New Attempts to Define "Art."

In the 1990s even the most knowledgeable and sophisticated critics were sometimes hard-pressed to distinguish brilliance from schlock, with conservative critics bemoaning the depths to which so-called artists had fallen. For example, Roger Kimball, managing editor of the conservative art journal The New Criterion, bemoaned the pervasiveness of performance art, "that euphemism for politicized psycho-drama." One of the most controversial works at the 1993 biennial exhibition of new art at the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York City was Gnaw, an installation created by Janine Antoni to express her opinions on love, beauty, and artifice. Using a large block of chocolate, a block of lard, and a polished metal-and-glass display case, she chewed and spat out some of the chocolate and lard and shaped the pieces into hearts and lipsticks, which she displayed in the case as if...