Most of the really invigorating action in the art world today is a quiet affair, Mr. Kimball observes. It usually involves not the latest thing but permaneZnt things―they can be new or old, but their relevance is measured not by the buzz they create but by the silences they inspire. With reviews and essays composed over the last twenty years and revised for this book, Art's Prospect illuminates some of the chief spiritual itineraries of modern art. There is much to be learned and enjoyed in these stimulating, provocative, and elegant essays. ―Paul Johnson

Art's Prospect: The Challenge of Tradition in an Age of Celebrity

Arts & Photography

Roger Kimball

History & Criticism

Ivan R. Dee

The Fortunes of Permanence: Culture and Anarchy in an Age of Amnesia

Roger Kimball’s incisive essays examine the art world from a fresh, skeptical perspective. From Gauguin and the Pre-Raphaelites to the latest exercises in artistic absurdity, Kimball’s keen eye and lucid prose makes for bracing, entertaining reading. He sets himself dead against the shallow rhetoric and celebrity/money culture of the contemporary art world, breathing new excitement into debates over what we value in art and why. Art’s Prospect is savage and hilarious in debunking chalatanism, but at the same time informed and insightful in revealing the best of contemporary art.
Whether he is meditating on the concept of kitsch in the Pre-Raphaelites, the cultural pathology that has led critics to compare Gilbert and George’s preposterous images with the Isenheim altarpiece, or the genius of such disparate painters as Paul Gauguin and Richard Diebenkorn, Kimball proves himself to be one of the liveliest critical minds in the art world today.

Art's Prospect (Cybereditions Critics Series)

Lisa Loucks Christenson Publishing, LLC

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Books by Roger Kimball