Art Since 1900: Modernism, Antimodernism, Postmodernism [Hardcover]

Hal Foster (Author), Rosalind Krauss (Author), Yve-Alain Bois (Author), Benjamin Buchloh (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0500238189 | ISBN-13: 978-0500238189 | Publication Date: March 2005

Four of the most influential and provocative art historians of our time come together to provide a comprehensive history of art in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Adopting a year-by-year approach, they present more than one hundred (c.3,000 words) essays, each focusing on a crucial event such as the creation of a seminal work, the publication of an artistic manifesto, or the opening of a major exhibition to tell the story of the period from 1900 to the present. All the key turning points and breakthroughs of modernism and postmodernism are explored in depth, as are the frequent and sustained antimodernist reactions that proposed alternative visions of art and the world. Two roundtable discussions one at mid-century, the other at the close of the book consider some of the questions raised by the preceding decades and look ahead to the art of the future.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Here's an exceptional rarity: a large, sweeping art history text book so well-done it almost makes the reader wish she or he were back in school. It's rather amazing that it took so long for a book like Art Since 1900: Modernism, Antimodernism, and Postmodernism to exist: a balanced, seven hundred page historical tome written with multiple perspectives in mind. As any undergrad knows, H.W. Janson's ubiquitous History of Art was written as if art history were some sort of race to colonize ideas and imagery; you'll likely not miss Janson's fetish for pointing out who did what first. Penned by a nimble crew who all teach at Ivy League universities, Art Since 1900, which mirrors the development of psychoanalysis and the creation of a huge international art scene, is on a smaller scale a history of contemporary theory and the art world almost as much as it is the art itself. Attention is paid throughout to important exhibits and texts, pointing out the rippling effect throughout the art community of these mirrors and portals. The book is arranged so that there are one or two essays per year. In such a novel format, often undervalued movements are given as much respect as Cubism and Minimalism. There are entire chapters here on Fluxus, feminist art, the Assemblage movement, Lettrism, the Independent Group, Gutai, Kineticism, the Harlem Renaissance, Aktionism, earthworks, video art, and the aesthetics of ACT UP. As with any history, there are personalities whose works are emphasized over that of others; the scant attention given to Jean-Michel Basquiat, for instance, is a rather large question mark. Quibbles aside, it's a very important, and nearly immaculate, work. --Mike McGonigal

Images from Art Since 1900

From Publishers Weekly

This history, coming soon to a college survey class near you, is like the period of art it covers: as often obscure and frustrating as it is dazzling and insightful. The authors, four prominent art history professors, offer a work that is beyond reproach with regard to thoroughness and accuracy but, despite the rich pageant of ideas on parade, they rarely illuminate their subject with even the faintest spark of excitement. Art is presented as a series of problems (the problem of figuration, the problem of post-colonialism, the problem of history), as if the ideas behind art were interchangeable with art itself. Painter Paul Gauguin, for example, is dissected solely in terms of his ill-conceived notions of the primitive purity of non-Western cultures, which is a bit like judging a fine meal only by its cholesterol content. The book's rigorously academic prose often sounds like a debate the reader has happened into the middle of: e.g., "Any attempt to transform autonomy into a transhistorical, if not ontological precondition of aesthetic experience, however, is profoundly problematic." Despite these defects, the volume manages to be fast moving thanks to its snappy format-107 short chapters, each broken up by subheadings, illustrations and sidebars-and it cannot fail to impress through the sheer vigor and profusion of the ideas on display, from Cubism to Chris Burden. Indeed, the book is a kind of intellectual tilt-a-whirl, with no comforting H.W. Janson-style master narrative at its center. The authors leave their own authority in deconstructed shards in the first paragraph of the introduction, which invites readers to arrange the book's "puzzle pieces" according to individual need. It may be a lively ride to those already familiar with its terms, but to the uninitiated, this book will likely remain a series of broken conversations.
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Product Details

• Hardcover: 704 pages
• Publisher: Thames & Hudson (March 2005)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0500238189
• ISBN-13: 978-0500238189
• Product Dimensions: 11.3 x 9 x 2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 7.2 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (23 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #976,151 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

88 of 101 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Read this book. It will improve your mind., July 8, 2005

By 

Blue State Resident (North of the Bible Belt) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Art Since 1900: Modernism, Antimodernism, Postmodernism (Hardcover)

Although I have read only the first half of "Art Since 1900," I feel compelled by the negative comments offered by other readers to express my considerable admiration for this book. Because I am not an academic or other art world insider, I have no axe to grind regarding which artists or movements may be under or over-represented in the text. After reading a number of books on modern art, I have found this one to be, on the whole, head and shoulders above the rest. For example, "The Shock of the New" by Robert Hughes is a fine book, but it is very superficial by comparison with this one. What impresses me most about "Art Since 1900" is the incorporation of ideas from other disciplines dealing with modernity, including philosophy, psychology, sociology, anthropology, linguistics, and literary theory, which provides a broader context for the subject than is usually presented in art history texts. For the benefit of those who are not already familiar with the intellectual history of the twentieth century, the authors include four introductory chapters and a glossary that help to familiarize readers with concepts of marxism, critical theory, psychoanalysis, formalism, structuralism, post-structuralism, and postmodernism. While the introductory chapters are not a substitute for wider reading on those topics, the authors succeed very admirably in making "highbrow" ideas accessible to "middlebrow" readers. But it is not necessary to master the contents of the introductory chapters in order to obtain a great deal of benefit from the remainder of the book. Each of the nearly 100 short chapters is, by itself, a polished gem that offers much food for thought, so that it is possible to approach the book by reading one chapter at a time and meditating on the ideas presented there for a while before returning to the text. In fact, such an approach may serve to resist the unconscious desire to oversimplify the great multiplicity of works and ideas that constitute modern art. While fragmentation is consistent with the postmodern attitude of the authors toward the subject matter, comprehension by others is facilitated by supplementing the chronological ordering of chapters with an inter-textual system of cross-referencing by artist and movement. Unlike more conventional art history texts, this book can provide readers with a greater appreciation of the capacity of modern art to provoke the kind of critical thinking that liberates the mind. What could be more useful in a society that is so thoroughly dominated by conformity and anti-intellectualism? If all Americans would read this book, the White House might never again be occupied by an ignoramous.

49 of 61 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars important but narrow, March 6, 2005

By 

a reader - See all my reviews

This review is from: Art Since 1900: Modernism, Antimodernism, Postmodernism (Hardcover)

Face it, for better or worse, this is a crew we have to deal with. They've got their October power, and look at the author listings, all of them big-deal academics with a name after their name. Now they've tried to come down off the mountaintop to write for a less in-crowd than they usually bother with, and the book they've put together has all the blindness and insight everyone might expect. There's some great stuff on mainstream avant-garde movements (irony intended). But it's mostly European and American, and the readings are kind of limited: nothing political seems to have happened in 1968, and so on. However, the biggest downside is the weak section on contemporary art. Foster wrote most of the entries on the 90's, and they look like he was just going through the motions. He doesn't seem to connect with the new stuff the way he did in his prime in the 80's. Maybe they should have gotten some of those younger October editors onto the job (unless the farm team is too full of clones). And considering their attempt for a general audience, the glossary is hilarious. Even so, the entries through the 80's make this an important, although narrow, take on our dearly departed 20th century.

9 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars here come the grownups, November 25, 2008

By 

J. Smith - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Art Since 1900: Modernism, Antimodernism, Postmodernism (Hardcover)

Art Since 1900 probably shouldn't be read by artists, younger ones at least. Here is where all your sincerity, all your peer support, all your sudden joy in thinking you've finally got it right this time, goes to die, splattered like meaningless bracken against the wall of Context, of History. Probably what's enraged so many people so much about this book is that its authors, scholars of 20th century art if there ever were any, aren't in the least afraid to make judgements, to call a bad idea a bad idea, to explore the limits of an artwork's relevance to the question: can art still matter? The criticisms of the book all seem to want to posit some grand democracy of artistic endeavor, or better still an anarchy, all the while ignoring the fact that we've already gone past the point of anarchy and moved into pure spectacle, which can only exist within the disavowal of history, and of judgement. Utopia's already here, but this book wants to mean more than that. Ultimately its message seems to be, simply: not making crap takes hard work. Read it and suffer.