Art Since 1900: Modernism, Antimodernism, Postmodernism [ハードカバー]

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.

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.

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.