Pterodactyl Cries Challenges Art World Presumptions; The Thin Book For Battling Thick Skulls

PORTLAND, Ore. - Nov. 2, 2021 - PRLog -- This December tenth will see the publication of the book the art world has not been waiting for, maybe even dreading.

Provocative, highly readable, and timely, Erik ReeL's Pterodactyl Cries: Art, Abstraction, and Apocalypse was originally meant to answer the question "Why he paints the way he paints"—however, ReeL's meditation on abstraction quickly takes a left turn into the raw guts of the art world's most sacred cows. Eviscerating everything in sight from artist's statements to its acceptance of racism and the historical suppression of feminism, ReeL reveals connections everywhere, including to apocalyptic tendencies imbedded throughout our cultural machinery.

Starting with Kirk Varnedoe's challenge to Gombrich's A.W. Mellon lectures, Pterodactyl Cries draws from a wide array of sources ranging from Aristotle to Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, and Jung, to Boole, Bateson, Turing, and Chomsky, to the impacts of technology and artificial intelligence, in a lively discussion of visual art for those who feel they don't get it—or get it all too well—challenging a lot of the art world's favorite assumptions along the way. ReeL attacks materialism, pointing out its malicious influence on our art, and how history has been misused to justify systemic injustice, such as sexism, racism, and colonialism through a "tyranny of false evidence," deceit, and more than a helping hand from our art world.

The Author: Erik ReeL is a Seattle-born visual artist and writer known for revitalizing improvisational objectless painting and the Portland Renaissance. ReeL has written on visual and performing arts for High Performance, Vanguard, ArtExpress, Seattle Voice magazines, Society805.com online magazine, and is an exhibiting visual artist represented by collections based in Buenos Aires, Berlin, Chicago, Dubai, Frankfurt, Hamburg, Houston, Indianapolis, London, Los Angeles, Minneapolis, New York City, Oakland, Paris, San Diego, San Francisco, Santa Barbara, Santa Fe [NM], Seattle, and Seoul. Public collections include the Morris Graves Museum of Art, Seattle City Light, Museum of Ventura County, Whitman College. For more information see erikreel.com.

The Book: Pterodactyl Cries: Art, Abstraction, and Apocalypse (Centaur, $27.50, 161 pages, 8 ¾ x 5 ¾ " (Digest) Hardcover, ISBN 978-1-7375507-0-9, genre: Art Theory) is available at major booksellers and online, including pre-order, at Amazon (https://www.amazon.com/Pterodactyl-Cries-Art-Abstraction-...), Barnes and Noble, throughout the UK at Brown's Books, in Australia at Angus & Robertson or Booktopia, in New Zealand at Mighty Ape, at Adlibris in Sweden and Finland, and worldwide through its distributor (https://store.bookbaby.com/bookshop/book/index.aspx?bookU...).

Review copies available upon request.