Magicians & Charlatans: Essays on Art and Culture

by Jed Perl (Contributor)

Essays on art and culture.

Genres: Essays, Art, Criticism

358 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2012

Reviews

[Michael · Rating 5 out of 5]

For more than a decade, my wife -- who is an artist in several media -- has told me how generally parasitic and useless she finds art criticism; so, I was pretty interested when she starting praising Jed Perl's recent work in the New York Review of Books (actually, the first two or three times she mentioned him, it may not have entirely registered, but that fourth time, my razor-sharp intellect detected the pattern). Wanting to encourage her excitement, I bought a small shelf of Perl's books. This is the one that I read myself first and I was utterly blown away. Every essay -- nearly every page -- struck me with the depth its insight and its feeling. And its scholarship. Like so many great books, this one is a portal into many others as well, of course, as into many canvases. I loved it.

[Richard · Rating 3 out of 5]

Good criticism of "anything goes" in modern art. Gets rather tendentious at times.