Sortir Du Champ: Art Criticism Outside the Ready Media
Following his recent book on landscape in art in the 21st century, Naturans. Il paesaggio nell’arte contemporanea (Naturans. Landscape in Contemporary Art), Angelo Capasso’s Sortir Du Champ. Art Criticism Outside the Ready Media (Silvana Editoriale, Milan 2021), focuses on the destiny of art criticism in the era of social media.
Capasso says: “Except for a handful of academic essays, writing on art has become the domain of journalism. Very few art magazines publish new theories. In comparison to the last century, the current debate on contemporary art has been reduced to sensationalism and economic issues, justified by the high financial investments that art attracts in the new millennium. The haunting theory of the ‘end of art’ was likely foreshadowing a different end, that of art criticism. If that has taken place, it has happened in the form of a suicide. The art critic is the true victim of ‘suicide by society’, to take up Artaud’s words about Van Gogh—’Van Gogh committed suicide because the collective consciousness as a whole could no longer tolerate him’. Like the Dutch artist, the critic’s suicide is a social necessity: art criticism has been eradicated by the superfetation of acritical information that circulates through the media. We live in the time of the “press release”: a form of information that is accepted passively (in some magazines, one can download it directly from their website), or as a basis on which to build a review (not all magazines have enough contributors to cover the many events of the brimming the art world, but still need to show they are on the ball).”
Art criticism is a victim of the ready made, or rather of the “ready media”. In the complex liminal analysis between art and criticism, Capasso identifies the myth as a way out of the “compulsion to repeat” imposed by the ready made. Criticism can forge new myths out of historical ones or generate new myths out of the present. The two essays in this book focus on two main topoi found in classic philosophy and modern technology, Recognition and Electricity, and the illuminating insights they give into the contemporary art world.
The communication campaign on Capasso’s new book is promoted by the Centro Luigi Di Sarro in Rome.
Angelo Capasso is an art critic and professor of History and Methodology of Art Criticism and History of Contemporary Art, based in Rome, Italy.
He is the author of the books: Nottefonda, Edizioni ZowArt, Rome (2000); A.B.O. Le arti della critica, Skira, Milan (2001); AA. L’arte per l’arte, MME, Rome (2002); Ombre e fantasmi, Monti, Rome (2004); Opere d’arte a parole, Meltemi, Rome (2007); L’orlo del vuoto. Vita, morte e arte di Luigi Di Sarro, Skira, Milan (2008); Arte e le teorie di turno, Electa, Milan (2011); Sadiesfaction. Seduzione, economia, arte, DuePunti, Palermo (2011); Naturans. Il paesaggio nell’arte contemporanea, Skira, Milan (2019).
Contact: write [at] angelocapasso.it.
Centro Luigi Di Sarro—Center of documentation for contemporary artistic research was founded in Rome in 1981. The Center is named after the Italian artist Luigi Di Sarro (Lamezia Terme, 1941–Roma 1979). It is devoted to Di Sarro’s work and to all researches in Contemporary Art.
