The Highly Opinionated Newsletter: A Sometimes JudiciousSometimes Injudicious DISSENT From the Majority Opinion on the Current Art Scene

This volume is a collection of essays of art criticism written under the title The Highly Opinionated Newsletter. The essays were produced over several years on an occasional basis in response to museum and gallery art exhibits of individual painters and groups of painters. For those who had an opportunity to see the exhibits, the critical essays will provide additional pleasure, but one need not be familiar with particular painters or art shows to enjoy this book. What really distinguishes these critiques is the authors passionate rejection of many of the fashionable shibboleths of the current art scene, her insistence on distinguishing the merely trendy from the meaningful. As she says in her Introduction: The aesthetic today forms a radical break with aesthetics of the past. The present vogue is for innovation and sensation. In essays which consider the art of the Renaissance, Impressionism and many other epochs, as well as the trendy and self-satisfied art scene of Soho and, more recently, Chelsea in New York, the author refuses to lose sight of what has mattered in art over the centuries and rejects the idea that mere abandonment of these principles constitutes a meaningful artistic statement.