An indispensable resource for any visual arts lover, this anthology of original writings covers modern American art and culture from mid-1940's abstract expressionism and the Cold War right through to the late 1990's with its proliferation of video and technological developments in telecommunications and biotechnology—giving readers a firm understanding of the evolution of artistic development within the context of major political, cultural, and sociological trends and ideas that have emerged in the United States since World War II. KEY TOPICS: Presents writings from post WWII through the 1990's and organizes them around ten central areas of discussion (American avant-garde, the beat generation, objectivity/reduction/formalism, process and materials, sculpture, politics, the return of painting, image and identity, and the body and technology). Divides chapter writings into three categories—artists, critics, and context—giving readers clear insight into the major issues that the artists' work raises, and helping them connect the words of artists with criticisms about the art they created, exhibition reviews, and museum catalog essays. Includes selections from outside the visual arts to establish relationships between the issues and impulses raised by the work of these artists to trends and ideas that were gaining prominence within the broader culture at the time that the art was being created. MARKET: For general readers of modern art history and theory and/or post-war American culture; ideal for museum bookstores.
This clear, concise, and historically-rooted anthology traces the key developments in American avant-garde art from the 1940s with Abstract Expressionism and the Cold War through the late 1990s with an array of video installations and the broad cultural changes arising from far-reaching technological developments. Each movement is articulated by multiple voices the artists, their critics, and the intellectuals beyond the art world who were helping to frame the issues of their day. Sometimes positions converge; sometimes they diverge. Always the multiplicity of voices reprinted here in their complete, unedited form point to the major currents affecting or being affected by the art of their time, giving a succinct, but lively account of the artistic dialog of the past fifty plus years.