Concerned with the complex and sophisticated relationship between economics, social context, and aesthetics as represented in the contested space of the art gallery, the author raises the question of how artists must construe their work in relation to the gallery space and system.
"These famous essays are as fresh and stimulating today as when they jumped off the pages of Artforum. Those who have not read Brian O'Doherty will relish his poetically phrased, elegantly written, and ironically tempered taunt to so many received notions about twentieth-century mainstream art."—Jan van der Marck, author of Arman
"Inside the White Cube is a brilliant analysis of the sociological, economic, and aesthetic context within which we experience art. O'Doherty examines the critical relationships of context to content and with wit and irony exposes the myth of neutrality of the gallery or museum space. These essays mark a turning point in artistic perception."—Barbara Rose
"Brian O'Doherty's Inside the White Cube has remained one of the most influential and oft-quoted statements of its time. With cogent critical analysis and shrewd wit, O'Doherty investigates how the gallery space, sequestering the spectator within an apparently timeless realm and before the pretense of the enshrined object, insidiously governs the viewer's consciousness, perception, and emotional response."—Howard N. Fox
"Brian O’Doherty’s precise scrutiny of this near-omnipresent mode of display—the result of a worldview in which the apparatus of exhibition was newly understood as itself the carrier of meaning—still retains disruptive power."
