The Table Top Schools of Art argues that the art world is comprised of two sets of people. On one side are the conceptualists, who are the Establishment, a dominant and conservative mainstream that controls the main institutions of art. On the other are the makers and supporters of aesthetic art, who are the radical dissenting voices. Mainstream conceptualism and radical aesthetic art are at war, and in this little book Michael Paraskos offers a strategy for aesthetic art to win that war. The primary weapon, Paraskos suggests, is the creation of new institutions of art that deliberately marginalise and exclude conceptual artists. Because conceptualists have taken over the mainstream art schools,
galleries and publishers, these new institutions need to take a different form, and resemble hidden revolutionary cells. In
them, aesthetic artists can meet in small groups across the country, whilst plotting to create a whole new system of art.
A controversial book, the Table Top Schools of Art strips away the pretence that conceptualism and aesthetic art can
co-exist, and argues for a radical new ideal for twenty-first century art to replace the tired conceptualism of the last century.