"When Has Modernism Failed? was first published in 1984, it was one of the first books to confront the social situation of contemporary art. Suzi Gablik's description of how the heroic idealism of twentieth-century art had degenerated into a despiritualized marketplace of styles, forms, and attitudes challenged and provoked a multitude of readers. Here was a critic who was willing to add ethical, sociological, and economic perspectives to her credentials as an art critic in order to dissect an art milieu that seemed to be without purpose or moral authority." "Now, in this revised and expanded edition, Gablik assesses the state of contemporary art at the beginning of the twenty-first century. Though there is still a highly commodified modernist and postmodernist art world - a world for which Gablik's analysis is as relevant as ever - there is a burgeoning commitment to socially relevant and spiritually informed art. In a new prologue and two new chapters, Gablik looks at the promises and the problems of globalization, and the attempts of artists to integrate the concerns of the environment and the world with their art."--Jacket.

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