AICA-USA member Richard Kalina's new book The Changing Boundaries and Nature of the Modern Art World, The Art Object and the Object of Art examines the shifting boundaries and definition of art over the last 30 years. His focus is on the ongoing development of concepts, the transformation of art worlds and the social matrices in which they are created.

Merging an examination of animating philosophies and context - political, social, and personal—with a sharply focused look at the works of art themselves, Kalina brings us closer to understanding the social matrices in which art is embedded and responds to bigger questions about the object nature of the work of art in today's world.

In the book's introduction, Kalina says of art criticism,

"The boundaries of the modern artworld have historically been set not just by artists but also by critics. The critical framework for contemporary art regularly shifts and adjusts. The first evaluator is of course the artist him or herself, followed by the artist’s family, friends, and social circle (who are often fellow artists.) Radiating out from that are dealers, collectors, curators, art and cultural historians, and the general interested public. Each circle adds a voice and helps shape the form and expectations of the art of the time and place. Set at varying points in this diagram is that peculiar profession, the art critic. Of particular interest has been the influence on American art (and to a lesser extent, British art) of Clement Greenberg, Harold Rosenberg, and Lawrence Alloway from the 1940s through the 1970s. These rival and outspoken critics were not art historians, artists, or philosophers, but rather free-floating intellectuals deeply engaged with the artworld and with artists. They set up an ongoing dialectical debate between inclusion and exclusion that was a fascinating mélange of philosophy, rhetoric, taste, formal analysis, and sociological musings. Their influence, along with a number of other critics, who taught but did not see themselves primarily as academics, such as the New York-based Irish polymath Brian O’Doherty, helped set in place a reasonably coherent early to mid-postwar artworld. This has changed, and a more protean and changeable artworld has been paralleled by the diminution of traditional critical influence and persuasiveness. As contemporary artworlds have grown in size and economic power the direction and fate of art rests more in the hands of museums, auction houses, dealers, and collectors than with artists and critics. To understand this situation, and possibly remedy it, it is helpful to explore the circumstances that have led to the creation of the artworlds that nurtured these critics and the artists about whom they wrote." (p. 4-5)