Conversations Before the End of Time, by Suzi Gablik (Thames & Hudson, £12.95 in UK)

Suzi Gablik, an art critic, has based her book on a series of "dialogues" - they are more than interviews, since her own views are paraded as well as those of the other parties - with nineteen artists, writers, theorists, psychologists, and at least one gallery-owner, Leo Castelli. The subject, you may gather, is modern art, a subject which can be bent at will to serve any philosophy or, to be blunt, any fashionable form of academic or psychological jargon. There is, predictably, no unanimity of outlook or anything resembling one, but the shifting viewpoints supply plenty of interest, in spite of a certain amount of topical cliche and political correctness. Not for everybody, but recommended for art students in particular. B.F.