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Jed Perl

The latest issue of Harper's has a round-up, by Joshua Cohen, of new books.

The one that catches my eye is a comment on a collection of the writings of art critic Jed Perl. I've probably read a good chunk of that book, as I'm a fan of Perl's work as it appears in The New Republic.



Unfortunately, Perl's new book, Magicians and Charlatans, looks a little pricey for me.  So I'll confine myself to just quoting here what Cohen writes about it:

"[T]his miscellany's greatest recommending stretches are its critiques of what is essentially unreal: the art market. Shock, that old weapon of Dada and Surrealism, concussing sensibilities since World War I, has become a marketing manifesto licensing a Christ soaked in human urine (Andres Serrano's Piss Christ) and a Mary slathered in elephant dung (Chris Ofili's The Holy Virgin Mary) not as expressions of rage but as provocations of PR ....The museum is converted into its architectural double, the bank, as art and its market become incorporated -- that, mon frere, is mixed-media performance."

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