Dialectical Conversions Donald Kuspit's Art Criticism

Few art critics in Western history have had the lasting international impact of philosopher and psychoanalyst Donald Kuspit. A student of Theodor Adorno, Kuspit introduced in the 1970s a new type of philosophical art criticism drawing on critical theory, phenomenology, and psychoanalysis. Dense and demanding, yet deft and incisive, this multifaceted art criticism has gained world renown for reasons that critics, art historians, and philosophers from around the world explain here. The first book about one of the most distinguished art critics in history,Dialectical Conversionsis a searching survey of Kuspit's role in triggering several historic shifts within art criticism.

David Craven is Distinguished Professor of Art History at the University of New Mexico. His publications include Poetics and Politics in the Art of Rudolf Baranik (Atlantic Highlands, 1996), Diego Rivera as Epic Modernist (Boston, 1997), Abstract Expressionism-as Cultural Critique: Dissent During the McCarthy Period (Cambridge, 1999), Art and Revolution in Latin America, 19-10-1990 (London and New Haven, 2002), and Mexican Modern: Masters of the 20th Century, co-authored with Luis Martin Lozano (Santa Fe, 2006). Brian Winkenweder is Associate Professor of Art History at Linfield College, McMinnville, Oregon, and the author of Reading Wittgenstein: Robert Morris Art as Philosophy (Saarbrcken, 2008).