasses so much of the book, does not mean that it does not need to be read now. Much the opposite. Though almost every essay comes back to these points, some essays deal with the subject in regards to a certain book, or just the act of creating art itself. As an artist, as any writer/painter/poet/? is, I found this to be a call to arms, in a way, inspiring me by assisting my mind in delineating exactly what I wish to create. If you are creative, read this collection.
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Title: Art & Lies by Jeanette Winterson ISBN: 0679762701 Publisher: Vintage Pub. Date: 20 February, 1996 List Price(USD): $13.00 |
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Title: The World and Other Places : Stories by Jeanette Winterson ISBN: 0375702369 Publisher: Vintage Pub. Date: 20 June, 2000 List Price(USD): $12.00 |
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Title: Sexing the Cherry by Jeanette Winterson ISBN: 0802135781 Publisher: Grove Press Pub. Date: September, 1998 List Price(USD): $12.00 |
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Title: Gut Symmetries by JEANETTE WINTERSON ISBN: 0679777423 Publisher: Vintage Pub. Date: 28 July, 1998 List Price(USD): $13.00 |
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Title: The PowerBook by Jeanette Winterson ISBN: 0375725059 Publisher: Vintage Pub. Date: 09 October, 2001 List Price(USD): $13.00 |
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