Description: "Entertaining, informative, and packed with important but lesser-known stories about how artists became famous, I Am Not an Artist is a critical appraisal of the role of the artist through time. At turns a critical framework for examining what constitutes the term "artist", an alternative art historical account and a no holds barred guide to how the art world really works, it challenges existing practices, methodologies, and metrics of success, and helps readers critically position themselves in today's art world in a clear, ethically grounded, and responsible way"--
Brief description: Giovanni Aloi is an art historian and curator, specializing in the history and theory of photography, representation of nature, and everyday objects in art. He currently lectures on modern and contemporary art at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, USA and Sotheby's Institute of Art in New York, USA and London, UK. Since 2006, Aloi has been the Editor in Chief of Antennae: The Journal of Nature in Visual Culture.
Review Quotes:
"Giovanni Aloi's I'm Not an Artist is an ambitious and overdue contribution to the much-needed (and much-avoided) project of reconsidering what art is, was, and could be. Bucking an artistic discourse that long ago mastered the dark art of co-opting such challenges into its own image, Aloi strips away the truisms which shield the art world's collective false consciousness from so many dangerous yet necessary questions." --Mitch Speed, Art Critic and Writer, Berlin, Germany
"Urgent and vital reading for anybody interested in questioning what an artist is. Giovanni Aloi carefully dismantles the conception of the artist, equipping the reader with the tools to define their creativity on their own terms." --Harold Offeh, Reader in Performance and Social Arts Practice, Tutor in Contemporary Art Practice, Royal College of Art, UK