Enhanced descriptions from Syndetics:

This text provides an accessible historical progression through the modern period, focusing on particular artists and works of art, while attempting to draw out more general issues and implications. The discussion of key figures such as Picasso, Matisse, Pollock and Warhol, and movements such as Cubism, Surrealism, Abstract Expressionism and Minimal Art is animated by the most relevant concerns of contemporary art historical scholarship. Issues of gender and ethnicity, criticism of the accepted canon of modern art, and important social and political influences upon the institutions of art are interwoven with the discussion of particular works.

Reviews provided by Syndetics

CHOICE Review

This volume contains ten essays by nine different authors and is part of the challenging series of publications initiated by The Open University of London. Each essay is issue-driven ("The Academy and the Avant-garde" or "Modernity and Tradition ..." for example), but the topics are arranged chronologically from the early part of this century to the present, thus providing a general history of the major concerns of 20th-century art. As one might expect, the essays present reasoned and straightforward discussion not only of the individual styles which they cover, but also of the critical languages used to explicate those styles. Although the introductory essay starts the book off on the wrong foot by valorizing the complaint that modern art is "strange and difficult," the subsequent essays in the book deal directly and positively with the issues. Given the source of the publication, it is curious that five of the chapters utilize the traditional gendered biographical approach to material by concentrating on the works of Matisse, Picasso, Rietvield, Pollock, Warhol, and Andre. Each essay closes with a short bibliography, and the book concludes with a glossary of terms. General; undergraduate (including two-year technical program students); professional. J. T. Paoletti Wesleyan University