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Books

Art has ceased to be beautiful or interesting — but we are more obsequious than ever to artists

Artists are so dull and self-important these days — witness Richard Cork’s and Hans Ulrich Obrist’s turgid, witless interviews with them, says Stephen Bayley

16 May 2015

9:00 AM

16 May 2015

9:00 AM

Face to Face: Interviews with Artists Richard Cork

Tate Publishing, pp.256, £19.99, ISBN: 9781849763240

Lives of the Artists, Lives of the Architects Hans Ulrich Obrist

Allen Lane, pp.570, £22, ISBN: 9781846148279

Two ambitious volumes of interviews with artists have just been published. They are similar, but different. The first is by Richard Cork, a veteran with a Cambridge education who enjoyed a distinguished stint as art critic at the Times. He is nicely old school: chatty and avuncular. The second is by Hans Ulrich Obrist of London’s Serpentine Gallery, ageing Swiss boy wonder of the art fair circuit with a head like a pink dome-nut.

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