Name: The Painted Word
Rating: 3.5 (8 reviews)
ISBN: 9780553380651

Tom Wolfe

The Painted Word

Sean Goodwin

Excellent criticism on how modern art has abstracted away representation in favor of the art theory du jour. Also a great overview to take you from Cubism through to post-minimalism (though it could benefit from more reference images). 

Before I dropped out of my BFA program they made me sign up for a “Writing for Artists” course. It was really a crash course in keeping up with literary theory of the art world and tailoring your work to it. 🥲

The author derails the great American myth of modern art in a scathing, witty, uncompromising critique of American art from the 1950s through the 1970s. Reprint. NYT.

Giovanni Garcia-Fenech 

Simon Elliott Stegall

Val Moon

"America's nerviest journalist" (Newsweek) trains his satirical eye on Modern Art in this "masterpiece" (The Washington Post) Wolfe's style has never been more dazzling, his wit never more keen. He addresses the scope of Modern Art, from its founding days as Abstract Expressionism through its transformations to Pop, Op, Minimal, and Conceptual. The Painted Word is Tom Wolfe "at his most clever, amusing, and irreverent" (San Francisco Chronicle).

The Painted Word

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