Deconstructing Art - Paperback

by Siu Kam Wen (Author)

Modern aesthetics is in as much a quagmire as modern art is. Since the nineteenth century, there has been no serious attempt at defining beauty, while the great many of theorists focus their attention on a concocted concept that is foreign and unnatural to say the least: the aesthetic. Art theory, on the other hand, failed utterly in its fundamental task when it handed the artist and the so-called artworld a carte blanche-in the form of the institutional theory of art-to decide by themselves what art is and is not. This study attempts to fill both niches thus left gaping. The work is divided into five parts: Part I and Part II provide an objective definition of art. Part III provides an objective definition of beauty. Part IV provides "guidelines" for judging or appreciating any work of art. And Part V provides a rather personal interpretation of what went on in the arts during the twentieth century.