David Carrier

Philosopher David Carrier examines popular American, European, and Japanese comic strips to identify and address the aesthetic problems posed by comics and to explain the relationship of this artistic genre to other forms of visual art. He also examines issues of interpretation of comics and places comics in historical perspective. Well-illustrated in bandw. Annotation copyrighted by Book News Inc., Portland, OR

The Aesthetics of Comics

From Gary Larson&’s The Far Side to George Herriman&’s Krazy Kat, comic strips have two obvious defining features. They are visual narratives, using both words and pictures to tell stories, and they use word balloons to represent the speech and thought of depicted characters. Art historians have studied visual artifacts from every culture; cultural historians have recently paid close attention to movies. Yet the comic strip, an art form known to everyone, has not yet been much studied by aestheticians or art historians. This is the first full-length philosophical account of the comic strip. Distinguished philosopher David Carrier looks at popular American and Japanese comic strips to identify and solve the aesthetic problems posed by comic strips and to explain the relationship of this artistic genre to other forms of visual art. He traces the use of speech and thought balloons to early Renaissance art and claims that the speech balloon defines comics as neither a purely visual nor a strictly verbal art form, but as something radically new. Comics, he claims, are essentially a composite art that, when successful, seamlessly combine verbal and visual elements. Carrier looks at the way an audience interprets comics and contrasts the interpretation of comics and other mass-culture images to that of Old Master visual art. The meaning behind the comic can be immediately grasped by the average reader, whereas a piece of museum art can only be fully interpreted by scholars familiar with the history and the background behind the painting. Finally, Carrier relates comics to art history. Ultimately, Carrier&’s analysis of comics shows why this popular art is worthy of philosophical study and proves that a better understanding of comics will help us better understand the history of art.

Carrier surveys the developments within theory during the 1980s, focusing on constructive critical analysis of the then-fashionable work of Jean Baudrillard, Walter Benjamin, T. J. Clark, and Jacques Derrida. He provides detailed accounts of a number of painters, among them Thomas Nozkowski, David Reed, and Sean Scully, whose development he followed closely.

The Philosophy and Practice of American Abstract Painting in the 1980s

The Aesthete in the City

The author serves up a concise account of the history and practice of art writing, discussing the wide range of approaches to writing about this ephemeral subject, from critics to encyclopedias of art. Original.

Writing about Visual Art

"Principles of Art History Writing traces the changes in the way in which writers about art represent the same works. These differ in such deep ways as to raise the question of whether those at the beginning of the process even saw the same things as those at the end did. Carrier uses four case studies to identify and explain changing styles of restoration and the history of interpretation of selected works by Piero, Caravaggio, and van Eyck." -- Back cover

Principles of Art History Writing

"Artwriting is concerned with texts of recent art critics. The analysis draws on Arthur Danto's theory of interpretation and upon three connected conceptual points: the need to properly identify an artwork; the possibility of conflicting interpretations; and the use of rhetoric in interpretation." -- Overture.

Artwriting

Is writing a world art history possible? Does the history of art as such even exist outside the Western tradition? Is it possible to consider the history of art in a way that is not fundamentally Eurocentric? In this highly readable and provocative book, David Carrier, a philosopher and art historian, does not attempt to write a world art history himself. Rather, he asks the question of how an art history of all cultures could be written—or whether it is even possible to do so. He also engages the political and moral issues raised by the idea of a multicultural art history. Focusing on a consideration of intersecting artistic traditions, Carrier negotiates the way meaning and understanding shift or are altered when a visual object from one culture, for example, is inserted into the visual tradition of another culture. A World Art History and Its Objects proposes the use of temporal narrative as a way to begin to understand a multicultural art history.

A World Art History and Its Objects

Art History, Historiography and After the End of Art

Danto and His Critics

A Brief Sketch of a New Answer to that Old Question

What is a Comic?

First Published in 1999. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

Biography and Taste

England and its Aesthetes

A Study in Art-historical Methodology

Poussin's Paintings

Studies the work of the most original and influential present-day art critic, tracing her development from her formalist writings in the 1960s through the post-structuralism of the current academic climate.

From Formalism to Beyond Postmodernism

Rosalind Krauss and American Philosophical Art Criticism

DIVProminent art historian looks at the birth of the art museum and contemplates its future as a public institution./div

A History of the Display of Art in Public Galleries

Museum Skepticism

Joachim Pissarro

“Wild Art” refers to work that exists outside the established, rarified world of art galleries and cultural channels. It encompasses uncatalogued, uncommodified art not often recognized as such, from graffiti to performance, self-adornment, and beyond. Picking up from their breakthrough book on the subject, Wild Art, David Carrier and Joachim Pissarro here delve into the ideas driving these forms of art, inquire how it came to be marginalized, and advocate for a definition of “taste,” one in which each expression is acknowledged as being different while deserving equal merit. Arguing that both the “art world” and “wild art” have the same capacity to produce aesthetic joy, Carrier and Pissarro contend that watching skateboarders perform Christ Air, for example, produces the same sublime experience in one audience that another enjoys while taking in a ballet; therefore, both mediums deserve careful reconsideration. In making their case, the two provide a history of the institutionalization of “taste” in Western thought, point to missed opportunities for its democratization in the past, and demonstrate how the recognition and acceptance of “wild art” in the present will radically transform our understanding of contemporary visual art in the future. Provocative and optimistic, Aesthetics of the Margins / The Margins of Aesthetics rejects the concept of “kitsch” and the high/low art binary, ultimately challenging the art world to become a larger and more inclusive place.

Wild Art Explained

Aesthetics of the Margins / The Margins of Aesthetics

The great poet Charles Baudelaire (1821&–1867) was also an extremely influential art critic. High Art relates the philosophical issues posed by Baudelaire's art writing to the theory and practice of modernist and postmodernist painting. Baudelaire wrote in an age of transition, David Carrier argues, an era divided by the Revolution of 1848, the historical break that played for him a role now taken within modernism by the political revolts of 1968. Moving from the grand tradition of Delacroix to the images of modern life made by Constantin Guys, this movement from &"high&" to &"low,&" from the unified world of correspondences to the fragmented images of contemporary city life, motivates Baudelaire's equivalent to the post-1968 turn away from formalist art criticism. Viewed from the perspective of the 1990s, Carrier argues, the issues raised by Baudelaire's criticism and creative writing provide a way of understanding the situation of art writing in our own time.

Charles Baudelaire and the Origins of Modernist Painting

High Art

Two of the most important modernist artists, Marcel Proust and Andy Warhol, also developed aesthetic theories. Proust presents imaginary artists - a composer, a painter, and a novelist. Warhol made paintings and sculptures; created art history writing, fiction, and films; and sponsored a rock group. Warhol most likely never read Proust, but because their ways of thinking contrast dramatically, much can be learned about both men's art by comparing: the imaginary painting described by Proust to Warhol's Marilyn Diptych; the ways that Proust and Warhol understand art-making; how Proust and Warhol define art; and the ways that Elstir's studio differs from Warhol's factory. Also discussed is the relationship of their homosexuality to their art. Proust/Warhol: Analytical Philosophy of Art employs three key intellectual tools: the aesthetic theory of Arthur Danto, the account of Proust by Joshua Landy, and the analysis of the art of living by Alexander Nehamas. Proust/Warhol concludes with a discussion of an issue of particular importance for Warhol, the relationship between art and fashion.

Analytical Philosophy of Art

Proust/Warhol

Wild Art is an incredibly brash and current collection of over 300 extraordinary artworks that are too offbeat, outrageous, kitschy, quirky, or funky for the formal art world. From pimped cars, graffiti, flash mobs, and burlesque acts, to extreme body art, ice sculpture, light shows, and carnivals, the works featured here are variously moving, funny, or shocking - and guaranteed to elicit a reaction. Authors David Carrier and Joachim Pissarro have studied alternative and underground art cultures for years. Here, they've compiled the ultimate collection of creative works that celebrate the beauty and art in anything and everything, challenging the reader's perception of what is and what isn't art.

David Carrier

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