In "The End of Art" Donald Kuspit argues that art has come to an end because it has lost its aesthetic charge. Art has been replaced by 'postarte', a term invented by Alan Kaprow as a new visual category that elevates the banal above the enigmatic, the eschatological above the sacred, intelligence above creativity. Tracing the disappearance of aesthetic experience to the works and theory of Marcel Duchamp and Barnett Newman, Kuspit argues that devaluation is inseparable from the entropic character of modern art and that unsightly postmodern art constitutes its final phase. Unlike the former, which expressed the universal human unconscious, the latter has degenerated into an expression of narrow ideological interests. In reaction to the emptiness and stagnation of post art, Kuspit points to the aesthetic and human future that the New Old Masters bring. Extensive and incisive review of ...read more