This Is Modern Art

by Matthew Collings

Modern art today is a cow cut in half with a chainsaw, floating in a glass tank. A house cast in concrete. The London Underground map with all the station names changes - the Circle Line stations are comedians, the Northern Line stations are philosophers. A tent embroidered with the names of everyone the artist who set up the tent has ever slept with. But what does it all mean? What is Modern Art? Why do we like/hate it? Can anybody do it? Is it always modern? Who started it? In this refreshing and extremely accessible book Matthew Collings tells the story of modern art and our modern attitude to it. It combines hard information on major artists and movements - what really happened - with ordinary reflections: modern art is intimidating and unfathomable to many but Matthew Collings cuts through this barrier by asking all the kinds of questions many of us will have asked and been puzzled by. He will compare Goya to Duchamp and Picasso, Rothko to Yves Klein; he will look at the role of African tribal art in the rise of Modernism and Punk Rock in the rise of Post-Modernism. This will become a classic book of its kind, quirky, culty and great fun.

Genres: Art, Nonfiction, Art History, Philosophy, Cultural

271 pages, Paperback

First published June 12, 1999

About the author

Matthew Collings is a British art critic, writer, broadcaster, and artist.

Reviews

[Zoe (Zthecapybara) · Rating 4 out of 5]

I found this book really useful in the run up to starting A-Level Art as it made me think about my style of art and other ways of presenting my work.

[Joanna · Rating 4 out of 5]

Matthew Collings has been rightly criticized for being simplistic and sometimes dismissive when writing about art movements and artists, but this book is a fun read. I think that his quick, funny style makes the contemporary art themes he writes about easier to understand.

[Barry Pierce · Rating 3 out of 5]

A nice overview of modern art written from a Young British Art perspective. Collings draws links from (then) contemporary artists such as Sarah Lucas, Chris Ofili and Tracey Emin to their common ancestors, Picasso, Dalí and Duchamp (with the occasional excursion to more off-the-wall artists like Bruce Nauman and Paul McCarthy). Collings has a wonderful but oft criticised prose style which is like reading Vasari, as transcribed by Viz. The accompanying Channel 4 documentary is the pinnacle of Channel 4's 90s in-yer-face style and it is wonderful.

[Rebecca · Rating 5 out of 5]

one of my favourite art critics ever. collings is conversational without being casual, and witty without being condescending. this book was published to accompany the bbc series of the same name, but you don't need to have seen the show to read the book. a good introduction to modern art and its foundations.

[Aaron Hertzmann · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is 20 years old, yet I found it to be an excellent overview of Modern Art. Many of the artists he covers are still big names today. Most importantly, it was really valuable to see how he describes, evaluates different artists and movements in the context of their times. I appreciate his casual tone and ability to acknowledge the difficulties in appreciating modern art, to recognize, for example, that a work might not be that special had it not been shown in an art context, but then to explain what made it special in that context. This makes one much more sympathetic to the works he presents than a writer who presumes the genius in conceptual works is self-evident and unassailable.

I also watched the first episode of the BBC series (on YouTube) which this book is based on. The BBC series does a better job of discussing a few core artists, with a more sustained and visual presentation, but at the expense of the detail of the book. I appreciated the extra detail of the book, though I wish it was more concise, organized, and more willing to commit to a point of view and explain it, rather than going back and forth between "maybe this famous work was great, maybe it's pretentious, well maybe a bit of both". The book could use some editing and I ended up skimming the last two chapters.

Still, despite its age, this is the best book I've read that purports to answer the question "what is modern art today".

[LPK · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is how all books about art should be. It's sassy, sarcastic, funny, dry, witty, honest, and brutal. I love it. Has awesome works by controversial modern artists, and questions everything about "what is" modern art.

[CM · Rating 3 out of 5]

From Matisse to Damien Hirst, this book covers way more than what the term Modern Art usually means with about 30% to 40% on what we may call Contemporary Art. Part commentary, part thematic introduction, part art history and biography, this is one of the few books where the voice of the author is so ironic that you can't really tell if he is serious but his preference/bias and wry humour come through that voice. In each chapter, there are a collection of related sections (in tiny font) with their own heading, an example here on Rene Magritte (right next to the reproduction of his famous painting, Golconda)


Why Magritte is popular
[...]Magritte is popular because his jokes don't stay up an ivory tower. But also because everyone knows his painting style is old style and he seems like a real artist. Although actually nothing like it exists in traditional art. It is a sign style, flat like posters or ads - ads in the 1930s. The point of it is to make a point, not to draw attention to itself as a style. But it is beautiful in its own way. The economy of the style make you stare - the ingenious picking out of outlines, making silhouettes expressive.[...]

Nightmare
Magritte's style is like the illustrations in Ladybird books. The Ladybird book of phenomenology perhaps. What would it say?We have pictures in our heads for everything we see, conceptual signs that guide us round the visual world. But what happens when you paint only the signs and not the things they refer to? And make the signs tell lies? Ugh! That would be horrible!
Magritte tried mixing the deadpan style with a sunny impressionist style briefly during the war. The results look quite gruesome and they seem to prove that the Magritte delivery must only ever be dead straight for it to work - everything must be absolutely straight in a world of logical wonkiness.

The book may have a slow start but it's worth a read. You can also find the original TV series (of the same title) on Youtube. I really recommend watching the series as well but both the book and the series are much more enjoyable if you already have some sort of knowledge of the key figures in 20th century art.

[Doug · Rating 3 out of 5]

A very good overview of contemporary art by someone who actually likes most of it. Collings is a very good read, droll and conversational, but he has this way about him of an insider pretending to be an outsider who rolls his eyes at all the insiders (as well as at all the outsiders). His use of "we" to talk about the collective mindset of contemporary art-think is meant I'm sure to be ironic and droll, but he's also I'm sure serious (while also being ironic---it's his safety net, I think) in his (or their, which includes him I'm sure) dismissal of ideas and reactions and artistic intentions that are based on aesthetics and emotion and expression rather than intellectualizations of boredom and despair (and French Theory), and it feels annoying and snobbish. He gets tiresome after a while, with his world-weariness and his inability to express anything or believe in anything that isn't first wrapped up in an ironic yet possibly serious dismissal.

[Julia · Rating 3 out of 5]

(really more like 3-1/2 stars) Matthew Collings is a super-insider who personally knows pretty much all the contemporary (well, contemporary at the time, this is kind of an older book) artists he talks about, and assumes you probably do too, or are more than passingly acquainted with their work. The book tries to make the 1990s YBAs (Young British Artists) conform to an imagined continuum of Modernism, and they simply just don't, unless you count the shock aspect of Modernism all that there was to the movement. I'm not saying the YBAs aren't good--quite a few of them are brilliant--just that his case isn't well enough made, or universally applicable. Nevertheless, it's very entertaining, although I wouldn't recommend it for rank beginners.

[Theresa · Rating 4 out of 5]

It doesn't read like a text book at all. It actually has personality, and I learned a lot about different artists from this book!

[Safoura · Rating 5 out of 5]

Another one of those books who helped me figure out the modern art

[Kurt · Rating 3 out of 5]

Interesting quick, opinionated survey of a handful of themes in 20th century and contemporary art. Worth my time.

[Peter · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excellent book for beginner reading of modern art. Witty, funny, and entertaining.

[Aryo Wasisto]

Good explanation and interpretation.....