Have you thought of publishing it as an e-book? You can then sell e-versions anywhere in the world at say $1, which could attract buyers such as art students, for whom $15 is a stretch

Beauty is in the eye of the beholder!
Put a small pile of grain at the centre of a large canvas, and then allow a couple of dozen hungry chooks to walk through several pans of paint to get to it.
Do this for a dozen days, changing the pans of paint and the position of the grain daily.
Wait until all the paint dries and sell it to the govt for a million dollars!
It would be truly unique and like DNA, never ever exactly replicated!
Watch while bemused tourists from every walk of life go ga ga, saying things like, aren't the tracks life like; or, so that's what interstellar intelligent life looks like; or, from the toffee nosed snob set, the man's an artistic genius, etcetera, etc, etcetera.
Alternatively, give a very small child a dozen tubes of oil paint and let her/him lose on a canvas, to finger paint, with about the same result?
Many so called art experts will likely rave over the result!
And indeed, others will fiercely compete, to pay good money for it?
Makes you want to visit the local kindy doesn't it?
Replete with very generous gifts of oil paint and canvas, just as long as the finished products, become your sole uncontested property!
Which will probably catch many an "art experts'" eye and make the owner incredibly rich.
As for me, I'll wait until I see something so beautiful that it sends goose bumps chasing each other up and down my spine, [landscape, portrait,] before I say, now that's what I call art.
Cubbins, with his still life pioneer series comes close for me.
But then, beauty has always been and will remain forever, in the eye of the beholder, as will, so-called art!
Rhrosty.

I to have a problem with so called art. Tom Robert's is my kind of art, it tells a story.
It's incredible how, bits and pieces of junk tack welded together can command an incredible price.

Rhosty, you seem to have a very cynical concept of the visual plastic arts. That's very sad, but very common in today's post-modernist era.

Post-modernism isn't really about anything except stripping meaning and dignity from anything of the past. As such, it tends to be what Mr Richardson's article is about, to a degree. In post-modernism, everything is art, as you described it with chooks and kids, and the creator and the viewer make of it what they like. Art for them, is as you described, all about them/me and whether or not it has some meaning for them/me on a personal level. If not then they don't care about it any more. Any other qualities or disciplines the work may hold or represent don't matter to them. That seems to be about where you're coming from. Don't worry. You're just one of the normal twenty-first century crowd.

But, by the way, not all art is created to be beautiful. Much highly acclaimed twentieth century modernist art was intentionally created ugly, or powerful, or comic, or emotive, or painful, or shocking, or, well, lots of things. It's about the aesthetic as the author discusses.

To Mr Richardson, good luck with your book, but I fear that few will have any interest in it. Despite the halls of academies being chock full of 'arts' students, the fact of the matter is that art and art appreciation are things most post-modernist people don't have any time for, don't care about and don't want. It's sad, isn't it?

Cheers.

I think it is time we told those who like to daub a bit of paint, or take a few chips off a bit of rock, that we welcome them & their little hobby. We are quite prepared to look at, & perhaps even admire their handiwork.

A hobby is good for people.

It is also time to tell the same people, & those aspiring to be classical musicians, singers, & other such, that we have amateur companies even in small towns, & suggest they join one, & enjoy.

What we must do is let them know, in no uncertain terms, that we will not support them with tax payer dollars. We have enough use for our taxes, & none of them are in supporting others in their hobbies.

Glorifying "art" as other than a hobby is ridiculous. Using tax dollars to buy the arts community vote, as did Hawke & Keating is immoral.

What a very sad article this is.

"The book is indeed a slim volume"

As is the article. Indeed, it does not even seem to be complete.

"The problem with most books on art theory is that they have not been written by artists."

Why this should be a problem is not explained.

While it is true that I would expect a book on, say, cricket, to be written by a cricketer, it is fortunately not at all necessary to have read one in order to be thoroughly enraptured. Consider the efforts of Australia trying to to dislodge the last six South African batsmen on the last day of the second Test in Adelaide. What a day's cricket that was, six hours of pure tension with the result in doubt right up to the final few overs.

Why should it be necessary to "understand" art, in the sense that the author would like us to, given that it is an enhancement to, rather than fundamental to, our lives. A privilege, rather than a necessity.

Much like cricket, really.