Caging the lion Book

A very easy to read overview of a few art theories (bad on Kant; okay on Hume; good on feminism/ritual theory), and Freeland's chosen theory is a solid one as far as it goes. She has Dewey's idea that art is somehow metonymic of a 'culture' and can be understood cognitively as well as emotionally or aesthetically + institutional art theory's point that art is just what a community says art is.

But she never deals with the obvious objection: institutional art theory can only exist in modern and post-modern contexts. This is difficult to express without self-contradiction, I apologize: if art isn't cut off from everyday life (e.g., stained glass windows are set in the context of prayer rather than a museum), it makes no sense to have an institutional art theory. Now consider the social and cultural requirements for a theory of this kind, and ask yourself if this is the kind of art theory you want. Maybe it is, but maybe we want a theory that's more aspirational.

For instance, I'm worried about the effect that institutional art theory has on the future production of art: it seems to damn us to endless cycles of critique and recuperation, of shocks that are shocking for about fifteen seconds before they get commodified by those who have the money to tell the rest of us what art might be (and that includes 'shocks' like performance art that supposedly resists commodification, but in much the same way that tie-died T-shirts resisted commodification, i.e., not much). In this situation, Dewey's art is metonymic of culture bit suggests very little about our culture other than the fact that it's decadent, unimaginative, backward looking and slightly pathetic. And I'm pretty sure there's more going on than that.

Anyway, this is a thought-provoking book that you can read after lunch and before afternoon tea.