Abstract
In the 1990s, a number of Western art critics, with Dave Hickey foremost among them, rejected the critical aesthetics of negation and distance as elitist, favoring a more mutualist, egalitarian potential they associated with beauty. This article tests the legitimacy of paralleling the New Academy and the concurrent beauty trend in the West. The focus of my analysis falls on the career of Olga Tobreluts between 1990 and 2003. As I argue, the similar appeal to beauty in the work of Tobreluts and the New Academy in fact partakes of both negation and affirmation while ignoring their difference, undermining the opposition between enthrallment and estrangement (or beauty and the sublime) that made the Western debate about beauty possible.
Sign-in/Register to access full text options 
Free) 
Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Schedule a call
