Enhanced descriptions from Syndetics:

Contemporary art can be baffling and beautiful, provocative and disturbing. This pioneering book presents a new look at the controversial period between 1945 and 2000, when art and its traditional forms were called into question. It focuses on the relationship between American and European art, and challenges previously held views about the origins of some of the most innovative ideas in art of this time. Major artists such as Jackson Pollock, Jasper Johns, Yves Klein, Andy Warhol, Louise Bourgeois, Cindy Sherman, and Damien Hirst are all discussed, as is the art world of the last fifty years. Important trends are also covered including Abstract Expressionism, Pop Art, Minimalism, Conceptualism, Postmodernism, and the art of the nineties.

Table of contents provided by Syndetics

• Introduction (p. 1)
• Chapter 1 The Politics of Modernism: Abstract Expressionism and the European Informel (p. 5)
• Chapter 2 Duchamp's Legacy: The Rauschenberg--Johns Axis (p. 37)
• Chapter 3 The Artist in Crisis: From Bacon to Beuys (p. 67)
• Chapter 4 Blurring Boundaries: Pop Art, Fluxus, and their Effects (p. 95)
• Chapter 5 Modernism in Retreat: Minimalist Aesthetics and Beyond (p. 131)
• Chapter 6 The Death of the Object: The Move to Conceptualism (p. 161)
• Chapter 7 Postmodernism: Theory and Practice in the 1980s (p. 197)
• Chapter 8 Into the 1990s (p. 233)
• Notes (p. 246)
• Further Reading (p. 252)
• Timeline (p. 260)
• Galleries and Websites (p. 266)
• Picture Credits (p. 269)
• Index (p. 275)

Reviews provided by Syndetics

CHOICE Review

This excellent work focuses on important movements and issues in the visual arts from WW II to the present, in eight terse and densely allusive chapters--rather too dense, perhaps, for the general reader, making it best used in conjunction with supplementary materials. Unlike the usual period survey, it makes no claim to be comprehensive or neutral. Hopkins (Univ. of St. Andrews) argues that "the Duchampian attack on traditional aesthetic categories has been the engine behind the distinctive shifts in postwar art" and deftly incorporates revisionist views and recent theories into his discussion of particular works and artists. Such a selective overview is bound to raise objections; this reviewer's concern is the importance accorded certain English artists and events in Hopkins's treatment of the period. However, he largely 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. W. B. Holmes University of Rhode Island

Author notes provided by Syndetics

Dr David Hopkins is Lecturer in Art History at the University of St Andrews where his broad areas of specialism are Dada and Surrealism, the history and theory of post-1945 art and twentieth century photography. He has published extensively on Dada and Surrealism and related topics in post-war art. Publications include his books Marcel Duchamp and Max Ernst: the Bride Shared (Oxford University Press, Clarendon Studies in the History of Art, 1988) and Marcel Duchamp (London, 1989), co-authored with Dawn Ades and Neil Cox. He also writes and performs poetry, often in collaboration with other performers and visual artists.