The book was awarded The Art Association of Australia and New Zealand Book Prize in 2010. Art
continues to bemuse and confuse many people today. Yet its critical analyses are saturated
with daunting analyses of contemporary art's exhaustion its predictability or its absorption
into global commercial culture. In this book the author seeks to clarify this apprehensive
perception of art. He argues it is a consequence not only of confounding art-works but also of
the paradoxical impetus of a culture of modernity. By positively reassessing the perplexing or
apprehensive features of cultural modernity as well as of aesthetic inquiry this book
redefines the ambitions of art in the wake of this legacy. In the process it challenges many
familiar approaches to art inquiry in order to offer a new understanding of the aesthetic
social and cultural aspirations of art in our time.
