Disclosing Spaces

In recent decades the proliferation of art practices has left behind the critical frameworks needed to understand and appraise art. In Disclosing Spaces, Andrew Benjamin diagnoses and addresses this failure in terms of the role of criticism itself, proposing a realignment of the relationship between painting and criticism at a fundamental level. Broaching the idea that 'Paintings are not examples; not even of paintings, ' the consequences are played out against modern art theory in a uniquely philosophical way. An individual art work cannot be seen in any straightforward way as a 'particular' of an established 'universal' that we might call art: painting is not reducible to a determined form. Rather, maintains Benjamin, painting evolves and encounters new territory through the constant tension of the 'work' that constitutes the art, and the work of criticism. What follows is a renewal of the terms of criticism which draws on the philosophical (Immanuel Kant, Walter Benjamin) and the art-theoretical (Arthur Danto, Rosalind Krauss) alike. Throughout, the argument is funneled through detailed treatment of an eclectic range of works, classical, modern and postmodern. This intriguing and persuasive book is illustrated with the works under consideration, and will serve as a valuable new vantage point for students and teachers of art, art history, or aesthetic philosophy. --Publisher description.