Description

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Reissued for today’s reader with a redesigned cover by the renowned artist Seymour Chwast, Tom Wolfe trains his satirical eye on Modern Art in this “masterpiece” (The Washington Post).

What has become of art?

In his dazzling and controversial book The Painted Word, Tom Wolfe explores this question and more as he investigates early trends in Modern Art and critiques the critics who dominated the art world during the 1960s and ’70s. Wolfe addresses the scope of Modern Art, from its founding days as Abstract Expressionism through its transformations to Pop, Op, Minimal, and Conceptual. He bring into question the work of famous avant-garde artists like Andy Warhol, Jackson Pollock, and others. With gorgeous, pointed prose, Wolfe investigates what has become of Modern Art and examines the control that art critics have over the art world at large.

Elegant, hilarious, and devastating, The Painted Word presents a sharp critique of the modern state of art.

About the Author

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Tom Wolfe (1930–2018) was one of the founders of the New Journalism movement and the author of contemporary classics like The Right Stuff and Radical Chic & Mau-Mauing the Flak Catchers, as well as the novels The Bonfire of the Vanities, A Man in Full, and I Am Charlotte Simmons. As a reporter, he wrote articles for The Washington Post, the New York Herald Tribune, Esquire, and New York Magazine, and is credited with coining the term, “The Me Decade.” Among his many honors, Tom was awarded the National Book Award, the John Dos Passos Award, the Washington Irving Medal for Literary Excellence, the National Humanities Medal, and National Book Foundation Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters. He lived in New York City.

Praise For…

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“If you have ever stared uncomprehendingly at an abstract painting that admired critics have said you ought to dig, take heart. Tom Wolfe . . . is on your side. The Painted Word may enrage you. It may confirm your darkest suspicions about Modern Art. In any case, it will amuse you.” —New York Sunday News

“Tom Wolfe is a journalist who always manages to combine an encyclopedic store of inside knowledge with the obstinate detachment of a visitor from Mars, not to mention a brilliant style and incisive wit.” —San Francsico Chronicle

“The Painted Word may well be Tom Wolfe's most successful piece of social criticism to date.” —The New York Times

“The Painted Word is a masterpiece. No one in the art world . . . could fail to recognize its essential truth. I read it four times, each of them with mounting envy for Wolfe's eye, ear, and surgical skill.” —The Washington Post

“His eye and ear for detailed observations are incomparable; and observation is to the satirist what bullets are to a gun.” —The Boston Sunday Globe