After Modern Art 1945-2000

by David Hopkins

Overview

Modern and contemporary art can be both baffling and beautiful; it can also be innovative, political, and disturbing. This book sets out to provide the first concise interpretation of the period as a whole, clarifying the artists and their works along the way. Closely informed by new critical approaches, it concentrates on the relationship between American and European art from the end of the Second World War to the eve of the new millennium.

Jackson Pollock, Jasper Johns, Yves Klein, Andy Warhol, Louise Bourgeois, Cindy Sherman, and Damien Hirst are among many artists discussed, with careful attention being given to the political and cultural worlds they inhabited. Moving along a clear timeline, the author highlights key movements such as Abstract Expressionism, Pop Art, Minimalism, Conceptualism, Postmodernism, and performance art to explain the theoretical and issue-based debates that have provided the engine for the art of this period.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780192842343
Publisher:	Oxford University Press
Publication date:	11/26/2000
Series:	Oxford History of Art
Pages:	288
Product dimensions:	9.00(w) x 6.30(h) x 0.70(d)

About the Author

David Hopkins is Lecturer in Art History at the University of St. Andrews. He has published extensively on Dada and Surrealism and related topics in postwar art, with books includeing Marcel Duchamp and Max Ernst: the Bride Shared (Oxford, 1989) and Marcel Duchamp (London, 1989), co-authored with Dawn Ades and Neil Cox.

Table of Contents

Introduction

1. The Politics of Modernism: Abstract Expressionism and the European Informel
2. Duchamp's Legacy: The Rauschenberg—John Axis
3. The Artist in Crisis: From Bacon to Beuys
4.Blurring Boundaries: Pop Art, Fluxus, and their Effects
5. Modernism in Retreat: Minimalist Aesthetics and Beyond
6. The Death of the Object: The Move to Conceptualism
7. Postmodernism: Theory and Practice in the 1980s
8. Into the 1990s

Notes
Further Reading
Timeline
Galleries and Websites
Picture Credits
Index

Editorial Reviews

"This excellent work focuses on important movements and issues in the visual arts from WWII to the present....[Hopkins]...succeeds in extending discussion out from American art to provide an international perspective as well as an exceptionally stimulating and cohesive commentary on the 'difficult' art of the 1960s,'70s, and '80s. Reproductions are good; well-chosen, helpful notes; brief chapter bibliographies; useful time line; list of Web sites. Upper-division undergraduates and up."—Choice

"Hopkins is an able guide...creating a self-determined path through some remakrably dense territory but ready to point out the meaningful byways as well."—John Loughery, The Washington Post

"After Modern Art, in only 245 pages, covers that amazing creative period following the Second World War. Well documented with a good array of illustrations, this book is fun reading."—Gadfly

"Finally an affordable, clearly written book on the Contemporary Era. Filled with resources and analysis that students can use."—Steven Michael Vroom, Cornish College of the Arts

"An invaluable guide to art of the second half of the twentieth century"—Sandy Nairne, Tate Gallery

From the Publisher