INSIDE THE WHITE CUBE

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by Brian O’Doherty (1999)

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An analysis of the art gallery or “art space” that can be observed to be nothing but a white cube. This dominant trend within modern art galleries is less a professional necessity and much more an ideological construct. White walls, white ceiling, windows whited out, why? To shut out the outside world, our world, and its daily realities. Is modern art so diluted and weak that it cannot corroborate, challenge, or contradict our society and its conventions, mores, and myths? Perhaps it is the white cube itself that informs and reassures us that what we are viewing is art. Accordingly, the white cube is the gateway to the art purveyor and gift shop. We feel certain that we are buying art, because we purchased it from within the white cube. An excellent critique that examines the choice of the curator and reveals a fundamental truth about art. That if additional props are needed, such as the white cube, it probably is not art, since authentic art is brazenly self-reliant and wonderfully independent when it seeks to communicate with us. Non-fiction. 120 pages.

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DETAILS:

Title: Inside the white cube. The ideology of the gallery space

Year: 1999

Author: Brian O’Doherty

Pages: 120

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Book review by Keith Salter