True Colors: The Real Life of the Art World

by Anthony Haden-Guest

Book Overview

The last quarter century has been an extraordinary and turbulent period in the art world. It was a time of creative intensity during which a handful of artists, like Julian Schnabel, Jeff Koons, Keith Haring, and Jean-Michel Basquiat, managed, in their different ways, to cross over from the rarefied world of high art into popular culture. It was also a time when other promising careers and even whole movements, like Graffiti, spurted to life and...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0871137259
• ISBN13: 9780871137258
• Release Date: September 1998
• Publisher: Atlantic Monthly Press
• Length: 352 Pages
• Weight: 1.30 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.1" x 6.1" x 9.0"

Customer Reviews

page-turner

This is a book to inhale and savor, evocative of the 70s-80s-90s Art World Times, full of insight and things-around-the-corner. Gives good background understanding to the subsequent Wasteland in the art scene, and more recent developments.

True Colors:The Real Life of the Art World

This book really has provided me the insight into collecting that I had always wanted to see. It was a fantastic,important and redefining period for art and collecting. Tremendously well done.

nicely done

An engaging overview of the N.Y. art scene. Especially nice is how Haden-Guest uses gossip and fact to give an entertaining explanation to the rise of such 80s figures as Jeff Koons. I especially enjoyed his chapter on Donald Judd and other chapters on early Conceptualists and how that genre has morped over the past 3 decades. These are not hard core critical essays! But that is not what I was looking for. Recommended to the casual art fan like myself.

a must for all interested in the contemporary arts scene

This is the first book that ties together the art movements from the last three decades with the happenings in the art market, which in turn shaped part of the movements. Anthony Haden-Guest was and is part of this world himself, so you're getting a first person account, not merely a list of events accumulated by a researcher. Haden-Guest very nicely places all the major happenings and people in a row and relates them to eachother. Entertainingly written too! Even if you already know all about who was who in the artworld, this is still a fun read.