The art of breaking the rules

TRANSGRESSIONS: THE OFFENCES OF ARTBy Anthony JuliusThames & Hudson, 24.95Victoria MacCallum

Having swapped princesses for paintings, Princess Diana's former solicitor Anthony Julius - now a consultant at London firm Mishcon de Reya - has reinvented himself as a critic of the arts.

His latest book follows on the heels of Idolising Pictures, a history of Jewish art, and TS Eliot: anti-semitism and literary form.

Rather than many solicitors-turned-scribes who find themselves writing novels about, well, lawyers, Mr Julius has produced a weighty, well-researched and controversial tome which smacks of the professional critic.

Transgressions traces the history of controversial art from the outrage which greeted Manet's Le Dejeuner sur l'herbe - which featured naked women picnicking nonchalantly with fully dressed men - through to 1997's tabloid-baiting Sensation! exhibition at the Royal Academy, which contained, among other exhibits, a portrait of Myra Hindley made from children's handprints.

He argues that since the mid-19th century, artists have constantly rejected the accepted ideas of the time in order to test and subvert laws of morality and taste.

Drawing on famously controversial artists such as Marcel Duchamp, Jeff Koons and Gilbert & George, along with the later bad boys of Brit Art, Damien Hirst, and Jake and Dinos Chapman, he shows how the modern period has been characterised by art which perverts established rules, defiles the audience's beliefs and values, and challenges the rules of the state.

The problem with contemporary art, however, is what it moves onto once all the taboos have been broken and the tabloids have filled their column inches.

What happens when the exceptional becomes the norm? Do artists go full circle and return to conventional figurative work? These questions are posed in the book, but not answered.

Mr Julius's writing style bears a number of hangovers from his days as a lawyer - words such as 'antinomianism' and 'panchronistic' suggest someone better acquainted with jargon than accessible prose.

Nonetheless, the writing is strangely appropriate to the subject matter of modern art - occasionally obtuse and impenetrable, but giving great pleasure when finally understood.