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Art since 1900: Modernism, Antimodernism, Postmodernism
Art Bulletin, The, June, 2006 by Nancy J. Troy, Geoffrey Batchen, Amelia Jones, Pamela M. Lee, Romy Golan, Robert Storr, Jodi Hauptman, Dario Gamboni
4. Ibid.
5. Mark Miller Graham, "The Future of Art History and the Undoing of the Survey," Art Journal 54, no. 3 (Autumn 1995): 33.
6. Ibid.
Review by Geoffrey Batchen
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In one of several methodological introductions to Art since 1900, Benjamin Buchloh recalls that the social history of art was originally based on an aspiration "to make the writing of history itself--its historicity--contribute to the larger project of social and political change" (p. 22). Given that this once might also have been an apt description of the ambitions of October, the influential journal edited by Buchloh and his three fellow authors, Hal Foster, Yve-Alain Bois, and Rosalind Krauss, it seems reasonable to assess their book according to this same standard. What kind of politics is advanced by this book's particular historicity? In what ways, and to what degree, does the book contribute to an ongoing project of social and political change? Or are these questions simply no longer relevant to art history? Despite its shroud of leftist rhetoric, is this book doing little more than, to employ a denigration made infamous by October itself, "helping, in its own modest, academic way, to produce subjects for the next stage of globalized capital"? (1)
Like any undergraduate textbook, Art since 1900 must begin by providing a clear and accessible pathway through the material it discusses and establishing a coherent relation between its structure and its content. The book solves this problem by adopting a familiar chronological narrative that moves through the twentieth century on a year-by-year basis, from 1900 to 2003, in a comprehensive series of short but well-illustrated chapters. The book also features periodic sidebars on specific topics and two roundtable conversations between the four authors. This format suits the strengths of these writers, who are best known as essayists, and allows them to speak as if with one voice (authorship of the individual parts is deliberately made elusive). It also enables teachers to assign selected, self-contained sections, depending on what is being taught. Those teachers will find that this is easily the best organized, most intelligently written, most informative history of twentieth-century art currently on the market. In many ways it is an extraordinary achievement of collective scholarship. By the same token, in my judgment large portions of this book are pitched well beyond the reading capabilities of the typical American undergraduate student. Its chapters often feature condensed versions of longer arguments that each author has previously published, and these tend to assume prior knowledge and a specialized vocabulary. Art since 1900 will undoubtedly become the essential reference book for anyone interested in this field of study, but undergraduates will need some help with the language and concepts it takes for granted.
A textbook is, of course, more than a convenient depository of information; it is also an exemplary object. It should teach students how to write and how to think, not just about the art that is included but also about life and culture in general. To its credit, Art since 1900 insists above all else that art making, as well as art history, is an intellectual activity. This understanding is emphasized throughout the book: from the philosophical density of its analyses of artworks; to the central role in twentieth-century art it ascribes to Marcel Duchamp; to the association of art movements with scholarly ones (such as the Vienna Secession with Sigmund Freud and psychoanalysis); to the acknowledgment of critics and texts as key players in artistic life ("1960," for example, discusses the publication of Clement Greenberg's essay "Modernist Painting," while "1975" similarly highlights the appearance of Laura Mulvey's "Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema"); to the sidebars devoted to such luminaries as philosophers Ludwig Wittgenstein, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Michel Foucault, and Jurgen Habermas. At the same time, Art since 1900 proposes, through both its overall structure and its individual essays, that art making is a relatively hermetic activity, keenly attuned to intellectual currents and to the work of other artists but not closely tied to larger social and political forces.
