Enhanced descriptions from Syndetics:

In Art Since 1940: Strategies of Being, Jonathan Fineberg presents the art of the last six decades of our century as a series of responses, made by exceptional men and women, to the conditions of life in baffling and chaotic times. This Second Edition includes a whole new chapter on the 1990s and augmented sections earlier in the book. The year 1940 marks a defining moment in 20th-century art, when many artists of the European avant-garde moved en masse to New York. The city was instantly transformed into the art capital of the world, triggering radical changes of direction as artists, both immigrant and American-born, struggled with the reshuffled facts of their existence. For these artists, says Fineberg, making art was -- as it continues to be for artists today -- a strategy of coming to terms with their moment in history. This book helps us understand these "strategies of being" of the greatest postwar artists, and by extension other artists both well-known and little celebrated. Professor Fineberg focuses on artists' lives and how they intersected with broader cultural issues. Individual artists looked at indepth include Calder, Hofmann, Gorky, Motherwell, de Kooning, Pollock, Newman, Rothko, David Smith, Dubuffet, Giacometti, Bacon, Rauschenberg, Oldenburg, Johns, Beuys, Klein, Warhol, Rosenquist, Westermann, Arneson, Hesse, Nauman, Christo, Polke, Richter, Guston, Bearden, Aycock, Kiefer, Clemente, Borofsky, Basquiat, and Wojnarowicz. Professor Fineberg's thematic discussion treats ideas and events that are critical to understanding how social and cultural climates have affected creative people from the 1940s to the present. The accent is on individual artists and their experience. Interspersed are fascinating considerations of scores of major tendencies -- from the Cobra, art informel, British Pop Art, Bay Area figurative painters in the 1950s, and the artists and writers of the Beat Generation, to the Minimalists, the impact of feminism, minority artists, conceptual art, European neoexpressionism, the East Village of the 1980s, recent artists of appropriation, installation, and the return to the body in the art of the 1990s. Written in a vivid prose (that often makes you feel as if you were there) and illustrated with nearly 600 illustrations, Art Since 1940 is an intelligent, clearly plotted, and rewarding tour of the art of our times. Book jacket.

Table of contents provided by Syndetics

• Foreword to the Second Edition (p. 10)
• Acknowledgments (p. 11)
• Preface (p. 13)
• 1 Introduction (p. 14)
• Approaching Art as a Mode of Thought (p. 14)
• The Concept of the Avant-Garde (p. 16)
• The Critical Point of View of this Book (p. 18)
• 2 New York in the Forties (p. 20)
• New York Becomes the Center (p. 20)
• Surrealism (p. 20)
• American Pragmatism and Social Relevance (p. 24)
• The Depression and the Works Progress Administration (W.P.A.) (p. 26)
• The Availability of European Modernism (p. 28)
• The Europeans in New York (p. 30)
• The Sense of a New Movement in New York (p. 31)
• Commonalities and Differences Among the Artists of the New York School (p. 32)
• Automatism and Action in the Art of the New York School (p. 34)
• Action and Existentialism (p. 35)
• Clyfford Still (p. 38)
• Adolph Gottlieb (p. 38)
• Franz Kline (p. 39)
• Friends in and around the New York School (p. 39)
• 3 A Dialog with Europe (p. 42)
• Alexander Calder (p. 42)
• Calder's Early Life and Themes (p. 42)
• Calder in Paris (p. 45)
• Cosmic Imagery and the Mobiles (p. 46)
• Hans Hofmann (p. 52)
• Stylistic Lessons from Europe (p. 52)
• Hofmann's Art Theory (p. 54)
• Hofmann's Painting (p. 55)
• Arshile Gorky (p. 59)
• Gorky's Life (Real and Imagined) (p. 59)
• The Development of Gorky's Style (p. 61)
• Gorky's Late Works (p. 65)
• Robert Motherwell (p. 67)
• Intellectual Affinities with the European Moderns (p. 68)
• Recurring Themes in Motherwell's Work (p. 69)
• Teaching, Writing, and Editing in Motherwell's Early Career (p. 69)
• Motherwell's Painting (p. 70)
• Willem de Kooning (p. 74)
• De Kooning's Training and Early Career (p. 76)
• The Dissolution of Anatomy into Abstraction (p. 77)
• The Anatomical Forms Dissolve into Brushstrokes (p. 80)
• De Kooning's Abstractions of the Fifties (p. 84)
• The "Women" of the Sixties and the Late Works (p. 84)
• 4 Existentialism Comes to the Fore (p. 86)
• Jackson Pollock (p. 86)
• Pollock's Early Life and Influences (p. 86)
• Pollock's Breakthrough of the Early Forties (p. 89)
• Pollock's Transition to a Pure Gestural Style (p. 90)
• The Dripped and Poured Canvases (p. 92)
• Pollock in the Fifties (p. 97)
• Barnett Newman (p. 98)
• The Revelation of Newman's Onement 1 (p. 100)
• The Paintings of the Late Forties (p. 102)
• Vir Heroicus Sublimis and Other Works of the Fifties (p. 103)
• The "Stations of the Cross" (p. 106)
• Mark Rothko (p. 106)
• Rothko's Formative Years (p. 107)
• Turning to Classical Myth (p. 108)
• Surrealism, Psychoanalysis, and "the Spirit of Myth" (p. 109)
• "Heroifying" the Ineffable (p. 111)
• The Murals and Other Late Work (p. 113)
• David Smith and the Sculpture of the New York School (p. 115)
• Smith's Initiation into the Art World (p. 116)
• The Aesthetic of Machines and the Unconcious (p. 118)
• The Pictograms and Hudson River Landscape (p. 121)
• An Existential Encounter with the Materials at Hand (p. 121)
• Career Success and Personal Sacrifices (p. 122)
• The Figural Presence and the Work of the Last Decade (p. 123)
• 5 The New European Masters of the Late Forties (p. 128)
• Jean Dubuffet and Postwar Paris (p. 128)
• Dubuffet's Painting of the Forties (p. 131)
• Dubuffet's Philosophical Premises (p. 132)
• A Focus on Matter in the Fifties (p. 135)
• A Grand Style of Entropy (p. 137)
• The Existentialist Figuration of alberto Giacometti (p. 138)
• Francis Bacon (p. 142)
• 6 Some International Tendencies of the Fifties (p. 148)
• Purified Abstraction (p. 148)
• An Encounter with the Physicality of the Materials in Europe (p. 148)
• A Material Reading of Action Painting in New York (p. 153)
• Greenberg's Definition of Modernism (p. 154)
• The Greenberg School (p. 154)
• Formalist Painting (p. 156)
• "New Images of Man" in Europe and America (p. 160)
• The Cobra (p. 160)
• The Figurative Revival of the Fifties (p. 162)
• Figurative Painting in the Bay Area (p. 169)
• Existential Imagist Art in Chicago (p. 170)
• 7 The Beat Generation: The Fifties in America (p. 172)
• "A Coney Island of the Mind" (p. 172)
• John Cage (p. 174)
• Merce Cunningham (p. 175)
• The Cage "Event" of 1952 (p. 176)
• Gutai (p. 176)
• Robert Rauschenberg (p. 177)
• The Self as a Mirror of Life (p. 177)
• Rauschenberg's Early Career (p. 178)
• The Combine Paintings (p. 181)
• The Drawings for Dante's Inferno (p. 183)
• The End of the Combines (p. 183)
• The Silkscreen Paintings (p. 184)
• Performance and the Prints of the Later Sixties (p. 187)
• Appropriating the Real: Junk Sculpture and Happenings (p. 188)
• Junk (p. 188)
• The Genesis of the Happenings (p. 188)
• The Judson Dance Theater (p. 193)
• Fluxus (p. 193)
• Walk-in Paintings (p. 193)
• Claes Oldenburg (p. 197)
• The "Cold Existentialism" of the "Ray Gun" and The Street (p. 197)
• The Store Days (p. 198)
• Soft Sculpture (p. 199)
• Proposals for Monuments (p. 202)
• Realizing Monuments and Architectural Scale (p. 203)
• Jasper Johns (p. 206)
• "Nature" Is How We Describe It (p. 206)
• Painting as a Discourse on Language (p. 206)
• An Aesthetic of "Found" Expression (p. 208)
• Emotion and Distance (p. 209)
• Incorporating Objects: What One Sees and What One Knows (p. 209)
• The Paintings of 1959 (p. 210)
• The New Emotional Tone of the Early Sixties (p. 213)
• Explorations of Linguistic Philosophy (p. 213)
• Diver of 1962 (p. 215)
• Periscope (Hart Crane) (p. 216)
• The Perceptual Complexity of Looking (p. 217)
• The Hatch Mark Paintings (p. 217)
• Dropping the Reserve (p. 220)
• 8 The European Vanguard of the Later Fifties (p. 222)
• Nouveau Realisme (p. 222)
• Yves Klein's Romanticism (p. 222)
• Le Vide (p. 224)
• The "Living Brush" (p. 224)
• Seeking Immateriality (p. 226)
• Klein's Demise (p. 228)
• The Nouveaux Realistes (p. 230)
• Joseph Beuys (p. 231)
• Revealing the Animism in Nature (p. 232)
• The Artist as Shaman (p. 233)
• Art as the Creative Life of the Mind (p. 234)
• British Pop: From the Independent Group to David Hockney (p. 237)
• Key Figures of the Independent Group (p. 237)
• The Exhibitions (p. 237)
• Paolozzi and Hamilton as Artists (p. 239)
• Reintegrating Popular Imagery into High Art (p. 240)
• David Hockney (p. 241)
• 9 The Landscape of Signs: American Pop Art 1960 to 1965 (p. 244)
• The Electronic Consciousness and New York Pop (p. 244)
• A Turning Point in Theory (p. 244)
• Events that Shaped the Popular Consciousness (p. 246)
• Collaging Reality on Pop Art's Neutral Screen of Images (p. 246)
• Andy Warhol (p. 250)
• Warhol's Background (p. 251)
• Selecting Non-Selectivity (p. 251)
• Eliminating the Artist's Touch (p. 253)
• A Terrifying Emptiness (p. 253)
• The Factory Scene (p. 256)
• Business Art and the "Shadows" that Linger Behind It (p. 257)
• Roy Lichtenstein (p. 259)
• James Rosenquist (p. 261)
• H.C. Westermann, Peter Saul, and the Hairy Who (p. 267)
• H.C. Westermann (p. 267)
• Peter Saul (p. 270)
• The Hairy Who (p. 272)
• West Coast Pop (p. 277)
• Funk Art (p. 277)
• Peter Voulkos (p. 280)
• The Politicized Cultural Climate of the Sixties (p. 281)
• William Wiley (p. 281)
• Ed Kienholz (p. 283)
• L.A. Pop (p. 283)
• Robert Arneson (p. 286)
• Arneson's Break with Conventional Ceramics (p. 286)
• The Toilets (p. 287)
• A Technical Breakthrough (p. 287)
• Objects of the Mid Sixties (p. 289)
• The Self-Portraits (p. 289)
• Discovering a Political Voice (p. 291)
• Introspection via Pollock (p. 291)
• 10 In the Nature of Materials: The Later Sixties (p. 294)
• Back to First Principles--Minimal Art (p. 294)
• Frank Stella (p. 297)
• Donald Judd (p. 299)
• Tony Smith (p. 300)
• Carl Andre (p. 301)
• Dan Flavin (p. 303)
• Robert Morris (p. 304)
• Sol LeWitt (p. 306)
• The Los Angeles Light and Space Movement (p. 307)
• Object/Concept/Illusion in Painting (p. 309)
• A Focus on Surface Handling in Painting (p. 310)
• Eva Hesse and Investigations of Materials and Process (p. 311)
• Eva Hesse (p. 312)
• The Direct Sensuality of Fiberglass and Latex (p. 313)
• Bruce Nauman and Richard Serra (p. 316)
• Bruce Nauman (p. 316)
• Richard Tuttle and Richard Serra (p. 318)
• Artists Working in the Landscape (p. 323)
• Michael Heizer (p. 323)
• Walter De Maria (p. 326)
• Robert Smithson (p. 327)
• An Accidental Rubric (p. 331)
• Arte Povera, and a Persevering Rapport with Nature in Europe (p. 332)
• 11 Politics and Postmodernism: The Transition to the Seventies (p. 338)
• Re-Radicalizing the Avant-Garde (p. 338)
• The Critical Atmosphere of the Late Sixties (p. 338)
• Language and Measure (p. 340)
• Art from Nature (p. 342)
• Vito Acconci: Defining a Conceptual Oeuvre (p. 346)
• Body Art (p. 347)
• Ana Mendieta (p. 349)
• Lygia Clark and Helio Oiticica (p. 349)
• Performance Art (p. 351)
• Nam June Paik's Electronic Nature (p. 352)
• Direct Political Comment (p. 354)
• Marcel Broodthaers (p. 354)
• Situationism (p. 356)
• The Potential for Broader Political Action (p. 356)
• Christo and Jeanne-Claude (p. 356)
• Art in the Theater of Real Events (p. 356)
• The Shift to an Architectural Scale (p. 360)
• The Logistics of the Projects (p. 363)
• The Surrounded Islands (p. 363)
• Christo and Jeanne-Claude in the Nineties (p. 364)
• Postmodernism (p. 365)
• Sigmar Polke (p. 365)
• Gerhard Richter (p. 371)
• John Baldessari (p. 374)
• 12 Surviving the Corporate Culture of the Seventies (p. 376)
• A New Pluralism (p. 376)
• Art and Feminism (p. 381)
• Photography in the Mainstream (p. 384)
• A Dazzling Photorealism (p. 384)
• Entering the Real Space (p. 387)
• Public Sites (p. 389)
• Appropriated Sites: Charles Simonds (p. 392)
• Gordon Matta-Clark's Site Critiques (p. 392)
• The Complexity That Is Culture (p. 393)
• Romare Bearden (p. 394)
• Bearden's Collages of the Sixties (p. 395)
• Alice Aycock (p. 398)
• Metaphor Replaces Physicality in Aycock's Work of the Eighties (p. 401)
• Philip Guston's Late Style (p. 405)
• Guston's Early Career (p. 405)
• Guston's Action Paintings of the Fifties (p. 408)
• The Reemergence of the Figure (p. 408)
• 13 Painting at the End of the Seventies (p. 414)
• New Expressionist Painting in Europe (p. 414)
• Jorg Immendorff's Political Analysis of Painting (p. 416)
• Grappling with Identity (p. 417)
• Georg Baselitz and A.R. Penck (p. 418)
• Anselm Kiefer (p. 420)
• Italian Neo-Expressionism (p. 424)
• Francesco Clemente (p. 425)
• The Internationalization of Neo-Expressionism (p. 426)
• The Peculiar Case of the Russians (p. 428)
• Ilya Kabakov (p. 430)
• New Imagist Painting and Sculpture (p. 433)
• Elizabeth Murray (p. 439)
• The Origins of Murray's Style (p. 440)
• Pursuing the Logic of the Shaped Canvas (p. 440)
• 14 The Eighties (p. 444)
• A Fresh Look at Abstraction (p. 444)
• American Neo-Expressionism (p. 448)
• Jonathan Borofsky (p. 452)
• Graffiti Art (p. 454)
• Keith Haring (p. 455)
• The East Village Scene of the Eighties (p. 457)
• Jean-Michel Basquiat (p. 457)
• David Wojnarowicz (p. 459)
• Post-Modern Installation (p. 463)
• Ann Hamilton (p. 464)
• Appropriation (p. 466)
• Cindy Sherman (p. 470)
• The Aesthetic of Consumerism (p. 471)
• Political Appropriation (p. 474)
• 15 New Tendencies of the Nineties (p. 478)
• Return to the Body (p. 478)
• Transgressing Body Boundaries (p. 482)
• The Academy of the Avant Garde (p. 484)
• Cultural Identity (p. 484)
• New Uses of the Camera (p. 488)
• Art as Controversy (p. 490)
• Fashion (p. 493)
• Slippage: Pop Culture and Romantic Nature (p. 496)
• Postmodern Conceptualism (p. 499)
• Constructing the Postmodern Self (p. 500)
• 16 To Say the Things That Are One's Own (p. 504)
• Bibliography (p. 506)
• Notes (p. 512)
• Index (p. 523)