For writer, critic and artist John Miller, the issue of the production-reception of a work of art is a genuine dialectic. He argues that the artist has no choice but to address the sociopolitical questions and the ideological apparatuses linked to the production of cultural "artefacts." Hence, his witty title, drawing attention to art as commodity. From polemical pieces to extensive theoretical essays to studies of Ed Ruscha, Bruce Nauman, Richard Artschwager and John Baldessari, the texts collected here respond to the ongoing collision of aesthetics and exchange value. Throughout, Miller draws upon his seemingly inexhaustible knowledge of art history, theory and popular culture. As critic Bruce Hainley has written in Artforum, "Miller's essays are a pungent intervention into the ideologies of beauty, representation and looking."
