The Devil in the Gallery

In the art world, scandal has almost always been a good thing for the artist and for their art, writes Charney in his lavishly illustrated new book on rivalry, scandal, and shock over 2,000 years of art history. Each chapter introduces and defines one of these three key terms and then whisks the reader away on a breathless ride through a series of case studies that key in on a specific artwork or art-world intervention. Though the visual analysis is well trodden--for example, the discussion of Caravaggio's paintings highlights the artist's unique decisions to dress biblical figures in contemporary garb and show unusual moments in their familiar stories--the framework of controversy invigorates the accounts with new energy and fresh perspectives.-- Booklist Any lover of art--and I certainly count myself as one as someone often led private tours through the National Art Gallery in London when studying in England and even convinced some fellow co-religionists of the sublime wonder of some of the very pieces of art sampled in book and why they should love them--needs to add this book to their library. They won't be disappointed--even if they may be shocked at some of things and revelations Charney says and highlights. Above all, Charney's work invites us to meditate and wrestle with the complex but undeniably sublime history of art. That isn't a scandalous thing to consider, is it?-- VoegelinView Are the best artists badly behaved? This is the question Charney seeks to answer. He makes the case that rivalries, scandals, and shocking moments seem to have benefited the reputations of some artists. He opens and closes his exploration with stories about Caravaggio, a notorious bad boy painter in Renaissance Italy, who was known for threatening people, joining gangs of artists, and even killing a rival. Caravaggio is just one of the many artists detailed here (some from the Western canon, some from outside it). Charney covers a lot of ground in each chapter, with bite-sized but comprehensive coverage of dramatic events in the art world. His theme is artists who have learned how to cleverly rebel against societal norms while raising their notoriety and popularity. In the business world, competition may lead to cheaper goods, but in the art world, competition, rivalry, and scandal can raise one's net worth. This book offers lots of peeks into the art world throughout history. It's an in-depth look at varied time periods and artists, which readers interested in gossip, drama, or art history will enjoy.-- Library Journal, Starred Review In this delightful romp, novelist and art history professor Charney makes a thrilling case for how antagonistic actions, moods, and tendencies... actually helped shape and elevate the course of art. Charney makes his case in often-irreverent prose ( Caravaggio was a major-league asshole ) and uses vignettes to demonstrate how his themes of scandal, shock, and rivalry have advanced the careers of artists and changed the trajectory of art from classical times through to the present. Notoriety and the risque testing of society's boundaries, for example, often accelerated the careers of such painters as Greuze, Manet, and Picasso, while controversy, Charney asserts, is not always bad: Duchamp's Dadaist urinal created shock waves in its day, but seems tepid when compared to the bizarre performance art practiced by contemporary artists Ulay and Marina Abramovic (who carved a star into her own stomach ). And rivalries--such as those between Italian painters Duccio and Giotto, sculptors Ghiberti and Brunelleschi, and Roman architects Bernini and Borromini--often pushed artists to new heights, yielding famous designs including Florence's Gates of Paradise. Like the topics it addresses, this will undoubtedly add spice to conversations about the meaning and purpose of art.-- Publishers Weekly Noah Charney has done it again: written a spellbinder that propels the reader through centuries of artists committing shock, scandal and rivalry. Want to know how Caravaggio literally got away with murder? How Damien Hirst gamed the art market? How rivalries between Turner and Constable, Picasso and Matisse moved their art forward? Buy this book. Now.--Nancy Moses, author, Fakes, Forgeries and Frauds The Devil in the Gallery is a guided tour of the history of art through it scandals, rivalries, and shocking acts, each of which resulted in a positive step forward for art in general and, in most cases, for the careers of the artists in question. Author Noah Charney is an internationally best-selling author of more than a dozen books and a professor of art history specializing in art crime.-- France Armenie Review The main task of the artist, it has been said, is to make yourself stand out from all other artists. In the intense rivalry that results, scandalizing the public is a well-trodden path to fame or infamy. Noah Charney's breakneck tour through this long history of shock and scandal shows how artists have exploited these dangerous effects--sometimes with results they hadn't anticipated.--Julian Stallabrass, professor of art history, Courtauld Institute of Art Noah Charney takes the reader on an informed and often irreverent journey through art history that spans centuries and continents from Caravaggio to Koons, Courbet to Hirst. With a brisk narrative and a keen sense of humor, he pulls back the curtain and reveals an original perspective that only a writer with Charney's wide range of scholarship can provide.--Brent D. Glass, director emeritus, National Museum of American History, Smithsonian Institution Noah Charney, among the most insightful and compelling voices in art history today, has written a book about art scandal that is at once hugely entertaining, widely informative, and, most important, profoundly transformative. With Noah as our expert tour guide through the shocking tales behind many of our favorite artists and works - from that murderous crook Caravaggio to Damien Hirst and his shark in formaldehyde - we discover that scandal in the art world has almost always been a good thing for the artist and for their art.--Gary Vikan, former director, the Walters Art Museum, and author of Sacred and Stolen: Confessions of a Museum Director