Art on the Cutting Edge: A Guide to Contemporary Movements

The concept of the "beautiful" has undergone profound changes during the last half of the twentieth century, as has our way of considering everything that is called "art." We need a new key to help us "know how to see" so that we can stay attuned to what is going on in the contemporary world of art where new aesthetic styles are appearing and being challenged one after the other. This book by Lea Vergine, which discusses seventeen different art movements in separate chapters, offers, within the panorama of contemporary art criticism books, a blend of handy art-history manual and an assessment of a cultural adventure that has passed through and overturned the parameters of taste of the last forty years. The clear and incisive writing style guides the reader, student or specialist, whatever his or her specific interests and curiosities, like an essential travel kit for understanding today's reality, grasping its "raison d'etre," and above all, plunging into its multiple mutations.