Published as:Sartwell, Crispin. Beauty and Reconciliation in the Art of Joana Vasconcelos. In Joana Vasconcelos: Material World. 308-19. London: Thames and Hudson, 2015. For more information on the published version, visit Thames & Hudson's Website.

Now, as occasionally in the past, there are many reasons to be grim and outraged, or sneering and cynical. These are attitudes that to some extent have dominated the arts for the past several decades, and we have often been instructed, pointedly or subtly, about gender, or poverty, or race, or power, or capitalism. I am not saying that these are not valid or necessary artistic projects. But though I want to be grim or sarcastic, because things are grim and sarcasm is called for, I do not only want to be grim and sarcastic, if I have any choice in the matter. I don't know about you, but were I to look back from old age and behold squarely a life of alternating indignation and arch amusement, I'd regret it, especially if, as seems likely, I had not succeeded in transforming the conditions that annoyed me.

Crispin Sartwell is a professor of Philosophy at Dickinson College.

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