It Hurts: New York art from Warhol to Now
By Matthew Collings with photographs by Ian MacMillan

Matthew Collings with Andy Warhol's 'Silver Pillows' 1996 and 'Cow Wallpaper' 1996. Photo © Ian MacMillan 1998, Courtesy The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Inc. ARS, New York and DACS, London 1998

In It Hurts Matthew Collings turns his attention to the New York art scene, and applies to it the same keen, unpretentious intelligence and perceptive wit that made Blimey, his book on the London art world, such a success. Here, at last, is an art critic who neither inflates his language nor 'dumbs-down' his observations. Collings has, almost single-handedly, created a new and immensely readable way to write about art and art makers.

Matthew Collings
Matthew Collings was born in 1955. He attended the Byam Shaw School of Art from 1974 - 1978. From 1990 to 1992 he did an MA in Fine Art at Goldsmiths.He edited Artscribe International from 1983 to 1987. He was a presenter/producer on the BBC's Late Show from 1988 to 1996 (including features on Donald Judd, Georgia O'Keefe, Willem de Kooning, Saatchi's art collection). He is the author of Blimey! and the presenter/writer of a new 6-part series, "This is Modern Art" for UK's Channel 4 Television, (to be broadcast from June 1999) on the meaning of Modern Art from Picasso to Now. He is the presenter/writer of Channel 4's Turner Prize programme.

Ian MacMillan
Ian MacMillan is a documentary film-maker, writer and photographer. His many films on culture and the arts have been shown on the BBC and Channel 4 and in museums and galleries all over the world and include Skinhead Farewell about the pulp novelist Richard Allen and the award-winning Big Art in a One Horse Town about the sculptor Donald Judd. He also made The Scholte Affair, an exploration of the bombing of Dutch painter Rob Scholte, which was broadcast recently. He took the photographs for Blimey and is currently co-producing the 1999 Channel 4 series on Modern Art. He is 32 and lives in Brixton in South London.

Blimey! Matthew Collings's book on the London art world was described by the Guardian's critic as 'hilarious and horrible, intelligent and frightening, the book the art world deserves'. It Hurts, Collings's new book on the New York art scene, could be described as the kind of art book that we mere mortals deserve. It's full of amusing stories about the bitching artists (they are all here - from Warhol to Koons to Johns and back again), critics and dealers, that Collings has met.
Gary Phillips, The Observer, 3 January, 1999



His summaries of each artist and movement are intelligent and concise yet clear-sighted enough to be a perfect introduction for bluffers. It Hurts is filled with anecdotes, which are by turns amusing and nasty, but always revelatory. The most striking feature is Collings's willingness to write about gross commercialism and pretentiousness of the New York art scene, while recognising the genius of its perpetrators. A refreshing read.
Amber Cowan, The Times , 30 January, 1999



...The British perspective adds a useful depth to the book. Collings quickly points out that the UK was a good ten years ahead of the States in the Pop Art charts. America, however, did it better. With excellent photographs of the main protagonists by Ian MacMillan and many pictures of their art, this is not a book for the faint-hearted ...This book, like the best television documentaries, peels back the skin of this sybaritic underbelly and presents its guts in a fascinating new light.
Birmingham Post, UK , 23 January, 1999