Nonfiction, Essays
Paperback book
Phil Day and Julian Davies
Art occupies uneasy ground in contemporary society. Although backed by powerful cultural institutions and increasingly embraced by the middle class, it has become more fractured and alienated. These two essays, both discursive and intimately reflective, examine the judgements we make about cultural significance and the values we bring to choosing the art and artists we celebrate and those we overlook or forget. Inherent here are possibilities of loss far more significant and fundamental than the erasing of any number of individual art objects. Today art is only one more brand.
“Lost Art is an absorbing and lyrical journey through the contemporary art world. Combining a sensibility that is both highly critical and deeply personal, … [it has] complexity and colour to shake off the laziness that is all too prevalent in contemporary art criticism. Both Day and Davies dance and side-step, placing famous and historical cultural figures alongside Hugo Ball’s Dada poems, Peter Cook jokes, and even betting equations for the Melbourne Cup. Lost Art is both welcomingly critical and magnetically alive. I applaud its passion and romance of expression” Scott McCulloch, Australian Book Review
“These two essays take up where many dinner-party conversations leave off in their probing of why we value one work of art over another…a moving case for scepticism about evaluative hierarchies.” Fiona Capp, Sydney Morning Herald
Lost Art is the continuation of a long collaboration between Phil Day and Julian Davies.
Davies and Day also collaborated on Davies’ novel, Crow Mellow, (2014), which Day illustrated with almost 400 drawings.
Nonfiction, Essays
Paperback book
Phil Day and Julian Davies
Art occupies uneasy ground in contemporary society. Although backed by powerful cultural institutions and increasingly embraced by the middle class, it has become more fractured and alienated. These two essays, both discursive and intimately reflective, examine the judgements we make about cultural significance and the values we bring to choosing the art and artists we celebrate and those we overlook or forget. Inherent here are possibilities of loss far more significant and fundamental than the erasing of any number of individual art objects. Today art is only one more brand.
“Lost Art is an absorbing and lyrical journey through the contemporary art world. Combining a sensibility that is both highly critical and deeply personal, … [it has] complexity and colour to shake off the laziness that is all too prevalent in contemporary art criticism. Both Day and Davies dance and side-step, placing famous and historical cultural figures alongside Hugo Ball’s Dada poems, Peter Cook jokes, and even betting equations for the Melbourne Cup. Lost Art is both welcomingly critical and magnetically alive. I applaud its passion and romance of expression” Scott McCulloch, Australian Book Review
“These two essays take up where many dinner-party conversations leave off in their probing of why we value one work of art over another…a moving case for scepticism about evaluative hierarchies.” Fiona Capp, Sydney Morning Herald
Lost Art is the continuation of a long collaboration between Phil Day and Julian Davies.
Davies and Day also collaborated on Davies’ novel, Crow Mellow, (2014), which Day illustrated with almost 400 drawings.
