Jackson Pollock, Georgia O'Keeffe, Andy Warhol, Julian Schnabel, and Laurie Anderson are just some of the major American artists of the twentieth century. From the 1893 Chicago World's Fair to the 2000 Whitney Biennial, a rapid succession of art movements and different styles reflected the extreme changes in American culture and society, as well as America's position within the international art world. This exciting new look at twentieth century American art explores the relationships between American art, museums, and audiences in the century that came to be called the 'American century'. Extending beyond New York, it covers the emergence of Feminist art in Los Angeles in the 1970s; the Black art movement; the expansion of galleries and art schools; and the highly political public controversies surrounding arts funding. All the key movements are fully discussed, including early American Modernism, the New Negro movement, Regionalism, Abstract Expressionism, Pop Art, and Neo-Expressionism.
This vintage volume contains a fascinating and informative treatise on the role of the art museum in modern America. This thought-provoking text explores the role of art and art exhibitions in the modern world, analysing the history of modern art, the changes in attitude and importance throughout the years, and the future of art in modern society. The chapters of this book include: 'On Art Museums', 'Some American History', 'Our History Continues', 'The Achievement', 'Problems and Theories', 'The Problem of the American Artist', 'The Problem of Modern Art', 'Casts and Other Reproductions', etcetera. This book is being republished now in an affordable, modern edition - complete with a new biography of the author.
The Oxford History of Western Art is an innovative and challenging reappraisal of how the history of art can be presented and understood. Through a carefully devised modular structure, readers are given insights not only into how and why works of art were created, but also how works in different media relate to each other across time. Here--uniquely--is not the simple, linear "story" of art, but a rich series of stories, told from varying viewpoints. Carefully selected groupings of pictures give readers a sense of the visual "texture" of the various periods and episodes covered. The 167 illustration groups, supported by explanatory text and picture captions, create a sequence of "visual tours"--not merely a procession of individually "great" works viewed in isolation, but juxtapositions of significant images that powerfully convey a sense of the visual environments in which works of art need to be viewed in order to be understood and appreciated. The aim throughout is to make the shape and nature of these visual presentations a stimulating and rewarding experience, allowing readers to become active participants in the process of interpretation and synthesis. Another key feature of the narrative is the re-definition of traditional period boundaries. Rather than relying on conventional labels such as Medieval, Renaissance, and Baroque, the book establishes five major phases of significant historical change that unlock longer and more meaningful continuities. This new framework shows how the major religious and secular functions of art have been forged, sustained, transformed, revived, and revolutionized over the ages; how the institutions of Church and State have consistently aspired to make art in their own image; and how the rise of art history itself has come to provide the dominant conceptual framework within which artists create, patrons patronize, collectors collect, galleries exhibit, dealers deal, and art historians write. Though the coverage of topics focuses on European notions of art and their transplantation and transformation in North America, space is also given to cross-fertilizations with other traditions---including the art of Latin America, the Soviet Union, India, Africa (and Afro-Caribbean), Australia, and Canada. Written by a team of 50 specialist authors working under the direction of renowned art historian Martin Kemp, The Oxford History of Western Art is a vibrant, vigorous, and revolutionary account of Western art serving both as an inspirational introduction for the general reader and an authoritative source of reference and guidance for students.
Hot Art, Cold War – Southern and Eastern European Writing on American Art 1945-1990 is one of two text anthologies that trace the reception of American art in Europe during the Cold War era through primary sources. Translated into English for the first time from sixteen languages and introduced by scholarly essays, the texts in this volume offer a representative selection of the diverse responses to American art in Portugal, Italy, Spain, Greece, Yugoslavia, Romania, Bulgaria, Soviet Union (including the Baltic States), Czechoslovakia, Poland, Hungary, and East Germany (GDR). There was no single European discourse, as attitudes to American art were determined by a wide range of ideological, political, social, cultural and artistic positions that varied considerably across the European nations. This volume and its companion, Hot Art, Cold War – Northern and Western European Writing on American Art 1945-1990, offer the reader a unique opportunity to compare how European art writers introduced and explained contemporary American art to their many and varied audiences. Whilst many are fluent in one or two foreign languages, few are able to read all twenty-five languages represented in the two volumes. These ground-breaking publications significantly enrich the fields of American art studies and European art criticism.
