Download or read book The Use and Abuse of Art written by Jacques Barzun and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2020-07-21 with total page 159 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From the celebrated cultural historian and bestselling author, a provocative history of the evolution of our ideas about art since the early nineteenth century In this witty, provocative, and learned book, acclaimed cultural historian and writer Jacques Barzun traces our changing attitudes to the arts over the past 150 years, suggesting that we are living in a period of cultural liquidation, nothing less than the ending of the modern age that began with the Renaissance. He challenges our conceptions and misconceptions about art “in order to reach a conclusion about its value and its drawbacks for life at the present time.”