The Painted Word

I quite enjoyed this deluge of modern art criticism, precariously trying not to be theory, as that inevitably is what the book aims to arrive at as it's title suggests. This is the first time I have read Wolfe, and I have always liked a bit of savvy, journalistic poking and prodding at artistic painting, so I approached this work in a care-free manner. The book races through the timeline of modern art and notable artists, making digs along the way. Tom, deceptively, writes from the point-of-view of someone baffled by the concept of painting but, in reality, evokes a written opinion piece that reveals a scrupulous, if not cursory, understanding of what he is writing about.

Liked it lots, but I always feel a little gypped when a publisher puffs up what amounts to a magazine feature’s worth of words with a big font, generous line-spacing and margins, and some illustrations, to make it just big enough to put legible text on the spine so they can sell it as a book.