The October Century

(38.) See John Berger, The Success and Failure of Picasso, Harmondsworth, Penguin, 1965; Patricia Leighten, ReOrdering the Universe: Picasso and Anarchism, 1897-1914, Princeton, Princeton University Press, 1989; Jeffrey Weiss, The Popular Culture of Modern Art: Picasso, Duchamp, and Avant-Gardism, New Haven, Yale University Press, 1994; David Cottington, Cubism in the Shadow of War: The Avant-Garde and Politics in Paris, 1905-1914, New Haven, Yale University Press, 1998; Gertje Utley, Picasso: The Communist Years, New Haven, Yale University Press, 2000.

(39.) For instance, in his chapter "1984b: Postmodernism," Foster begins by replaying the art wars of the 1980s, opposing the "poststructuralist" (i.e., good) postmodernism of Barbara Kruger, Jenny Holzer, Sherrie Levine and Louise Lawler to the "neoconservative" (i.e., bad) postmodernism of Julian Schnabel, Anselm Klefer and Francesco Clemente. Looking back, however, Foster comments that, despite their stylistic differences, both groups "tended to ... shatter the notion of traditional representation," the former intentionally, the latter inadvertently (AS1900, p. 599). The heretical implication is that the two groups weren't so different after all, and that maybe artists such as Kiefer and Clemente were just as subversive--and important--as Kruger and Levine.

(40.) Eric Gibson, "At the Altar of the Obscure," Wall Street Journal, Mar. 11, 2005, p. W7.

Author: Pepe Karmel is an associate professor of art history at New York University and has written widely on Picasso, Pollock, Minimalism and contemporary art.

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