Eyewitness: Reports from an Art World in Crisis

For the six years veteran journalist Perl (Paris Without End; Gallery Going) has been the art critic for the New Republic, he has consistently argued for struggling artists in their studios and against some of the best-known art stars of the last 20 years, from Chuck Close to Cindy Sherman. On a month-to-month basis, this underdog, work ethic-centered approach to art reviewing can be refreshingly contrarian, championing the slow, thoughtful creation of art, and deriding what Perl sees as contemporary art's fundamentally misguided assumption: that context and not content is what makes or breaks a work, or at least governs its immediate impact. Collected in a book, though, these we-they essays embody not so much a Robin Hood spirit as an extended appeal to the taste-based art criticism of poet John Ashbery (referenced by Perl repeatedly), though without Ashbery's genial stance. Perl writes most often about paintings; those he likes best, reproduced in 32 b&w illustrations, are complex compositions by artists who make conspicuous use of perspective, either narrow or foreshortened (R.B. Kitaj, Jean H lion). He especially likes the studio as a subject (Stanley Lewis, Trevor Winkfield), and has a weakness for allegorical group studies (Gabriel Laderman). Perl's prose is elegant and readable despite his disdain for segues and his often blunt remarks. Of the 26 essays here, several deal with established figures like Balthus, Jasper Johns and Bruce Nauman. While one would think that having contemporary art's number would make Perl a little less critically cranky, his readings of the works that touch him remain illuminating. (Mar.)