True Colors: The Real Life of the Art World - Softcover

Haden-Guest, Anthony

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0871137259 ISBN 13: 9780871137258

Publisher: Atlantic Monthly Press, 1998

Synopsis

Covering a period in which the prevailing artistic fashion has rapidly shifted and when art, money, talent, and celebrity have been confused, a study of the last twenty-five years of the contemporary art world offers vivid portraits of key artists as they strive to fulfill their ambitions. Tour.

About this title

Review

This sometimes hilarious, sometimes scathing book is the most honest account to be found of the fashionable, fabulous, and often ugly New York art world of the last quarter century. This was the first time in history when visual artists came fully under the glare of the media and evolved into pop cultural figures. Here are Andy, Jean-Michel, Leo, and Julian as only art and cultural critic Anthony Haden-Guest can present them. Revealing anecdotes (and gossip) offer a sense of how the art world really works, its politics, its scene, and how artists survive in it or not. Wry, witty, and insightful, Hayden-Guest provides an absorbing narrative on how the art world got the way it is and where it is likely to go from here. This fresh look into art and artists is quite a thing apart from studying at the museum or library; True Colors makes you feel genuinely present at the most chi-chi art opening or cocktail party in town.

From the Back Cover

True Colors covers a period during which the prevailing artistic fashion has shifted as frequently as the focus of the Whitney Biennial, when art and money, talent and celebrity have often been confused. During this period, figures such as Julian Schnabel, Jeff Koons, and Keith Haring have crossed over from the rarefied world of high art into popular culture; and art dealers, like Hollywood power agents, have often claimed as much attention as those they represented. Anthony Haden-Guest has moved within this world, and known the players. He delivers here an authoritative and deliciously inside account.

Focussing on the lives and personalities of the art world's main players, and with a sure critical component, Haden-Guest gives us vivid portraits of the period's key artists as they strive to fulfill their ambitions. He does justice as well to the machinations of those who have come to control the larger drama-the dealers, collectors, and museum curators. Filled with incredible anecdotes, dramatically told stories, and subtle critical assessments, True Colors tells the story of the art world that we have never heard before.

"Sexier than Artforum, brainier than Vanity Fair."-Kirkus Reviews

"A devastating account of the art scene during the past three decades." -The New York Times Book Review

"Avid and unshockable."-Art in America

Anthony Haden-Guest is an art and cultural critic who writes for The New Yorker, Vanity Fair, The Times (London), and many other publications. He is the author of Bad Dreams, The Paradise Program: Travels Through Musak, Disney, Coca-Cola and Other American Empires, and The Last Party: Studio 54, Disco, and the Culture of the Night.

Edition details

• Publisher: Atlantic Monthly Press
• Publication date: 1998
• ISBN 10: 0871137259
• ISBN 13: 9780871137258
• Binding: Paperback
• Language: English
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 352