fights with Rauschenberg (University of Chicago Press) Leo Steinberg's witty lecturing in critical ethics.

fights with Rauschenberg (University of Chicago Press) Leo Steinberg's witty lecturing in critical ethics, exposes our penchant for reductive reading. Steinberg one time used Rauschenberg's "flatbed" art to undermine the dogmatic formalism of the "picture plane." Now narrow critical minds decode representatives fixating not on planes nevertheless on Rauschenberg's presumed iconography of anal sex Critiquing the critics, Steinberg chides flat the artist for occasionally indulging in trite sexual quirks as if inspired by the commentators' banalities. Don't assume that Steinberg is being prudish. He's an erudite specialist who speaks a popular, repeatedly earthy language, the natural enemy of borderline philistines and their fashionably "shocking" interpretations (and he names names). conflicts with Rauschenberg doesn't repeat gossip you've already heard, unless opens your eyes and mind. It's real criticism.

Richard Shiff is Effie Marie Cain governors Chair in Art at the University of Texas, Austin.

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