Ave Gratia Plena: On Painting after Postmodernism

When the grand narrative of modernism is at an end and art is dead, how is the story of art history to continue? What succeeds the postmodern? The premise of this lucid and persuasive book is that an artist's only recourse is to resurrect the ancestral craft of painting. This is what many artists have begun to do already, notwithstanding the danger that it may be an artificial resuscitation of an historically and spiritually exhausted tradition. Benjamin Patterson argues that there is a way to practice the craft authentically. In search of this straight and narrow trajectory, Benjamin Patterson conducts the reader through an intellectual history of the craft, from its medieval roots to its modern demise. The theory of art is explored both in depth and in breadth, from its beginnings in classical philosophy and Renaissance treatises to post-structuralism and phenomenology.