Table of Contents

Introduction Head It's Form, Tails It's Not Content On the Manner of Addressing Clouds "I Am" Is a Vain Thought Art History or Sacred History? Father the Void

Reviews

McEvilley directs our attention to the often obscured nature and function of ``healthy'' art criticism in a cultural system that includes artwork, artists, audience, and capital. His approach is historical and heavily informed by philosophical cycles that have addressed aesthetic concerns over the years. While usually overcoming the expert's tendency to write in jargon, McEvilley does ask his readers to bring to the text an understanding of the history of philosophy as well as knowledge of the history of art criticism in recent eras. Recommended for collections serving graduate students in these areas and for very well-informed lay readers.--Francisca Goldsmith, Berkeley P.L., Cal.

"Each of the six essays offered here represents the author's ambitious attempt to demonstrate that contemporary criticism maintains a place in the continuum of the history of ideas."--Journal of Art "McEvilley's argument [is] that the tension between what we call Modernism and post-Modernism is something that has been with us since ancient Greece and that it is impossible to understand the workings of formalism without tracing its roots back to Plato... A book of superior quality."--Arts "The author's primary basis for post-Modernism has less to do with psychoanalysis or linguistics, and much more to do with philosophy and history. From an American standpoint this is immensely refreshing... The connections between the essays were brilliantly conceived."--M/E/A/N/I/N/G