True Colors: The Real Life of the Art World

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.

Haden-Guest's gossipy and witty tour of the contemporary art scene, focusing on New York City with forays to California, Paris and elsewhere, probes a fickle art market where trends, connections, galleries and critics make or break reputations. It opens in the late 1960s, as conceptualists, performance artists and surrealists rebel against minimalism; moves through a flurry of movements from neo-expressionism to earthworks and graffiti art; and closes with a report on the 1993 Venice Biennale and a skeptical look at 1990s' developments, including confessional and victim art, ecological, computer and technological art. In a torrent of conversations, interviews, anecdotes, capsule bios and critical asides, Haden-Guest (Bad Dreams), an art and cultural critic who writes for the New Yorker and Vanity Fair, profiles dozens of well-known artists such as Cindy Sherman, Keith Haring, Julian Schnabel, Malcolm Morley, Donald Judd, James Turrell, Jeff Koons and Jean-Michel Basquiat. His engaging insider's account will appeal most to those already familiar with this scene.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.

The "real life" of the subtitle refers to the artists of the past 25 years: their ambitions, habits, and relationships with dealers, critics, and collectors, and, sometimes, their art. Like Calvin Tomkin's Off the Wall: Robert Rauchenberg and the Art World of Our Time (LJ 4/15/80), this chronicle of the New York art world is more anecdotal than art historical and is written with a keen detachment. An art and cultural critic for The New Yorker and Vanity Fair, Haden-Guest has honed his talent for gossip and amusement in Bad Dreams (LJ 12/1/81) and The Paradise Program (LJ 12/1/73). At a time when artist-movies like Basquiat and I Shot Andy Warhol are making the rounds, this should do well in public libraries, but it is recommended only to art libraries for the sake of inclusiveness.?Heidi Martin Winston, NYPL
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.