Vulgar Modernism

Library Journal

This is a collection of film critic Hoberman's writings on movies and culture, most of which appeared in The Village Voice . The essays are impassioned, erudite, blunt, and savvy. The question, which the omnibus encircles like a python, is how to best define the ``visual Culture'' of the 1980s. Given Hoberman's belief that art under Capital must be evaluated by the same criteria as all other cultural production, this question is both complicated and compelling. Hoberman's unacknowledged and decidedly conservative master is John Fell, whose Film and the Narrative Tradition LJ 4/15/75 coalesced the notion that Hollywood cinema was the logical culmination of late 19th-century culture i.e. novels, comics, tabloids, modernist paintings. This is a necessary acquisition for any collection concerned with movies, culture high or low, and images of our age.-- Robert Rayher, Sch. of the Art Inst. of Chicago