The Painted Word, Tom Wolfe
The Painted Word, Tom Wolfe
List: $9.95 | Sale: $6.96
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The Painted Word

Author: Tom Wolfe

Narrator: Harold N. Cropp

Unabridged: 2 hr 6 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 02/14/2014

Categories: Nonfiction, Art


Synopsis

No one skewers the popular movements of American culture like Tom Wolfe. In 1975, he turned his satirical pen to the pretensions of the contemporary art world, a world of social climbing, elitist posturing, and ingeniously absurd self-justifying theorizing. He addresses the scope of Modern Art, from its founding days as Abstract Expressionism through its transformations to Pop, Op, Minimal, and Conceptual. In the process he debunks the great American myth of Modern Art in an incandescent, hilarious, and devastating blast. Wolfes style has never been more dazzling, and his wit never more keen.

About Tom Wolfe

Tom Wolfe was the author of more than a dozen books, among them such contemporary classics as The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test, The Right Stuff, The Bonfire of the Vanities, and A Man in Full. A native of Richmond, Virginia, he earned his BA at Washington and Lee University and a PhD in American studies at Yale.


Reviews

Goodreads review by Glenn on September 18, 2023

Jack the Dripper, the king of Abstract Expressionism, an art movement author Tom Wolfe didn't hold in high regard You will be hard-pressed to find a more lively, wittier book on the phenomenon of modern art than Tom Wolfe’s The Painted Word, a 100-page romp through the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s where t......more

Goodreads review by Paul on December 27, 2022

The prose is absolutely brilliant, as always, and the social commentary is 100% correct, but Wolfe's overall argument is unconvincing. He's also wrong on a quite a few historical points -- e.g., Picasso was not languishing in obscurity until 1918 (to say the least). And, incidentally, Picasso had ma......more

Goodreads review by John on April 22, 2013

I am writing a much longer and more detailed review than usual because I plan to attend a local book club's upcoming meeting to discuss this nonfiction book. Tom Wolfe's small but potent book charts the course of Modern Art. The stylistic writing is as witty and provocative as Wolfe's earlier book "R......more

Goodreads review by Kevin on February 18, 2023

Tom Wolfe rips the pish out of art critics using their own chosen weapon - the word. This was probably about round 6 of a 12 rounder between painting and theory. Up to this pont Theory had been winning every round and it looked like painting was going to have to throw in the towel and abandon the tit......more

Goodreads review by Kathe on December 20, 2020

A clear and concise easy to read book about why the contemporary art world is what it is. The author claims that contemporary visual art no longer speaks for itself, but needs an interpreter and justifier to speak for it, something like the Emperor'S New Clothes fable. Why is the intellectualization......more