Whose Boots Are These, I Think I Know

Y'know, there’s nothing more I’d like to see than a final takedown of Michael Fried’s “Art and Objecthood,” if only for the sake of sparing future art and art history students from ever having that tiresome, long-winded, and utterly pointless text foisted on them by their professors. A dismantling that'd put the thing out to pasture once and for all. Whatever the case, this definitely isn't it.

Re, Heidegger’s musing on Van Gogh's "A Pair of Shoes," see the ripostes by Meyer Schapiro and Jacques Derrida. As far as the bit about “Guernica” and the problems with political art goes, see Ad Reinhardt taking the piss out of Leon Golub in a discussion on the agency of protest art reprinted in Artwords: Discources of the 60s and 70s.