Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #637169 in Books
• Published on: 2001-10-15
• Format: Illustrated
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 204 pages

Amazon.co.uk Review
Matthew Collings' amusing and readable take on the British art world in Art Crazy Nation is as punchy and as clearly written as we have come to expect from the trendy enfant terrible of art criticism. A natural successor to Blimey (the subtitle of which, The London Artworld from Francis Bacon to Damien Hirst, succinctly sums up the particular remit of that book), Art Crazy Nation sees Collings in a slightly more sombre mood than we have encountered him before. While Blimey was an urgent, polemical and, primarily, positive assessment of Hirst (whose recent book of interviews On the Way to Work with Gordon Burn is an essential insight into that particular artists' mind), Art Crazy Nation seeks rather to critique the "craziness" of the recent British love affair with the ironic and iconoclastic art of the post-Sensation generation. Collings here claims that while the YBAs may well be experts in the kind of cynical image manipulation we now flock to see in such hugely popular settings as Tate Modern they have simultaneously reduced the scope of what good art can offer. Art used to have its own spiritual and, principally, aesthetic concerns while now it seems to barely speak of anything except the gestural. Tragically Collings' own writing--arch, clever, bombastic but devoid of seriousness, weight or theoretical rigour--mimics absolutely the nescient, one-dimensional shallowness of the art he, rather late in the day, has come to suspect. Reading Collings remains a wonderful pleasure, but it remains a pleasure for the same reasons that viewing a work by Hirst remains one: neither Collings, nor those artists he now criticises, work hard enough to convince us that what they have to say to us is anything more than a joke, a glib anecdote or an amused observation. Both he and they need to put a little more effort into thinking through what questions they really do expect art to answer. --Mark Thwaite

Synopsis
A personal perspective on the contemporary British art scene is given by art critic Matthew Collings in this follow-up to the critically acclaimed "Blimey". He examines how art attitudes and behaviour and art fashions have seeped into the wider culture. He questions what people want from Art now and who they think it is. He asks what the intellectual currents are that run through it and what are its values. Collings takes the reader on a personal journey into the London art scene to seek out the answers.

Customer Reviews

Personal but not political
After the enjoyment of this man's other books, and his excellent TV series Hello Culture earlier this year, I suppose my expectations were high for this one. However, this is a long hard slog of a read. The art world musings are thin on the ground and are replaced by anecdotal wishy washy reminisces of dinners, parties and shopping trips the author undertook over the last few years. Objective reporting goes out the window and is replaced by a chumminess that is at times excruciating ("they were at my house for dinner the other night...", "I didn't want to be there but then someone told me how much they liked my last book..." blah blah blah. Harder still to fathom is why the author looks so pleased with himself standing on a council estate on the cover as it's unlikely that's where most of the dinners and parties mentioned took place. A sad follow on to the excellent Blimey! Buy that if you don't already have it.

Hello or OK
Overall I enjoyed this book for the way how it was gossipy and easy to read. There are no great insights (unless you work hard to read between the lines), yet it seems to offer a mainly cynical outlook at 'his' artworld tempered by deprecating humour towards himself. There are moments that made me wince which were pages devoted to deploring for support from famous artists and curators. This book does not shy from being a diaristic piece of writing and often feels like as though he is addressing his social circles than as an informative book about culture, for exapmle interspersed throughout the erratic texts are apologetic sentences about his behaviour at private views and dinner parties. Yes, they are funny but they do become a little tiresome. The title Art Crazy Nation might suggest a survey of a culture that is filled with researched and thorough documention, but unfortunately does not deliver and is better described as a very expensive magazine in the format of a book equivalent to a Hello or Ok magazine with lots of colourful images (nice to be able to put faces to names). A flawed, rambling and relatively expensive book but because he openly reveals his own flaws, egotism and ineptness I felt it endeared 2 stars.

art crazy party bore
More low brow rubbish by a party bore, hardly anything about art in this book. just dull private views and dull musings on dull private views. 'crazy' as Matthew's life is, this book seems more about his cynicism than the artnation. It can be quite funny but so can seeing someone walking into a lampost. If you like second hand tales of last nights events then you will love this