If the image of the starving artist has been replaced by the glamorized celebrity, what does contemporary art represent? The art critic for the National Review , Gardner examines the artists who have been "sanctified" by the acclaim of critics, curators, and dealers and thus become part of a multibillion-dollar industry. Gardner sees the role of the critic in creating the artist--by producing more ad copy than criticism--as the pivotal force behind much of the current art market and in no small way a symbol of the terminal quality of contemporary art. From Soho to Cologne, Body Art to Outsider Art, contemporary art has become "an older order increasingly reduced to self-parody," according to the author, and what is hailed as new and innovative is too often meaningless, because the search for impact has replaced the desire for insight.
