High Art Lite

Julian Stallabrass, in his Verrine blast against Britart, combines the early Berger's fierce critique of consumerist contamination with the later Berger's sense of art's high purpose. -- Marina Warner * London Review of Books *
I cannot help but endorse his analysis of the high art lite tendency ... its abject willingness to be f**ked up by the cult of celebrity; f**ked over by the 1990s boom in consumerism; f**ked sideways by its adoption of the styles and modes of popular culture; and f**ked to buggery by its co-option by a new Labourite idiotology. -- Will Self
A lacerating analysis of the reactionary tendencies of high art lite itself. * Financial Times *
This is a sharp and sensible book about something that seemed unlikely to attract such treatment-the new, rude, jokey, confrontational British Art of the 1990s. * Evening Standard *
A full-throated attack on the 'new British art,' a movement obsessed with commerce and cults of the personal, that manages to be smarter and more far-reaching than its hyped-hopped-up subject ... Nimbly written and bolstered by a constellation of critical and cultural referents: balanced, engrossing, historically framed examination of this latest avant-garde, so startling yet so oddly familiar. * Kirkus Review *
He asks the questions that people would like addressed, and gives the thoughtful and provocative answers. What is the real worth of these artefacts? -- Richard Gott * Independent *
Stallabrass has done us all a favour. He's taken on a dirty job and we are all indebted to him ... his analysis is lucid and penetrating. It's also quite funny ... something to be read voluntarily with pleasure. * Art and Language, everything magazine *