Art and the Degradation of Awareness

by Jeff Nuttall

160 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1999

About the author

'Performance artist, poet, novelist, jazz musician, teacher, theorist, painter and sculptor, Jeff Nuttall is the only all-round genius most of us are likely to meet in our lifetime. And let the sceptic beware: this is no exaggeration. His talents usually control at the limits of human exuberance. His skills are both highly local and deeply embedded in European twentieth-century arts. In a culture exemplified by tepidly isolated skills, greed, pop repetitions and art trivia, Jeff Nuttall's work is bracing and joyful, celebrating another world of values, ones that last.'
Eric Mottram (Notes for CALDERDALE LANDSCAPES exhibition at ANGELA FLOWERS GALLERY, London 1987)

Reviews

[Jonathan Norton · Rating 3 out of 5]

The painful rage of the once-fashionable, now furious at a pop culture that drifted away and left them irrelevant. There's plenty of amusement to be had in some of Jeff's Angry Old Man turn from 20 years ago, but also a sour taste of what his idea of radicalism meant: a vision of the (male) Artist priapic and self-aggrandising and not answering to anyone, yet also quite keen on traditional standards when it suits him. The old bore still hanging around the party, and he sadly realises it. You can find precursors of "cancel culture" in here, but really the old goat cancelled himself.

[Nathalie · Rating 3 out of 5]

A moody book, this, and a fast-flowing, shuddering analysis of everything Nuttall saw going bad in 'culture' since money and hype skewed/screwed the arts... the icky pointlessness of it all.