world wide art work

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State of the Art

Contemporary Art Anthologies

Over the past 13 years, World Wide Art Books has published a total of 25 art anthologies. In these books, we have presented the work of over 2,500 artists, from practically every country in the world.

We have printed a total of over 150,000 books, and the total readership of all the digital books numbers in the tens of millions.

When we first started this endeavor, back in 2006, our mission was to create a year to year chronicle of noteworthy contemporary art being created all over the world. We considered that there are no more centers, no more dominant schools or doctrines or directions in art. No orthodoxies, no judges, no arbiters. Just a vast diversity. Democratic, or rather, anarchic.

Our approach was simple: to present the work of noteworthy artists from all over the world. The word “noteworthy”, of course, contains a certain subjectivism. For us, it contains two main criteria: something original, an element of inspiration, vision, originality. And secondly, a mastery in the artist’s given medium. But beyond this, to present each artist’s work without comment, to let it speak for itself.

Thirteen years later, we think this approach is vindicated. The books have become a recognized standard, a resource for art professionals, collectors, art

 

lovers and In the Kleefeld paintings in the Kleefeld gallery at the Kleefeld museum, what makes the “well of being” so peculiar is that the art is frankly terrible — by far the worst I’ve seen on display in a serious exhibition venue, public or private, for profit or nonprofit, in years. The creaky Romantic fantasy of the numinous artist, isolated from mundane labors, turning her back on the modern world to get in touch with higher truths, is on display. The fiction abounds in gift-shop-quality illustrations representing cosmic consciousness. (The artist, a longtime resident of Big Sur on the central California coast, has shown most often at the luxury Ventana Inn and Spa nearby.) Smeary rainbows, abstract faces sequestered inside expressionist faces, and crude landscapes of mountains and woodlands are splattered with random dribbles of color, like thrift-store Jackson Pollocks. Except not as good.

Despite an evidence-free university press release extolling her “highly acclaimed paintings,” Kleefeld is a visual artist of no distinction in the field. Her biography reflects no active participation in art’s larger cultural discourse. (Shows at a pricey resort and spa don’t count.) Kleefeld might have prominence in the inspirational or New Age self-help industry — “The Alchemy of Possibility: Reinventing Your Personal Mythology,” “Climates of the Mind: Poems and Philosophical Aphorisms” and “Soul Seeds: Revelations and Drawings” are among her small-press titles — but her artistic contribution is virtually nil.

One painting from 2007 shows a blue, melting female form flattened against a splattered dark brown plane, her head framed by a golden corona. The title is “Laura Huxley’s Departure.” I cannot say whether writer Aldous Huxley’s widow, a well-known self-help author and friend of the painter, went out at age 96 riding a burst of LSD, as she reported that her husband did before her. But Kleefeld’s bleary illustration of Huxley’s demise suggests it’s possible.