Fashionable Art

This stimulating, informative and well-needed book navigates contemporary art with viewpoints that are as refreshing as they are incisive. Fashionable Art presents us with an array of surprises and is written with verve and wit. This is a very original contribution to studies in contemporary art, an essential read - but not for the faint hearted! -- Benjamin Genocchio, Editor-in-Chief of Artnet, New York, USA The question of what the 'contemporary' in 'contemporary art' means has rarely been approached in such a sophisticated and historically conscious way as here in Fashionable Art. By working from the premise that contemporary art is fundamentally bound to, mediated by and understood through the mass media, market and fashion, the authors lay out a fresh and utterly convincing account of how the contemporary as a mesh of communications and social systems, aesthetic principles and ideologies coherently underpins a vast and otherwise divergent range of art practices, from Aboriginal art to video to minimalism as design. -- Blair French, Assistant Director, Curatorial & Digital, Museum of Contemporary Art, Australia A lot of mostly uninteresting books make the claim that fashion is art. This book is much more interesting in that it claims that art today is like fashion. A spirited jeremiad against the contemporary art world that is worth reading and worth discussing. Adam Geczy and Jacqueline Millner may well be the Dave Hickeys of the new millennium! -- Rex Butler, Professor of Art at Monash University, Melbourne, Australia ...a fine overview of modern art and ... a scholarly yet accessible discussion of fashion, art, media and market forces. Where competing premises would hold that fashion IS art, this book takes a slightly different approach in maintaining that art is like fashion - and it provides discussions on the process and patterns of fashion and how it dovetails with traditional art markets. MBR Book Review