Interventions Reviews - Tepotech

Book

Reviews

Reviews

Editor's Note

tice

The

issue of The Art Bulletin 2005 September a new series called introduced "Interven

tions":

commissioned

essays historical

and

methodological with responses

from

on

wide-ranging concerns,

readers

several

and

chief

and

reviews be

might in a similar

format.

that

agreed most

certain

productively

a having The Art Bulletin

than

Rather a book,

review

author

single could

editor reviewed

to a shorter several responses publish text of high and intellec single disciplinary As The Art Bulletins book tual significance. to the review is quite relative limited space

number

of books

Reviews"

will

be

"Interventions published, reserved for books that can

be

to advance

expected

of purpose, and historiography method, across the discipline. In keeping with The Art Bulletin review practice, there will be no to "Interventions commissioned responses Reviews." first

The

is a cluster

views" since

installment

of eight

1900: Modernism, A textbook

modernism. statement

and

ars of modern book

"Interventions

of

invites

Post

Antimodernism, as well as a

major

summa

schol by four leading art, the contemporary such extended and multiple and reflection.

Interventions

Reviews

HAL

ROSALIND

FOSTER,

YVE-ALAIN D.

to Art

responses

and

consideration

H.

Re

AND

BOIS,

KRAUSS, BENJAMIN

BUCHLOH

Art since 1900: Modernism, Postmodernism

Antimodernism, London: vols.:

Thames

and Hudson, 2005. 2 352 pp., 210 1, 1900-1944, vol. 2, 1945 ills., 106 b/w. $46.88; 424 pp., 236 color ills., 128 b/w,

color 2003,

both

$46.88; in one

vol.:

vols. 704

$84.38. 413

pp.;

Also

available

color

ills.,

entrenched

Schwarzer

and

history,

he

acceptable under impossible

tory, has been

rendered

our

within

growing pluralism I think it may why

be

field,

to rethink

time

Who the with

to teach of us assigned among has not struggled survey of art history the very concept of the comprehensive those

In many and colleges a foundational survey nevertheless

overview?

the bread gram,

the

and

butter

centerpiece

universities, remains

the art history of a disciplinary

of

pro prac

to 1944, while the second with begins 1945. My remarks here are prompted by volume would be applicable 1, though many an en to volume That 2 as well.) actively reader

gaged

is being

called

forth

in the apparent this book"?with

immediately "How to use

becomes

instructions? which

the

two text Here, opens (pp. 10-11). are with additional reproduced

book pages

out features of the signs pointing are to and that intended layout organization the reader "follow the development of help art the twentieth and up to century through graphic

is

the

The solu introductory enterprise."3 "a tion that Collins collection of proposed, and in-depth of separate, lengthy analyses a book that would leave major monuments,

the present day." As the presentation

this wording

would

sug

entire

gest,

the

each ap entries, five pages in length and keyed proximately to a given year. The organiza chronological tion is further articulated by the grouping a counter of entries into decades, although

issues

structor,"

to the individual of continuity in the possibility introduces of an

to the alternative intellectually rigorous one dominant that evolutionary paradigm, to the most could be adapted of general field within the surveys or to a particular of art. "I can imagine, too," Collins history es "that such a book might include wrote, on offer of view that says competing points . . . a or monument. given work Perhaps in this area, given what we need the meth

13) makes the book's ous

he

condemned

for

of

traditional its ties

to

the panoptic First perspective."5

gaze and the on his list of

is this advice:

the using textbooks.

of the

"Stop

survey course must

to construct

get list continues

the

sense

. . .

entries,

(pp.

Bois;

that

does

The

authors

Antimodernism, a survey text

scholarly process."6 of Art since 1900: Modernism, Postmodernism that

responds

have

produced

surprisingly

the

reader

to destabilize

estab narrative, to reveal the histo

example,

of

authors

of art history"; "teach the con and, finally, ... the actual debate and disagreement the

for

"The cepts," malism

the

theoretical

the entries, and are stand-alone

Modernism

constitute

of an unfolding across time

links

(pp. 12 one of its numer

principles;

paths

In fact,

is just

encourage

alternative

discussions

its agenda." Graham's with to "stop fetishizing completeness"; canon the con and thematize "eject the and engender the discipline tent"; "embody

flicts

chronology

the

entries

national schools, partic or stylistic developments, concerns. thematic cross-references Many to the authors' call attention introductory inform

hold

clear,

organizing cross-references

ular media,

the

from

emerges arbitrary quality some years have multiple are omitted while others altogether. as the "Preface: A Reader's Guide"

a radical

of

individual

manding fact that

lishing ries of,

deconstruction

appears rigorously as the material is or

insofar

chronological, into

ganized

our field, within is a diversity odological Some range of quite different options."4 Graham for later, Mark Miller years argued

of

by Nancy J. Troy

it

riod

the

by which

calls

Review

is available in a single volume, publication can also be as two separate vol purchased the first of which the pe deals with umes,

of world

any circumstance, even more absurd

the most

of

the

in the book. (Although the

highlighted

sweep "The writing of a of art's his overview

noted,

present generation Those who teach

b/w. $95.00

yet

and hierarchies generalities."2 Collins Bradford years earlier, had addressed the challenge by the posed was survey text, he, like Schwarzer, writing that seek to present works of about books to the vast

some

egre survey genre by chal problems en to become the reader lenging actively the critical debates that are gaged with of

gious

questionable five When,

in relation

(but not all) of these pre an ambitious new

establishing that solves

paradigm

truths of complex art. It is he contin also," humanity through at its most reduc "art history ued, political, to cultural and individual differences ing

privileged remedies

224

scriptions,

at is art history to reveal the promising

art

to many

closely

offering. According in 1995, "The survey its most grandiose,

text

survey, which "the authority

vol.

two dozen

described

completely

discussion

vigorous

Zerner

to this deeply curricular

corollary problematic to Mitchell

the author from counter-responses pub lished in the same issue. During the initial of the series, the editor-in development books

that Henri

years ago as "an uninspired professional a routine machine."1 feeding busy academic The the indispensable survey text has been

Social

methods

these

too,

essays

by

that like

the

individual

in 14-48): "Psychoanalysis and as Method," Hal Foster; by of Art: Models and Con History

H. D. Buchloh; "For by Benjamin and Structuralism," Yve-Alain by and "Poststructuralism and Decon

Krauss. by Rosalind this framework encourage to focus on issues conceptual

struction,"

Not the

only reader

raised by, or and events in objects it also allows the authors

in relation

to, salient

the history

of art,

ART

374

BULLETIN

2006 VOLUME

JUNE

to provide numerous demon compelling can strations of how theory and method in to structure applied practice interpreta tion.

be

in the survey context? unusual Especially where have been and anonymity objectivity the normative ideal?is the fact that all four authorial

identities

throughout ever, the

individual

not

signed, identified at

lished

remain

the volume.

end

Moreover, even embrace

discussion

pub

2, p. 671.) and acknowledge differ

ten "these they write, an unbroken sions story by a are unified rather by single voice; they dramatized each of by the four authors, a different

has

(p.

odological cussions

another?less

2 provide

focused

and,

less successful?format for correspondingly, as to highlight the authors their differences on what reflect have what written, they they left out

they have connections

of

the account, have

they might tify in the process. This latter dialogical

and

the

to iden

failed

the has

thirty years since a become powerful

it was

founded,

nexus

of

some oretically sophisticated (though, would also conceived) argue, narrowly course

the

on the of art impact practice has been Given the high history profound. level of the journal's intellectual ambition, would

choose text

survey

surprising to take on

vey, Art

since

manding

some least

comprehensibility. would expect

intellectually that new initiates

one

and

prove helpful, at while confusing, as incom just plain of "desub the explication

prehensible?see limation,"

pp. 662-63.) Virtually entries make sophisticated

yearly that go well cal facts of works

and

all of

arguments of histori

in more

fully contributions

other

scholarly publications. case in excellent is Krauss's point treatment of Pablo Picasso's Cubism collage An

(pp. 112-17), "a battleground

a

count

of how

topic that she describes in which various parts

as of

and

"high"

(p. in

sources

avant-garde for her consideration see

of

"those

reasons for ex artist's] as this material ploiting primarily political" Patricia (p. 116), notably, Leigh ten, with on a whom Krauss has for years carried tors who

[the

debate

about

its of Leighten's contextualism

versus

interpretative and biographical Krauss's formalist

of meaning, which plorations privilege tailed visual analysis of characteristics

. ex de that

of art. This

to the work

internal

strictly

structures controversy methodological Krauss's discussion of collage in the entry for 1912, and it reemerges in the entry for 1919

she

Picasso's

surrounding of the late 1910s.

identifies

"a radical

camps of face with

scholars

The

where

160-65),

(pp.

the

Once

division"

the

explanation theory of the

growth

each

position certain facts." It comes from

neutral but

issues,

of

method.

the other

feeling

itself

is blind

to

as no

is far that Krauss surprise in her presentation of these

it is precisely

force

in the directed

na

that

its pedagogical out that interpre Krauss crucial

and

her

issues

of

colleagues and theory into the foreground, them at the center of art histori positioning even on the cal practice, level introductory

method

of

the

"a na?ve

is," she cautions, survey text. "There belief that historical explanations

whom

theo

with gallery Gleizes as

she dismisses the high-art to which

in a manner

that

and

position

media photog its

explores its history

integrates narrative "for larger art historical au the first time in any survey" (p. 12), the thors engage with and design architecture in the entry on (most directly only fleetingly to the Bauhaus,

devoted

pp. 185-89), analysis by feminist to Freudian fiddle psy

offered second

The ignored. and American

accepted modernism

intact

on

(essays

the

controversial

studies

is entirely of European remains largely

canon

two outliers?the

movement,

Mexican and

255-59,

pp.

the Har

lem Renaissance, contrib pp. 302-7?are uted by a mysterious fifth author identified as AD), two unfamiliar only although fig artists Wladyslaw Strzeminski ures, Polish are Kobro, Katarzyna given prominence El in Bois's nuanced dis Lissitzky alongside was cussion of how Russian Constructivism

and

in Berlin

received the

ing But

1920s

since

1900

on

omits

or

those

book

complexities

of

with engage self-reflexive

the

whose

but

of

they of a

the authors

art as a surveying innovations is often

remains

Foster,

as

model

Krauss,

insuffi Bois,

for

however,

and of

that is internally history in historical contradiction,

di

to debate

art's rich

vided,

intervention.

It remains

to be

and seen,

success in apparent it survey text and infusing ambition will place their

if the authors'

the rethinking with intellectual book

(p. 13).

a version

invite

modern

of

nevertheless

us

new

with

modes

stylistic embeddedness

theorized,

ciently Buchloh

ripe

Instead

historical

Art

challenge to assimilate the

its discursive

succession

claimed

to judge

a welcome need

sophisticated art that history

set out.

dur

Europe

it subjects as the authors

it includes;

represents who will

to its users,

have

Eastern

"Of course, out, point come new omissions"

orientations The

and

(pp. 226-31). be disingenuous the basis of the

it would

seamless

commentary lies. For in pointing is always intentional,

authorial

to

as their

affiliated

Privileging and sculpture,

themselves

deter internally creative individual,

the

of her

tation

us face

sets

contextual

against mined

the

again, Krauss "two between

[that] brings of historical

issue

takes up neoclassical

as well

the

mural

mer

the

social

the au

made deliberately for Krauss, the Picasso

Metzinger,

of painting is added raphy

as an

served

are

choanalytic theory, while of visual culture subject

stage commenta

to an

in which

judgments

doctrinaire.)

1923,

the

through as that of many sets the artists. This

have

might this book,

the possibilities seem to play

of

circulated

other

and Jean

facts

to the

shape

Kahnweiler's Daniel-Henry private that of Salon Cubists Albert trumps

with

but

significant have scholars

"low"

caveat

(Typically model of Cubism

cultural

expression as well of Picasso

value

to October

of multi

several that

positions

cultural

ture

fleshed-out

apparent. Braque

the his

But

recourse

have

that gives

predispositions

a

Introducing

the past quarter century during to Picasso's with coll?s, men respect papiers ac in particular Thomas Crow's tioning

the

the recitation beyond to present complex interpretations of art, a number of which have

surfaced previously in the authors' form

terpretative staked out

turn

should

retical

the

'polys?mie,' productive often ple?and opposed?meanings" then turns to a brief 114). Krauss of

or not) model

epigraph thors' value

representational Krauss performed by collage, that Picasso's of deployment

discussion

interrogated;

for

immediately to Picasso's

that

organized, analyzed, weighted, and to do this all historians

Krauss's

she

or

de

unnecessarily comes across

devel

even more is, paradoxically, with Mallarm?'s aligned Symbolist in which the linguistic poetry, sign is treated as it is in Picasso's that is, "as papers, pasted

pointed

to be

need

(consciously

the medium

debate

to art

of

a record of the facts simply torian extracts from the archive.

of mass

embrace

friend.

are

underlying facts."

closely

a sur

find somewhat daunt probably as most of exciting. (Although at the end of the book entries

informative are

con

But from

is an

1900

enterprise

history will as well ing the glossary are

one

to what

and reading

Picasso's

links

to the

semiological

are

its editors

the writing of a in which have risked they might in an effort discursive rigor

compromising to assure broad trary

that

first

contemporary

heated dis

whose

it is somewhat

Krauss

opment media But by Apollinaire. this connection complicates

work

strategy will be famil iar to readers of October, the influential jour art and culture nal of avant-garde of which all four authors of Art since 1900 are editors. During October

and St?phane Mallarm? Apollinaire as a lo to reactions the (whose newspaper cus of culture were popular diametrically

wildly

to the meth 13). dis the two round-table essays, at the ends of volumes that appear

methods"

1 and

to these

allegiance In addition

discussion

laume

operations demonstrates

"In this book," are not masked

whom

are against pitted out the terms (p. 114). Setting of the debate not only to the with reference visual arts but also to the poetry of Guil the foregoing another"

of collage

of volume

their methodological

2

one

opposed),

how

essays are of each is

introductory the author

although in the round-table the

distinct

(Peculiarly,

the authors

ences:

fairly

NUMBER

LXXXVIII

the grasp of the introductory beyond audience for which it was intended.

BOOK

nancy

is professor j. troy of modern the University of Southern California Von KleinSmid [Department of Art History, Center - VKC 351, University of Southern Los California, Angeles, Calif. 90089-0047].

art at

easily

the best

written,

most art

eth-century

Notes capabilities

Survey," Art Jour 322.

3. Bradford Collins, "Art History nal 49, no. 3 (Autumn 1990): 4.

that

each

author

and

these

tend

and

a

specialized

become

it takes A

for granted. is, of course, of

depository

several

to Art

tions

exemplary object. to write and dents how

Batchen

by Geoffrey of

the art that just about about life and culture

introduc

methodological

Buchloh 1900, Benjamin social history of art was origi on an "to make the nally based aspiration of itself?its writing history historicity?con to the larger project tribute of social and recalls

since

that

credit, Art since that art making,

the

intellectual

assess

their

standard.

according kind of politics

What

is advanced

this book's

spite book

of

leftist

little more

doing

made

rhetoric, to

than,

"helping, to produce

The

book

solves

familiar through year basis,

from

series

hensive chapters. sidebars

The

1900

book

also

on

features

table

specific conversations

topics between

thors.

This

suits

format

these writers, ists, and voice

allows

who

sections, taught.

and the

four

of

is the

to schol

Secession

with to the

and

psychoanalysis); of critics and texts

as

key

life

"Visual to the as

to

devoted

time

closely forces. political for example, the

perhaps decision made.

central

the most

Foster, recent The

of Modern once

and

enables

At

poses is

through themes

a

challenging an eclectic

of

Bois,

Art

of reopening in New York

for

all

that

and

individual

curatorial artists.

are

almost

four

to tell us why. of art to

effort

of connections

al

realm constantly political round-table conversations

absent entirely Art since

contexts

from

rest of

the

opens with to art historical meth

True,

essays devoted each of them

ods,

a

1900

informed

by competing to take interests. But,

and

the example I opened with which up again us it's one my commentary, thing to tell that there is such an entity as the social his to actually it. tory of art and another practice The

sections

to the art of

devoted

of

this elision.

own

1968

seem

"Dates

to

center

of gravity," says Rosa lind Krauss but this doesn't pre (p. 274), vent each author from the assigned treating as the fulcrum

Hilla

for a more

of a chosen

two

Becher, such

Candida

their

including as Thomas

Struth,

in 1968,

but and

this digression linear chronology

effects,

with

in 1993,

and

Thomas Gursky. pictures 1962-71,

1990. Among complicates

the on

influence

and Andreas

H?fer,

1998,

ac

essay at all). to survey Bernd photographers

it is illustrated

1989,

are

to 1968

as an excuse

of German

Accordingly, not made

ple line

topic.

devoted chapters some years get no is taken

extended

There

other the

sim

by the time maintain

promised

format while simultaneously its The second ing biological implications. the manifestation of con essay deals with art in the United and is simi States, ceptual larly

illustrated

with

works

from

other

years:

by Ed Ruscha from 1962, Sol LeWitt (1963),

pro

Robert

methodology mix of Moreover,

and

the book.

1977,

obsoles

little

the kind

to in the

luded

as art

to pose

and judgments of what happened

view

comprehensive but making

students

a

sort of

at the

value

rendering

when,

Ruff, and

of his the

is to risk pre inex organic, here evades

art criticism

it allows

history,

(whereas The first

the

a

a more the necessity of articulating nuanced and dissemina theory of art's production tion within is a history (there modernity but no hint of historical here, materialism).

tually

organizing crucial meth

Krauss,

historical

orable,

discussion

of

choice

Art model

abandoning found idiosyncrasies

to chronology it as a natural process: Its adoption inevitable.

senting

career

to declare is happy its own the T?te Modern in London

cence,

entirely

dates

simple of masterpieces tells you very ex of modernism, the history a now it is to that be cept apparently history to the past and to the ar safely consigned of the shopping mall. Where chitecture the

Modern

of Modern

tory without

typical their have

to larger

tied

as this book's

line

to the work

and

not

but

the Museum

are

Ludwig

philosophers

letting history the T?te offers

itself,

which space within argument seem possible. In adopting of the organizing principle to the time line, Art since 1900 comes close

political

and Nar

Pleasure sidebars

375

conceptual and change

Strikingly, the social

procession little about

au

self-contained selected, on what is being depending Those teachers will find that this

and

demonstrated

of

It also

social

the Museum

strengths as essay known as if with one to speak is the individual parts

elusive).

artists

odological Buchloh

year-by

periodic two round

the

as the Vienna

for

speak

In short,

is an

of

currents

other

metaphor,

are best

them

(authorship made deliberately to assign teachers

a

all else

as art history,

This

Mulvey's

intellectual

a

in a compre but well-illustrated

short

of

on

century to 2003,

its

density central

Cinema"); luminaries

Consider,

this problem by adopting narrative that moves

chronological the twentieth

To

structure both its overall and its through art that is a rela individual essays, making to attuned activity, keenly tively hermetic

its content.

and

also

but

in general. insists above

Maurice Wittgenstein, Merleau-Ponty, Michel and J?rgen Habermas. Foucault, the same time, Art since 1900 proposes,

a

infamous

its structure

is included

not

its analyses of art role in twentieth-cen

(such Freud

Sigmund

such

globalized capital"?1 Like any undergraduate Art textbook, a clear since 1900 must begin by providing and accessible the material pathway through a coherent it discusses and establishing rela tion between

arly

ones

rative

is this employ

to think,

how

In never

contestable.

interpretative T?te. To tie art

a con

than

to Marcel tury art it ascribes Duchamp; the association of art movements with

of Laura

by October itself, in its own modest, academic way, next for the stage of subjects

denigration

concepts

("1960," for example, the publication of Clement Green discusses while essay "Modernist berg's Painting," the appearance "1975" similarly highlights

ways, and contribute

its shroud

need

it is also information; It should stu teach

as well

acknowledgment in artistic players

In what historicity? particular to what degree, does the book to an ongoing of social project and political Or are these questions change? no to art history? relevant De simply longer

by

will

understanding the book: from

philosophical to the

same

to this

book

refer

in this

throughout

works;

tial journal edited and his three by Buchloh Hal Foster, Yve-Alain fellow Bois, authors, to and Rosalind it seems reasonable Krauss,

1900

activity.

emphasized

that this political change" (p. 22). Given once an apt also have been might descrip tion of the ambitions of October, the influen

essential

more

textbook

an

In one

the interested

1900

or even coherent, but the be comprehensive at least concedes from the T?te's approach outset that history is an artifice and there

magically

previously published, to assume prior knowledge Art since 1900 vocabulary.

ON ART SINCE

Ma studies by, say, Henri figure juxtaposing assumes tisse and Marlene the T?te Dumas, that the great modernists still have might to say to the art, and something important even to the life, of the present. It may not

fore

feature

has

anyone study, but undergraduates the language and help with

venient

Review

often

arguments

of

some

Ibid.

Its chapters of longer

versions

undoubtedly book for

field

Ibid.

5. Mark Miller Graham, "The Future of Art His of the Survey," Art Jour tory and the Undoing nal 54, no. 3 (Autumn 1995): 33. 6.

student.

ence

same

the

By

of

graduate condensed

will

scholarship.

this judgment large portions well beyond the reading pitched of the typical American under

are

book

the Introduc 2. Mitchell Schwarzer, "Rethinking tory Art History Survey," Art Journal 54, no. 3 (Autumn 1995): 24.

achieve

extraordinary

in my

token,

1. Henri Zerner, "Editor's Statement: The Crisis in the Discipline," Art Journal 42, no. 4 (Winter 1982): 279.

intelligently of twenti history on the market. In

currently

it is an ways of collective

many ment

most

organized, informative

BATCHEN

REVIEWS:

Weiner by

Kosuth

Morris

(1962

and

1963),

Lawrence

(1969), Dan Graham (1966), Joseph (1969-74),

and John

Baldessari

ART

376

BULLETIN

What

(1968).

we're

in this

told

art emerged

LXXXVIII

2006 VOLUME

JUNE

essay is that the conflu

from

or

the Vietnam

one, eliminating confusion of cultural difference enabling from this book's master narrative. Although

its

move rights or the student in Paris, or ments, uprising or the the Soviet of Czechoslovakia, invasion in China; not even of Cultural Revolution protests,

civil

of a counterculture

the rise States

the various

and

its distrust

in the United

of established

institu

we are an tions of all sorts. Instead, given formal of what these au entirely reading thors like to call "advanced art," in which one artist or group cre of artists responds or com to the work of atively predecessors in a percussive, survival-of-the-fittest petitors model evolutionary The bedrock of shaken

comes

a touching cacy of avant-garde thors of Art since tion

of good

avant-gardes model (both

faith

artistic

garde some their merely which many wise.

"dead"

and

effi au

The

the

thereby

providing for social-political) in the present. action

a

are

remove of

In construing of production. art as a world unto itself, century

this

its con

Art

flows

of

capital,

when

and

culture,

"negotiation

space-times" 1900 does

between

diverse

analysis

of

1900

a view

presents

of art

twenty years on, fits the marketplace of Ivy League programs

that now,

within

indeed

exclusions, of art historical

all

re

its authors

minor

shuffling this book's prefer in particular, and,

of

its

in Art since 1900, Buchloh worries that "the of an oppositional of very construct sphere to have artists and intellectuals appears . . . the been eliminated. between antimony on the one hand artists and intellectuals production capitalist or has annihilated This

on

the other

has

by at disappeared book, while certainly exam is also a primary As a contri describes.

the motivation

of art historians.

generation

GEOFFREY

BATCHEN

?SpwfeSSOT of the art at contemporary the of City University of New CUNY Graduate Center, 365 10016-4309]. York, N.Y.

history of photography the Graduate Center York [Art History, Fifth Avenue, New

and

responses the

specificity

to

brilliant, book Krauss

to the

lacking useless

as a

extent

too un

hubris,

that tool

teaching

not of people narrative

numbers

for

p. 674, or as sympa This is

own by its it is also

flawed

frustratingly and myopia

(who would

support

would Buchloh emerge Benjamin to the goals of feminism?). thetic all that is in the main also a book

it may be virtually for the increasing in a canoni invested

of the development last century. in the Implicit in this volume, is a nar illustrated

cal, modernist of "art" over

the

term, as or States-centric, rowly European-United even a Paris-New York-centric worldview. will

be

jority kinds

are

the

Bois,

Institute

not

at the studying in which these au

(Krauss at Columbia; now of Harvard,

ensconced

Yve-Alain

It

the vast ma

for

equally inadequate of undergraduates of elite institutions

formerly for Advanced

at

in Prince

Study at Princeton; Buchloh previ and now at Harvard), and ously at Barnard for whom the complexities of the book's ton; Hal

Foster

language There

will

be

largely to be

is much

elegant,

of analyses in this book.

ingly compelling and movements in this

notable sions

regard Bois's

of Cubism,

Henri

impenetrable. of said in praise blaz sometimes

well-articulated,

Matisse

and

and

-Krauss's

and

Buchloh's

canonical

the

works

Particularly are Krauss's discus of

of

the works

Piet Mondrian,

Foster's

of Surrealism

and its legacies, of works analyses by Gerhard Richter and other Continental artists. And, on with four initial sections methodological direct coyly, without (strangely, these are nonetheless attribution, in an aggressive written voice) first-person a chronological narrative and, following, around works, major by pivoting punctuated two round-table the au discussions among frameworks

authorial

thors

on modern

major,

to be

certain

canonizing, At the

and

structure

innovative

work same

art, the contemporary as a confirms the book as well

canonical

as

of art. in the history falls short the book time,

on

If, as the au points. it provides the new thors repeatedly claim, most account and of est, deepest, important several

fundamental

art and

Euro-American retical

of

shifts then

its relation

the past one hundred to task for what be taken it must

seen as a blatant only be the most insights profound

twentieth-century turalist theory claim

as their

2. For more

book

also

of modern

to theo

over

1. Hal Foster and Rosalind Krauss, "Visual Cul ture Questionnaire," October, no. 77 (Summer 1996): 5. on Nolan and Australia's regional see Ian Burn, "Sidney Nolan: modernism,

innovative,

her go on record proclaiming the "continuance of modernism,"

years, can

Notes of

have

thors

cultural

Art since (p. 618). However, not itself offer up such a space a cosy Euro-Ameri maintaining

an

since

information

negotiation, can throughout. hegemony of regional This last absence, modernity?of

and

the next

for privileged yet his people" (p. 617), to rep structure is content narrative book's as licate this same global economy history. Foster's of essay also speaks of the possibility a

A

of an empowering and of Art As the conservatism politics. since 1900 demonstrates, the invention of it a "historicity" such a politics, and with we live, for the times in which appropriate remains the most task that faces pressing

in "1989" of a post critically a world dominated by "mostly order of released multinational

American

that model.

incisive

writes

Cold War

to be

would

ideological

form an inquiry with alliance entirely congenial ruling-class In the final round-table and interests. values

or

to mo

responses

as with the they can, in Japan, be directly tied to the favored centers back of vanguard art?New London. Hal York, Paris, Berlin,

Foster

not

Jones

surprising Rosalind thought

surprising:

seem to be at a moment that sees tory? We after postmodernism itself as being but has name of a proper the burden yet to attract

made (such as the posters by stu in Paris during 1968 pro the May .Another is the absence from this

except dernity, Gutai movement

periphery that benefit

(p. 676). the best of its kind, ple of what Buchloh to a larger bution of social and po project litical change, it is an utter failure. Where, of art his it leave the practice then, does

since

art

artistic

Art

trition"

disconnects this art from the dynamics life and thus from a twentieth-century conse broader of modernity. One history is the erasure its story of any from quence as visual practices that cannot be packaged

regional

out

some from side. Apart the modernist canon,

been

twentieth

1900

of

and

like Sidney visual con

to gain a historical to develop to such negotiations. Art

turns

its history

and

of

tests) book

and

art. But

have

1900

methods

so

only and other

texts

high dents

of center

attuned

ences

avant

that privileges those practices

so if you is especially the social complexities

art from

1940s

shown

equally comfortably and the art history where universities,

the func

is to privilege

avant-gardes intellectual

commodities, This

would

1980s,

that at practice, contested the establishment of point own time, It is still a normative history. feeds an art world for economy such

the

the art of an Aus

by Amelia

is a structurally in some ways

This

to embody tradictions that speak into to, exacerbate uneven modernism's visibility, peculiarly across the Much could development globe.2 to the present be learned of benefit from

since

and

even

painter can be

Nolan

model

inherently this belief

practice. assume that

similarly transgressive Yet a normative history

from

Review

terms

in the

of October magazine, and therefore of of institutional the marriage and critique that so enlivened the postmodern theory

in the political

1900

tralian

one

is an un

artistic

art history of the past,

this book,

the negotiations found in such

art as an and with

activity,

a mess,

child

of history. this model

in high

belief

worthwhile

even

inconsequential, established by

and Modern Life," in Dialogue: Writ Landscape ings in Art History (Sydney: Allen and Unwin, 221. 1991), 67-85,

Thai, Nigerian, a particularly as it does the

unfortunate

men

(p. 527). No War and

abstraction" of

2

of, for example, Australian, or Peruvian modernism?is

"Conceptual ence of two of modernism, major legacies one embodied in the readymade, the other in geometric tion is made

NUMBER

fails and

that

contradiction of

the very

and

poststruc want to

philosophy these authors

The justification. an history adequate art in relation contemporary

bedrock

to provide

and

BOOK

to social and political unless forces, by his W?lff (as it was for Heinrich tory is meant a lin in 19151) of influences progression from one formally determined instance of instantiated innovation, usually by the work of a white other.

no

art with

to Indian

reference

explicit wars of independence

Algerian nam War,

nor

relation

a

between

of a critique structuralism and ments?a

or

to

queer. contradic profoundly of poststructuralism

is thus

tory to the insights several ways. important structuralism repeatedly

First,

it evokes

in post to

while

continuing a succes narrate the history of art through sion of authors and sidelining the epochal and

social

II

War a

cultural

Second,

period.2

general

subjective, accompanied of bodies the specificity

the

role

in the

sires

of

own

their

construction

highlight or

play

those

they

tive denial monic

of

this particular effect of their own vis-?-vis

they choose

to down

in relating, is the authors' collec

the politics of their as art historians.

practice

It is perfectly

the partic to choose

the (through and Marxian

simple

the very psychoanalytic models these authors

own

often

hege lens of critical de

themselves

are motivated to see why to pro they tome: after this kind of authoritative

ploy) duce all,

the market

the

cultural

critical

value

of

ideas

is itself

with

the

index

their worldview.

internal each

the names

lacks

thors, one the extent

of

of

the four The

of

because

imagines to which

circuit

others.

sion

entry make

chronological as a whole the book

and

at the

Edward

Bois

with

the

section

subtitle

"Kienholz

by tries

too hard,"

over Hannah p. 418; Eva Hesse to would be both the Wilke) acknowledge interestedness of their choices (the way in are which invested in the they deeply choices

they make

on

the bodily/conceptu level) and

al/personal-o/wfrprofessional hegemonic force of the discourse

they

collec

au

as Roland

such

Barthes

and and

regarding subjectivity at various evoked in points there is some discus Specifically,

ob and

of mean unknowability at the "core" the absence correlative

failure

structure

basic

and methods

lie it: the book

associated

with

the journal. of major scholars

and range are not connected in English who writing with October nor invested in its worldview

more

remains

to under

or

less

rooted

riod;

to the

endemic

because

format,

survey

is

of

pecially

the unusual

here

and

deemed

outside

as a result,

who,

are not

structure,

supports which has

October four

that

who

and/or

authors

have

the major jobs rary art history

canon,

credit.

hegemonic incontrovertible effects

as well

in the job market It is no accident

full

given a broader

book

The

the October

the

have

as the art market. scholars studied

a

stronghold in modern and in the United

linked with

these

on most

contempo States. Beyond

to focus here I want politics effects of their disregard ideological for the most of poststruc profound insights to those relating and turalism, subjectthese

the

obvious

of

artists'

as

words

evaluations

subjective

as final. of

the authors' es

of presenting their arguments, evident in the "Roundtables"

(paral in Octo

the round tables published leling assume that the stated ber)?which thoughts of these authors would be of on necessarily even going, perpetual art history and other

interest

to students

readers?also

of

finds

its

way into the chronological essays of the is especially in those book. This obvious tries has

to

state

their

authoritativeness

manner

in

of the pe history criticism of the contemporary

despite the authors

The

(or

political

present of artists' works

are is ignored A astounding. is the book's lack of foot problem to some extent while this problem

notes;

and

of formal

unfolding

teleological

practice, fact and

work

related

of

the modernist

continue

tellectual,

by authors The number

in the

and

that

or

on the

and works the primary

around author "structural") development names or rather than concepts problems to the social, relating infinitely complex

of others

over

given indicates the

which revolves indeed scholarship, a around closed circuit of scholars relatively and artists, clear: 30 to crystal approximately are from October 40 percent of the citations

To acknowledge their own invest authority. ment in, say, art that is "structurally" (read over art that is innovative formally) explic in its Pol "content"4 itly political (Jackson Jasper Johns is dismissed

an

is not

the way in which is per identity rather than innate; the chiasmic

beliefs of

of the arguments sophistication their often and unac implicit on other reliance de knowledged complex the book often the work bates, synthesizes

Fougeron; who Kienholz,

latter

by

are

the book's of

in interrogating. The paradox here is that are to describe and they compelled privilege the very kind of critique they themselves must to maintain in order their own ignore

over Andr?

the

and value meaning once and for all; and the effect that our a of has on our perception subject's identity of her or his work. Unfortu interpretation these do not affect however, nately, insights

the

the narrowness

mural

that

are written

by

ing and identity; of all subjects and the to secure all attempts

of end

the Harlem

the Mexican

the fact

"marginal"

the ultimate

value;

an

end

and

section,

of

which and through subjects to determine interrelate meaning

jects

reveal

and

lists at the

reference

informative

to artists

pho in Eu

structures

in which

self-citation, cites her/himself

of

formed

post a self

involves

1930s

Lacan

authorship the book.

inte

it would

the women

and

the book

theorists

Jacques

Interestingly, the four au

their work

each

whose of

part

and artists, philosophers, capital theorists have interested long been

lock

tural

insidiously, of citation, institutional strategy and historical narration that ex placement, cises and marginalizes all voices that do not accord

tradi

or mar This kind of conceptual exclusion is telling and endemic of the ginalization as a whole. book of the insights of Many II philosophers and cul War post-World

art his

and

as

the

of modernism

thors.6

a The politics of this hegemony, hege in other identified reviews of mony already this book,5 consist of a methodological for mula of the components varying involving at the beginning four methods outlined of

successfully

of

9>11

addresses

author, "AD," who credit or clearly identified, in which such movements

way are viewed

Revolution.

social

sections

full

revolu

their

Third,

marginalize.3 to this erasure

turn,

de

and

additional

serving

of

the conditioning history, and investments positions ular objects and narratives and

bodies

to the jour has also

grated?structuralism/formalism, , and, more structuralism)

and desires (includ their own), while writ ing, most specifically, a authoritative manner, ing in highly stating as fact. This tone ob opinions hectoring scures

the October

(psychoanalysis, the least tory?arguably

of the suspicion an erasure of by

methodological

about

and

by Buchloh) Renaissance (1943) ists (1933). However, two

in October. The

the book

in the post-World the authors convey

shifts

which

film

(in a vibrant

1900

outside

from 1920s

subse

book

narratives

1930a,

Krauss

and

The

postmodernism, of the

rope

and

Foster

ART SINCE

of artists

tographers

of the jour aspirations is, of course, signaled by its to Sergei refers Eisenstein's

tionary nal's founders name,

art, femi

and/or

book

her

extensively claim of the

published

links

Octoberism:

in 1976, students

editors and contributors quently is a colleague who nal, and Bois

the articu

critique in body and installation in work that is overtly

antiracist,

the

called

October

were

Buchloh

in post subjectivity move the various rights obvious

be

might cofounded

of

itself with

The

book

and

of

developments not to mention nist,

this hegemony even in such definitive?one marked might of this say final?form by the publication term,

ON

JONES

meaning-formation. work by a range tional canonical and

lack of a better

For

the Viet

deep understanding such events and

lation

as "natural."

to an male artist, to find a example, and contemporary

Euro-American

It is startling, for modern addressing

book

such strategic tively represent through choices and the correlative and repressions to shore them up marginalizations required

REVIEWS:

on

addressing established

that

topics her or his

Warhol

and

en

the author

authority

(Foster

undeni apparently or on 486), p. "greatest period," topics the authors felt the politi presumably

Andy

able

in which

cal necessity of find intellectually

his

in the book but including or uninterest anathema

offhand dismissals ing (Bois and Buchloh's one of the few non-Euro-American of Gutai, movements even mentioned in the book, "misreading"

Pollock,

implying

that we

all

as

ART

378

BULLETIN

is, pp. This

373,

to bear

on

correct

the

"know" what

tone

is brought

feminism,

postcolonial in ways practices so

they weren't of the essays

to art

of Pollock

reading

queer theory and

theory antiracist

that would

be

dangerous. to these

vast

relating

if

cru

and

of post-World War II thought and are to Foster, creative practice relegated a laudable who does many job of including of the important voices and theories articu of a structural

the

importance of meaning and

tique

cri

are

cursory

reference

though,

given

thus

discussed to feminist

the gingerly one the work,

approaches it must tasteful

have

Kusama's

template More seriously, racial,

the

effects

and

national,

their

of

self,

phalli). artists'

these

otherness

on

their work,

and

ethnic

of

conceptions

with

on

of the latter are com interpretations as if women's in artwork pletely ignored, the 1960s and 1970s can only be about gen as if der or, even worse, is separable gender others'

from cial

the

on paper acknowledges on crucial of feminism impact

While

Foster the

570) since

1960,

its most

neglects theoretical

pect mon

on

through contributions

important

judgments

that aren't

(an to

it must

insight,

be

or

minimized

tural

or

zarre

exclusions,

conceptual

anachronisms. erasure

left out

inattention

The

of

of Warhol's

such are

bi

blatant

word)

and queerness of Robert Rauschen the work

into

of non

no (there's really a handful of chro

as noted, two of which, segments, nological are are clus by "AD"; the others penned as if race tered at the very end of the book, to do with has little or nothing the visual arts until the 1990s. This has the effect of the more issue of the constraining general of racial and ethnic identity, which, politics I would is structurally foundational argue,

to

ap to the

as themselves

been, pre interrogated by some of addressed but not in some having

and

here. fully understood Part of the problem is that formalism of the Octoberists' the

ginalizes of modern both

ple,

Foster

tory of art

of

role

and

as

1960

since

the

narrate

the his

not sense

and

particular

other

of Kusama

brief

only

(pp. the

furthering antiracist cultural

Hatoum

concerns

the narrative

laid out

eerily structure Clement

post-1960 themselves

speci sex

in

Foster

identifies

of feminism Mona

artists

of embodiment in this book

is

is almost

activities

that

a way

power central role

extremely Can it be,

the

refining functions

and

by intellec

of

in

values

cultural

political in Louis

could

be

said

state

refined

apparatus? marks both

politi of

of

Correlatively, Octoberism

terms,

an

to be

the notion

as it purveys institutional

of control.

course,

ideological that this book

then,

the ultimate

as well

triumph

as

reification

thus (as hegemony)?and the recession into the past the (through narra of counterhegemonic generation Octoberism? tives)?of final

point they define here, following

serves

As

that

it

the au positions, the October line in gen more or less as

themselves the

to suggest

their

left

in (albeit to hewing of polit conception at the beginning, the

intelligentsia different ways),

interestingly

a generally avant-gardist ical critique. Yet right book illustrates the now-famous

theorists

viewer

with

largely

who

consider

and Duchamp, to Foster and to

in Paris begins that postmodern

defined

entirely take place

by visual

in or pass

scribes and of ists

a (p. 19). While long the "rise of feminism

seventies"

and

arts

through

and

"some Minimalist [note

the

an

Buchloh,

forty that modernism granted ends with New York and ism

Gramsci

the

to sustain

Of

Marxist

ideological story told by that bugaboo of all

an array of includes American and (though mostly artists of all persuasions from the both narratives still take for years,

past

in

1974 image a dildo of Lynda in front of Benglis holding her greased naked body, staring defiantly darkened toward the through sunglasses

some

German)

in the

of origins and authors, brilliant and innovative

is precisely of how

understanding

four

by

thanks

extent

let go of con

haven't belief

the artist

Antonio

eral, convey members of

a

within

this one, international

theorist

may. thors

in its underlying to the disembodied

Greenberg, artists and

of the

Theory

ism as a hegemonic discourse. the mid-twentieth-century

One

of the moment. While remotely around 1960 narrative Greenberg's stopped and completely eschewed the countertradi tion

in the positioning this book, while

the

to discuss

practice?by

erasure

close

they tion

Althusser's

to gendered and to see 502-4),

(pp. 635ff.). result of this

Bur

("structurally" as an originary and value, and because fail to interrogate their own participa in the posing of value judgments and

modes

of Minimalism,

others?positioned of white male Minimalist

The

and

the work

and interpreted) force of meaning

order

primarily

and

lineage Foster

authors

essentially nection between

references

by Krauss

forms

1974

modernist

accommodating tual discourse

and psychic identifica

and Hesse

concerns

to the

in his

these

hegemony to

in the body

and collective) (individual This occlusion allows them

with

and

or viewer's

racial,

gender,

tions.

works

interest

in the abstract only phenomenological but also as an enactment of the of an artist's

Because an

cal

around

pivoting

indebted

of an

the rise

con

early-twentieth-century of avant-gardism, reinforced for the Octoberists by Peter

ception refined

for

(they argue) legacy of institutional Duchamp's as well as other forces critique (including the impor phenomenology), discounting of

art

what

about

judgments

an

in the history art. For exam

Marcel

tance

value on

lingering mar account

itself

Minimalism,

exclusion

its analyses and structural organization, reveals the conservatism of October baldly

the body

contemporary and Krauss

broader matters

ger's arguments Avant-Garde.

cases

is that

a struc

insight leads to some

level

the gay relationship berg and Jasper Johns,7 is ghettoized white artists apposite

artists

an attention

value

to the virtual

leads scene,

from assumptions about value begin on formal concerns that hinge (though these are, of course, very differently posed And both ultimately base by Greenberg).

artistic

subject a different

This

Both

formation

of meaning and their limitations

cisely, exposed the very works

relation

who Aguilar, this history. on

to this

bution problems,

To my

and marginalizations, Aside from the all but total

of

more

and

Laura

of

aspects necessitated

have

the work

and more about (done here well) relatively this fundamental is also put insight, which in a different forth anti way by postcolonial, theorists

structural

com

poststructuralist philosophy). to contempo feminism's contribution art and discourse is less about the intro rary duction of women into survey textbooks

and

in all Euro-American

latter.

the British

the YBAs including and only passing (Young British Artists), to Los Angeles-based references artists.

the disregard of the degree intersectional role of racial

and

and art writing. production I am arguing What is that

social

mind,

racist, and queer as Frantz Fanon

theories

some

identifications

ual, sus

inherently said, also

of

to postcolonial in general and ex

indifference

and

to plains structural

ficity

the point particularly to make authoritative

debates, it is impossible

value

(p. art

to follow

he

to cultural that

of ra

and perception experience other identifications.

and

the

in

in two different first, ways: more art history?a of self-reflexive writing of the stakes of narrating this interrogation in this way?and to the attri second, history

and with briefly concerns (al she way in which

obsession

that

studies

proach

how dis imagines to con for Krauss

been

as art before

of cultural

section "Social Art introductory the corollary of expunging from the volume) scholarship

the

would

in subtle however, Regrettably, are not addressed. sights offered by these The work of artists such as Yayoi Kusama (Krauss, p. 502) and Ana Mendieta (Foster, p. 572)

as well

1900 dismissal

parallels histories

the

formation.

identity the more

2

(and History" visual culture

art

fascinating most Ultimately,

since The

Buchloh's

weirdly and art,

areas

lating

NUMBER

LXXXVIII

date.

464). authoritative

and

cial

2006 VOLUME

JUNE

increased

art," the

market

it sidesteps was image

as part of a double-page in Artforum magazine,

vertisement

image

several

pre ad spread thus itself

the techniques and adopting of print marketing structures as and second, that pornography,

blatantly economic well

as

of Minimalism

as the

that

sixties

mockery Benglis's art Postminimalist

and

recurrence

as well origin], of contemporary ing crucial facts: first, sented

notes

de

caption in the

prompted

Krauss

and

several

even as this

of her

BOOK

to resign from the board found October.9

coeditors

of

in art by artists sonal and/as political content such as Tracey Emin absent here). (completely 5. See, for example, Robert Storr's brilliant and amusing book review, "All in the Family," 2005, at www.Frieze.com (accessed November 17,

the

and

magazine What

this elision

the erasure knowledgment authors have

is precisely exemplifies of politics, and any ac history, of the way in which these

participated and maintained?their

structed

2005).

con

in?indeed, own

ex

which itself has powerful hegemony, a tool that serves to marketing some careers or stymie and unmake can One that the only hope strategic

tremely become make others.

6. The copyright page of the book includes a for "her assis thank you to "Amy Dempsey" tance in the preparation of the book"; one can only assume she is "AD." 7.

of this hegemony?its naturalization veiling as the to "do" the of mod only way history ern and contemporary Euro-American now

art?is statement not

do,

berist

however,

the work

to throw

out

tive enough it must be tainly high berism has to overthrow

It would

the Octo

ti-intellectual

with

to debates considered time enacted

to see

and

institutions

a successful

the

simplistically strand of modern

art history dominant in art and criticism programs the early 1980s. The endpoint lution"

is signaled by the very since 1900. And, of course,

revolution

is no

the very hegemonic now be countered

that

But it is cer seriously. it for what it is: Octo

porary

Art

the overt

the bathwater; there are in this work and, as with insights of Greenberg, it has been forma

baby

brilliant

to an end with coming of its ideals in this book.

revolution formalist, and

an

contem

in art history up through of this "revo publication a successful

of

but revolutionary longer force that itself must and

overthrown.

Amelia

is professor and Pilkington jones in art history and visual studies at the and Visual [Art History University ofManchester Chair

Studies, Humanities ofManchester, 9PL, U.K.].

Street, University Bridgeford Ml3 Oxford Road, Manchester

8. See Antonio Gramsci's "Prison Notebooks," originally written about 1930, in Selections from thePrison Notebooks, trans. Quinton Hoare and Smith (London: Electric Book, Geoffrey Nowell 2001), and Louis Althusser's "Ideology and State Apparatuses (Notes towards Ideological an Investigation)," 1969, in Lenin and Philoso phy, trans. Ben Brews ter (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1971), 127-88. ismentioned 9. Krauss's resignation coyly on p. 472 in a sidebar on Artforum, but the text does not explain her reasons for resigning nor the in a letter she cowrote, which was published issue of the magazine subsequent expressing outrage at the inclusion of Benglis's image. Nor does itmention Krauss's personal involve own relationship ment in the image?her with the artist Robert Morris, who had been in volved with Benglis and, apparently with Krauss's help, had made his own incendiary, sexualized self-portrait images around this time. See Amy Newman, Challenging Art: Artfo rum 1962-1972 (New York: Soho Press, 2000), 414ff.

Notes 1. W?lfflin's influential model for trac epochally of forms was ing an art historical progression outlined in his 1915 book Principles of Art His tory. in passing co authors repeatedly mention and such pressures; my lonialism, globalization, point is that they do not structurally accommo date their effects in their rather ahistorical of move logic of art history as a progression ments and great works.

2. The

3. The antisubjectivism of October is summed up by Krauss's highly intelligent critique of the to use in discussions tendency psychobiography of Pablo Picasso's work in her essay "In the Name of Picasso," originally published in Octo berm 1981 and collected in her book Original ity of theAvant-Garde and Other Modernist Myths (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1985). The au thors here, however, are hard put to avoid countless biographical since references, making their history pivots around individual authors (see, for example, Bois on Henri Matisse, p. 100). these writers rely on to privilege 4. The model one kind of work over the other demands to some degree a separation of form and content and an implicit privileging of "structure" over the embarrassingly direct expression of per

to In fairness, Foster makes several references Warhol's presumptive "gay viewers" and to the of his Thirteen Most Wanted Men "gay mockery" the (1964, p. 491), but this pretty much misses of Warhol's prac point of the queer unhingings that are about not the sex tice?unhingings partners or spectators he might have had, which the attribute of "gay" implies, but the sexual tensions in his works, in antinormative cluding his overtly queer public statements and his intensive immersion in the 1960s under Here is a case in ground queer film movement. to the work of scholars not cen which attention tered around October, including queer visual theorists such as Jennifer Doyle (coeditor of Pop Out: Queer Warhol [Durham, N.C.: Duke Press, 1996]) would have greatly en University riched Foster's understanding of Warhol's work.

Of

Krauss,

jamin Buchloh, of far greater both tory?in 1969.

The as a

mind

Yve-Alain

Bois, there

certainly urgency 1907,

and for

Giovanni

1969,

tices

tus as a textbook, sion

its pedagogical mis October distinctly

with

elaborated

a

from

perspective. note that

to the will (Subscribers journal some of the entries read like brisk

distillations

of essays the authors have pub the years.) To be sure, when Art in the of 2005, spring appeared

over

lished since

1900

detractors

October's

about carped as if its by the academy, ism had simply become the textbook I industry. at the very regrettable the limitations behind

matter

ernism

to

Arrighi long Les demoiselles century": d'Avignon the most stands at the ready for even half with modernism. confrontation And hearted

the mill

of

this position but whatever

least,

for

of art history with

students

twenty-first century, particularly spect to the rise of "contemporary tory"? This

me brings since 1900. At

Art

my

to 1969 the

and

purposes

its stakes

nearly

700

for

to as

risk of

in the field,

turning point in the book's

in re

art his

seeming a too punctual meaning, as shorthand it functions

this date

sign

for for a

latently expressed and its

pages

on fatal, prognoses for guarded, bordering recent art. For the year crystallizes the prob means to teach lem of what it effectively art history" if any and what, "contemporary this shift suggests for modernism's thing, institutional in the acad fortunes changing reasons

The

I qualify the phrase why art will become "contemporary history" to clear soon enough, but it should suffice emy.

1969 marks

did

a virtual

in the

at which long

the

the

"then"

project. measure of

sorts,

art-critical

of course,

in

1969

artists

shadow

be

of

1968,

(not to mention the authors of Art could acts

on

literature

invisible

of

divide and

institutional, kind. Because,

the

nouncing ism's larger Some

twen

of modern

for

grist find

the

tury art,

springs into what

coronation

version

it inad its reasoning, sa throws into relief a far more vertently lient question about the continued study of art: In what ways will mod twentieth-century

once

activity?than

of entry point has called "the

signal

Ben

are moments

instance,

as its decisive featured prac entry's are for postwar art. of postminimalism concerns me What of peri is a question sta the volume's odization, given especially on

formations of political) one since 1900, and because, the year 1968 more and more

for art his

consequence

year

and

379

of its compact rigor this year? reasons that I dwell of content

the moment represents the gin to labor under in the intellectual critical

that consti 107 year-by-year entries tute the better the part of Art since 1900, survey authored by Hal Foster, pioneering

1900

the diamantine

say that

the

Rosalind

for

with analyses, It's not for

generational, and temper

by Pamela M. Lee

Review

LEE ON ART SINCE

REVIEWS:

argue, like 1945

twentieth-cen an

line

in the

sand

and

"now"

of modern

this

shift

in

is detected

en

sections

the year-to-year structuring the bulk of the volume: comprising

tieth

tries

1959 merits

four methodological synopses introducing the text ("Psychoanalysis," "The Social His and Concepts," "Formal tory of Art: Models

part

of

ing from painter graphic

not

one

the October

but

four

editors,

with

the base materialism Lucio

Fontana

observations

entries

on

the

work of

rang the Italian

to the acute of postwar

photo American

life by Robert Frank. By contrast, 1969 gets short shrift. Why, relatively text on Art since 1900, brief

a then, frame a book striking

ism and

Structuralism,"

ism and Deconstruction") round-table clude ment

discussions

and

not

so much

format

does

tory of

twentieth-century

"Poststructural

and

the

that bisect

it ("Art at Mid-century," of Contemporary Art").

the

two and

"The This

atomize

con

Predica inventive the his

art as a rote

chron

ART BULLETIN

2006 VOLUME

LXXXVIII

as it under icle of events, recited, dutifully a web of narrative and conceptual across diverse tendencies historic mapped

war

380

JUNE

transnational

One of phenomena. the narrative?details

narratives?perhaps the emergence over

(As Buchloh "What place does

neo-avant-garde. conclusion,

those

com

garde

in the present it held in 1968?"

practice to the one

pared

). For readers the adventures of

in

the Spectacle theorized by in 1967, it's no surprise that Guy Debord a vaunted 1968 occupies historical position. For the student this material approaching a of for the first time, however, description the era proves instructive. The first lines of Rosalind

Krauss's are

alism tionary ment.

discussion with

charged

potentiality

of

reaction ments

throughout

Berlin,

Milan,

1968,

War,

Paris,

the political and critical moment. earlier that derwriting in the conclusion, self will offer

cli

bordian

move

to the art of

mandate

the moment

the

and life"

the

signaled

where

"point

art

tional

institu

we

up

where

she cites a Immediately following, in in May leaflet Paris student circulating serv to become teachers 1968: "We refuse

represented (usually tacked on for the respec Sherman) Cindy most current tive volume's editions. Such

a mechanism selection of social ing at the educational system operating to become of working-class children,

likewise surveys group prac contemporary tices along thematic lines, in the process the specific historical and for generalizing

action."

in an expense sociol

for governmen up slogans ogists drumming . ." tal election campaigns. (p. 40). Krauss's inclusion of this statement dramatizes the

social other,

more Perhaps is the art historian

identified strongly turalist methods

with

historicist

positioning with soixante-huitard and

construction, score their This

of

the

of

to say that

mix.

Among last decade, bare, Tacita

one

the

a

If with

count

word

the authors

In both

the

in the

contemporary their shifting

concluding art, the authors

allegiances identifies Foster

round

p. since

table

insist

on

on

to these

ap relative

the "wax proaches. a method's usefulness and of waning" ing in addressing (in his case, psychoanalysis) in post methods the "fate of these different

art. No

of Art

this

and

Shoni

the sheer perspective, to these diverse prac a affirma thoroughgoing

glancing devoted

art historians

both

Krauss, Bois, and Buchloh by Foster, as so many contrivances. ideological in "The Pre (As Bois avers to his colleagues "none of dicament of Contemporary Art,"

671.) 1900

Yinka

porary

and

critics,

the art

tices,

dismantling spaces and

in addi Where

art history," a different

table the round Indeed, art frames the conditions

as a

to indulge story alto on

contem

of current

terms

of what As

(p. 673). situation

teleology; negative of the autonomous spheres

as

and teaching in the univer

the through practice largely Bois calls a "dire diagnostic" "the postwar Buchloh argues,

steady

self-identify each writing

practices historical work.

of contemporary

be described

all of

doubt

current

sity?"contemporary a useful catachresis?is gether.

1900

to both

sits relative

study

since

of culture,

practices I

but Hirschhorn), constructive especially

interlocutors. Buchloh's

reservations deepening of so much character spectacular art (here, the worst offenders contemporary a are the likes of Bill Viola) inflect parallel about of early conversation the teaching the

can a prac and a

an By way of I have

modernism.

twentieth-century over the ecdote:

last several

years, to a marked

shift in colleagues speak to the postwar the field from the prewar at once avant-garde, signaled by the open to "postwar of academic lines dedicated ing and contemporary" scholars in departments

heard

of art history tation topics

and

1970s?not ter?but

last ten or

the sons miss

the growing recent art

about

list of disser

(by "recent," to that of the 1960s or only even of the 1980s, for that mat in also to work that has emerged

not

account the

so for

influence

I

of rea years). A number One this change. can't dis of the October editors

in shaping

themselves

the research agendas (I include myself among nor in this regard), the sense that many some of the more canonical material may the point of critical be reaching exhaustion. of

their

students

one

Likewise,

can't

discount

the

inevitable

into historicity that the study of art passage from the 1970s or 1980s represents: the from of work history reception lengthening more enabled productive or for For better scholarship. 1960s may have the replaced

this period serious

has

and

tices might appear tion of contemporary

dis

method," particular to Art introduction

encounters

travelers.

serve

to a

as

Andreas Rona Dean, Gursky, Ellen Gallagher, Rirkrit Tiravanija, and Liam Gillick, all Douglas, hardly

cussed

is married

ques the year-by-year ap in Art since 1900 is to of

To reflection. synchronie for a heterogeneous the artists discussed from the

about extensively tion to their more

us

under

this makes

sure,

fellow

dimensions. the methods

as well

achronic be

The

challenges The authors

recent

of

Thomas

this exchange

refer

these curatorial sidestep implicit judgment as its structure calls insofar invites both di

Stan

most

de poststructuralism, the like serves to under

anti-institutional

is not

ethos

by

Pondick,

poststruc bringing study of art, and her

to the

the artists

of

advantage undertaken

proach

than

diversion. Krauss

considerations

tion. The

to toothless reduced largely been nostalgia if it hasn't the been de media by popular as an idiosyn monized by neoconservatives cratic

"postmodernism"

mal

connection between necessary pedagogy in the 1960s for a and revolutionary politics for audience, undergraduate presumably ac the history of civil rights, student whom has tivism, and the antiwar movements

any

of

Foster

defeatist.

a number

Sekula,

(Allan found

about

conven and expertise, expedience art history to tend surveys stop some in the mid-1980s, with the additions

editorial

and

reductive

acknowledge

But

in survey texts: Art since 1900 runs to 2003. For reasons of both

treatment

as both

the

question

prognostications, from both impetus

in drawing and Debord, Adorno

distinct

the pedagogical implications to need that acknowledge is seldom such systematic granted

unpack this claim,

repeatedly

of Buchloh's

it illustrates the grounds: pedagogical even heated, of critical, debate but methodologically among sympathetic

(p. 656).

society"

spectacle' about optimistic rary art, Foster will

necessity

media-com

munications-and-entertainment-conglomer ates are the dominant ideological in Western

grated

which,

and

on

1960s,

the Spectacle's theorization, to 1998, when the "inflation of design in of consumerist many aspects display

but

of assimilation

to the point today where 'the inte Debord called " hardly (p. 673). While of contempo the prospects

homogenization, we witness what

odor

of

its course

Berkeley, into

Tokyo?erupted

her

(Krauss "I don't

intensification

perpetual

"finality"

com my earlier to this methodological option," insert on "The Spectaculariza p. 674.) An tion of Art," after all, does not assign its De

To

in

student

un

stakes

if I can maintain

know

recent

that

when,

the world?in

relative

of

official

against course

not just 1968 to the present of methodological interest but to how contemporary artists

engage

tions

she writes,

sixties,"

a collision

created

in the uprisings to the Vietnam

also

that mo

characterizing

the "Throughout ideals measured "youthful

cynicism maxed

of poststructur of revolu

sense

the

the art from

mitment

[p. versed

of October, well

673]

on

as a matter

it in the puts neo-avant

have

art and that

of the avant-garde, its provi and the debates eclipse pre-1945, as the its postwar and current iteration

sional

2

criticism" It is in this (p. 671). on post stress Krauss's I section light It implicitly structuralism. frames the entries

scores

and

NUMBER

the

worse,

era of Abstract as the postwar Expressionism immediate of art historical reference point of students. for a new generation The flip side of this picture, however, to the authors'

speaks

of

pansion

the

life,

and mediated

ated

the

corporate by postwar some have are

dergraduates

early avant-garde of the historical

amnesia

of

the

culture

cause

of

the

spectacular

cated

contemporary dalliances with and

the

stream

the

ex

spaces of of highly that instanti

teleology" culture.

Again that un suggested to less inclined study the on the one hand, because

levels

ment

the

experiences

"negative

anecdotally:

much

into

endless

everyday designed announces

about

worries

the aesthetic

and,

at all encouraged on the other, be seductions

art

itself:

fashion

emergence

of

so

its uncompli and entertain

of glamorous

"des

BOOK

(such as the various and the the world

art museums

tination"

around

Guggenheims that T?te)

such work.

sponsor

the

quence, the university

The

then,

art's

ostensible

the very mecha seeks to interrogate?

Far

from

avant-gardes. study of earlier that the volume flip claim

the

coverage the unfinished

of

business

effect"

anxiety endeavor.

the in the academy, modernism Krauss calls the "con of which importance While the conclud of modernism." tinuance

Bois,

the enormity table makes plain ing round of the task, Art since 190? stands as an un monument to that rigorous compromisingly Bois effort. As Yve-Alain hopefully speculates

book

"who knows liberatory

.. . perhaps effect." lee

M.

pamela

: (p. 679) have some

at its conclusion

the book

it might

is associate

of late

professor

art at Stanford University [Department Art and Art History, Nathan Cummings Stanford, Calif. 94305]. Building, of Art

paranoia is essentially Its hope art relevant by proving subversive. than anything, in this

a of what digest for almost thirty years reading it is mar in the pages of October. Although as a textbook, the stuff for it is hardly keted

This we

is essentially

volume

have

been

be most

It will

neophytes.

as a com

useful

of the the writings pendium in the modern/con four authors for those most illumi and perhaps field, temporary to art in ear historians specializing nating these four writers the years, lier fields. Over

on

Buchloh

ing not

on

a

on

panel

a

history. harder this?as

single This

different

one

came

from

to conceive is made of

passages and present

clear

patently this book^in work

of

of art

would

and we

today,

and

politics, the field

situation

lamentable

includ

panels, and

aesthetics

be

owe

in countless

large part of the authors

to past this sur

vey. is an ac given ret is refurbished, everything to make it sound more rofitted, avant-garde ev as a result, than it ever was, and where,

Meanwhile, count where

erything

what

is, as the

we

saying

are

goes,

forever

rest of

the

the

for highly

true believers

latest

the

in Insti

tution

Critique. our four While

their

editor,

outset

of

the

authors

at the Stangos, them the op for giving for this together"

"to come

portunity

it is well

project,

they have been for narrative

that

known

their master

collectively writing most of their adult

is why

lives?which to write

commissioned

they in the

this book

the joint the four intro

The

first

thank

gracefully

late Nikos

the book

emblem

perfect place. is the way in which project we are offered ductions?in which of

of

a most

individual

their

rest of

at

known

well

have

been

no wonder, to us modernists,

And

this book.

meth

least

for,

as is

is being is not so

phase, as a doxa, a new master narrative much to have as such we are supposed learned over the years exactly who's who among voices.

those

four

came

about

in the

the moment narrative

when was

the concept

that it is striking to be unaware that what

tially The edly

is precisely what set out to undo. authors in this

Foucault,

and Jean-Fran?ois the four authors

Bourdieu,

here

at precisely of the grand and disman

being questioned Michel Althusser,

tled by Louis Pierre

enshrine

survey,

but

and

that October

Considering late 1970s,

Lyotard, pretend

are

they doing themselves ini

they

themselves they do

repeat so remark

unself-critically,

a bit is nested of October, for instance, too modestly in one of the book's little text

birth

the year 1975) (under a handful of other journals,

boxes

as one including

short-lived

among

to

been

essay in the ex in the Seventies at

Buchloh's

Similarly,

to which

publications than it has

less kind

been

October.

for Europe catalog in 1977, the piece Art Institute the Chicago as the that put him on the American map or his bard of institutional critique, great

hibition

in Artfo Beuys archauratic

attack against Joseph scathing rum at the time of the latter's at the Solomon

exhibition

New

Museum,

R. Guggenheim never get men

in 1980

York,

as such

tioned

in this book.

Meanwhile,

it is Douglas Crimp's conversely, to stand for Pictures that comes Elisabeth

and

Joselit

as

perhaps feats selected

among inscribe

David

for Endgame of the the gallery

most

and,

1980s,

exhibition 1977,

Sussman's

Pictures

1986, Metro

themselves

tendentious our writers

that get and their

to

in the

friends

Martin narrative, Eyes Jay's book Downcast event for to stand as the main that comes 1993

and

Elisabeth

This

creates

in an

that year, admittedly, Rachel Whiteread's

(sharing format

a/b/c

House

with

Sussman's a

greenhouse the way

by

compounded the cating

Biennial). that is only

Whitney effect

in which?dupli

airtight atmosphere increasingly at "further of October?the given readings" us to yet more the end of each entry point student

published Broodthaers

a few months just completed of this in 2003). The yearly format a few), it by inspired (although skips

earlier book

1993

Hollier's

is effective

literature,

it allowed

while

Hollier

to dismantle

the

of a discipline that was of structured around concepts

traditionally

in our literary oeuvre, and all too well-known

and

authorship it retains

the old

of a Hegelian Krauss, whose doses

equal

of French anthology But and charismatic.

narrative

normative

ory, her

an un (including on Marcel dissertation

material

October-related

by

teleology. work has been insight,

field fla

in

driven for new

hunger

irritation

and

the

with

deep, irrepressible most her successfully places colleagues, art histories alternative within arguments and

counternarratives. abandoned, Having of deco in view of the modicum sensibly, a rum would-be survey, by popular required attacks that have animated the ad hominem of her most

many

delivers, the most always, of work rizon

that their considering most sensitive is, supposedly, methodology to issues of discourse and ideology. The ably

1970s, has

vor

what

and what

given here, to its ultimate

the fate

%$\

that emerged Interfunktionen, turn of of the theoretical

Screen, Macula, at the moment

Denis

display are sup and which preferences, to bring in Krauss's their out, words, posed not frictions? bear no signatures, internal even in the in the form of the initials used spectacular

consolidated

in neigh discourses theoretical originating that illustrates fields. An example boring con the shift: in 1983, a large international was Na ference by the Centre organized of tional des Lettres, Paris, on the theme in scholars Paris. Walter Forty-five Benjamin convened

Krauss,

except into latter-day incursions by Krauss targeted in various of indexicality instantiations pho and by and projected images tographed

we

some of the most intellectu produced and ambitious, exciting, provocative ally have put art in our discipline. work They on a par with advanced the most history have

were

It is quite

jump basically the depressing

after

leaving Foster's care,

in Hal

on pinned that it is,

odological

of

handbook

Buchloh soon

of

in their

that Rosalind

respect

and Benjamin ship in this survey of 1968, aftermath

were

by Romy Golan

to

dose

this book,

and

modernist

Review

is

worldview

avant-garde

a large is perceptible

to write

authors

telling

teaching

about

[neo-]

for a "liberatory halfheartedly, hopes, on what motivated as he muses the

making more

art

of recent

its broad

standing, underscores

institutional

its authors'

consolidates

merely

Bois

art of contemporary since 1900 such a criti

the

for

1960s

in this book, every entry imposed back is telescoped the narrative whether to 2003. While Yve-Alain 1900 or forward

with

It is the predicament Art history that makes

This

on

is contemporary ways institutionalization by the

discipline complicit nisms the best work

tool

in

is: In what

ask,

cal

art

contemporary by no small amount we need to question

teaching is fraught

of ambivalence.

a conse

As

of

"The avant-garde doesn't young. give up," a in large letters across scribbled Asger J?rn in he hijacked painting nineteenth-century his years as a mem the early 1960s, during in Paris. International ber of the Situationist

1900

ON ART SINCE

GOLAN

REVIEWS:

of

appears tory

without difficult brilliant

essays,

important too much and readings,

that has

spilled condensed

Krauss blood,

and yet, as of a body the ho altered

echoes

irrevocably Bois the art historical landscape. art his to traditional closest both

and single-image biography in his entries for the ear especially of the century) and the one most

(involving

analysis, lier part

to a of some reformulation open possible us in this book. parts of the narrative given to reflect is most It is also Bois who ready on the frictions between the theoretical tools

being

foregrounded

here

and

those

ART

BULLETIN

left out?say, istentialism.

between

382

no more

will

who

than Theodor

in 1964,

who,

structuralism

is the one

Buchloh

an

ex

and

not

Adorno

published

LXXXVIII

2006 VOLUME

JUNE

(where comfortable). they are more a is labeled De Chirico Giorgio crypto-fascist even before to he gets paint his metaphysi

swerve,

cal canvases

which Industry Reconsidered," in spite of its title, almost word for reads, in word like his eponymous Dialectic chapter of 1947. For Buchloh, it is of Enlightenment

Luc

Godard's

where

Contempt

other

asks Michel

Buchloh's

in Art, with but Wilhelm is

studies,

left,

remain

Harlem

gay/ He is of

internal

they do dissolution of

to the pertain at its core

identity

that has

been

wrought

here one survey. And amounts that what Foster does of

admit tour

de

this

force

sult Foster, book

two

the

most

round

with

cious

tables

amazing of highly

reservoir

to

to a

are legion: scenarios Surrealism or "overde (Marx) "predetermined" and Andreas termined" ;Bill Viola (Freud)

"commerce" take on

is

Art). Degenerate It is instructive where, authors had

away

ironically, of our

at Roman

Impressionism, art through

Focillon

Alois

looking in view of

at then?some

the profound authors for the concept

four

fold

of art criticism

of

the

task

blatantly The

onto

art history is inevi the history of something

writing a direct been

one

has and constant live pro have been. in, as our four authors tagonist to note Yet it is important that we are deal an with fact in which ing unprecedented three writers (this is not the case of Bois) as art critics have their careers began assumed here the nonnormative job of writ art history. of anachro The principle ing

who to look

at the

instances

from

before.

Futurism,

our they for

of Krauss the joint efforts example, required un whose and Buchloh, narrative gives way, to fas der the year 1909, almost instantly

from the the writing of art history now of the is absolute, present, standpoint us the identification of art history offering with art criticism. nism,

In the end,

dismissing,

ridiculing,

or

ig

vigi

tables?the

once

and

future

beloved

the

same

cast

is gathered,

premises moan the into

the

for as

in

on the the Verdurins, to be and now Artforum, of a culture dubbed industry at

supper of October evils

integrated

spectacle compounded In the mean globalization. men and women continue

by present-day time countless

to

(in refer nonsynchronously Bloch's famous essay in which on the to understand, attempts

live differently, ence to Ernst

of Hitler's

the unstoppable calls the Bloch

takeover,

rise

of fascism)?in what "here and now." We will

do well

to remem

that even in his most Brecht ber, however, ian pieces, remained Benjamin perturbed void left behind by the experiential by the of aura

and

given here out without

ritual.

As

And

yet what is an art history

Adorno. instead

did, we

if

car

or the time, the patience, to reflect who, while by authors historically art history, have retrieved for Benjamin they have retrieved him, and his fellow travelers, the dialectic.

minus ROMY

Golan

is associate

twentieth-century European Center of the City University History, Avenue,

Review

Graduate

CUNY New

York, NY.

project

encompasses and spills

of New York [Art Center, 365 Fifth

Storr

a new

thirty years criticism have been

This

of professor art at the Graduate

10016-4309].

by Robert

For

(and

ba

mat?where

ried

art

a constant

of unrelenting sit at round

regime authors

panoptic Our four

lance.

on

to live under,

indeed, sis?a

are

Expression at the Middle Ages en history, having from art criti parted

a critic, took on himself explicitly of writing the first master narrative one I would say, no more geared, canon than this toward formation). table when

is the avant-garde's artists' "commercial

by the survey format, compelled were to deal with issues forced

steered

Stan

is emblematized by two mega-exhibitions Fair and the Nazis' 1937 World's

confrontation

(the Paris

sub

of fascism

the rise

ism"; the

hack

of

For the final irony Mythologies." in this survey, the artists, the works, are asked to maintain? the readers

disappearance less poignantly,

art history of origins?is taken full circle to the to back very beginning: discipline's the moment when who was Vasari, Giorgio

either

subversive

and Henri

distaste

historical

sublime";

to look

lens

at late Roman

Riegl

what

psy

Gordon's, s "traumatic

the

Cubism?art through tered a new episteme, we are cism. What

in the nar

"romantic

survey a author,

self-consciously Franz when

moment

decided

through ism,

became

Matthew is a crypto-Wagne Barney of Gesamtkunstwerke, and producer of conceptual Documenta 5 is the triumph on its curator's favorite section ism, eliding

eve

in this

unnamed,

virtually

Piet

credit,

the author

mu

two (unre conclude by opening that of anachronism and lated) questions: ar that of nonsynchronism. Hans Belting

Wickoff

terms, for packaging choanalytic everything into splendid everything pairs, Foster drops and binary into place. The pairings neatly

are addicted to the Gursky to lime" as opposed Douglas and Janet Cardiff Douglas's,

intractable, such as the

the Mexican

outsourced

art history anachronistic?the

overarching project. via a capa knack, hypostatized

been

once

a re agility. As first on the appears

inserted

and

end

paintings

gued in The End of theHistory ofArt that

list, is alphabetical in the second satisfied,

the book's

to an

Thanks

name

otherwise

the author

rative,

intellectual

whose

cover's

also of

of

latter's

Let me

by the

has

and Em

cryptic AD (AmyDempsey).

via everyone's Bataille favorite, Georges notion of the informe?remain now-famous to three out of four of little or no interest writers

Renaissance

ralists, have to a fourth,

"oth

which?since

"otherness,"

the

and

theosophy, as a liar, Anselm figures pathological se is the author of the photograph one to his ries Occupations without painting

a Proustian

binary pathy, like a glove. A text, we are told, that in any case suits Die Br?cke better than it does so that

avant-garde here that Kandinsky were sadly "misled" by

read

Beuys Kiefer

and at

worldview

up hijacked. absolutely Topics even for Foster's adroit hands,

of gen

issues). instances

postcolonial is, with all those

ers" and not

Worringer's that fits Foster's

one

when

is this:

flavor,

religious Abstraction

comply do. We

they do not will not formulas

artists

"Individual

"From

[sic]".) Faced with to look of having

prospect

its unwelcome

Kandinsky,

that

[sic] arte metafisico on Neue Sachlichkeit, subtitle

successful with

rian

by Wassily Kandinsky paintings during re to abstraction, Foster years of his move sorts to another of hand, the sleight sliding a text. Not On the under paintings Spiritual

Bardot.

queer

entry

to

the

Lang responds: to Piccoli's by poor B.B." And "Bertolt Brecht?" he can only re query, a 'Yes," even as he spond with melancholy to the other, more fa just next standing mous B.B. Piccoli's wife), (playing Brigitte is left to pick up the many Foster in this survey, consisting ing pieces der and identity (feminism, politics

nuove

the unpleasant

a ballad

from

a un

portemanteau to machino

manichino

"It's

Piccoli.

and,

[sic]"

I go to the market where lies are . . . and I get in line with the hopeful, sellers." "What's that, Hollywood?"

sold

is true

in the

"Contributo

to the query himself, playing responds to "Coming Capri with us, Mr. Lang?" with to earn my these lines: "Each morning bread

out

and

inadequate

for everything touch too far off the geographic Italy, already of this not very international map survey, the point that there are many misspellings or titles, so that we have of Italian words

beauty. from Jean Fritz Lang,

scene

is both

noring

Mondrian

in 1912. Meanwhile,

ing

over

effect the

in Paris

the bibliography of date. (This

entitled

"Culture

the alienation always One of is reminded

2

cism

himself,

essay

NUMBER

art history and construction.

art

under

spreads

across

a wide

many neighborhoods, into adjacent intellectual

terrain, abuts commu

In of many hands. has arisen this vast metropolis an structure designed apparently imposing to be a citadel. As the cosmopolitan city

and nities, one corner

is the work of

it expands into new suburbs and other often but gener complex, to its center, this closer ally open buildings now has fortress, pre nearing completion,

around

throws

up

sented

an

ever more

Its principal and with Krauss, face.

1900, gate

opaque architect

and imperious is Rosalind

of Art since the publication to its Alexandrian main the keystone has fallen into place.

BOOK

In the

field

art, Krauss own

her

right.

of Clement Krauss

of modern

and

contemporary in figure

a historical

is already

the most

Among

ambitious

followers, as author of early of David Smith raisonn?

the first

catalogue of a lucidly written Terminal monograph Iron Works: The Sculpture David Smith, of which remains the best overall of analysis and

as well

to date

his work

as Krauss's

ex

only inModern

tended

scholarly study. Passages an and ten abbreviated extremely in that, given is remarkable survey, its 1977 publication it pays precious date,

Sculpture, dentious

little Hesse all

to women

attention and

to Lee

artists

at (and none in part, one

Louise

Bourgeois at least Bontecou,

because of Krauss's suspects, athy to relief) while assigning to men such as Robert Morris Serra.

rest of her

The

lected

essays

zines,

as Eva

such

formalist

antip roles

the key and Richard

of col

consist

books

for museums,

maga fo the most galleries, The Picasso Papers, and being the journal she founded in 1976 other schismatic writers Artforum penned and

symposia, of these

cused

for October, along with disenchanted azine's

the mag by what they deemed The historicizing seriousness. survives in the mod the decade

loss of

of militancy ernist austerity a to hostility

of October's

design,

reflecting

that only

"visuality"

apostates of pure "op

from

the Greenbergian dogmas feel, and in the revolutionary ticality" could of its title, though substantive echoes Marx ism as distinct from moralizing aesthetics has

of a role in Krauss's played much an editor As of October and a thinking.

never

own

at City University Graduate Center

professor (CUNY)

of New

York

and more

as

lematic

With

few

land Barthes,

Jacques

cault, Jacques art historical

Lacan, context

relations

behind

initial

their

and

their mark. matters

is that

altered

the words

of Charles

kind

volume ences

and

multiple reticians

for

A

is

projects?Krauss That said, the

with

Along

two vol

the differ is intro

the books'

apparatus?detailed and chronologies,

other

text

capsules schools of

and thinkers?these essays provide thought, an easy way into a maze of art and ideas, as with all things made "easy," the though summaries these and by questions begged the

contradictions

trinaire

less

but

authoritative-sounding assertions incompatible

important. This is most

never

their

between

than

frequently are numerous and

on

it is written:

example,

some

that

accept

the role of agency of art] would

the social

history left with only

be

inevitably

in whom

a few heroic

a correlation

such

class-consciousness, could alliance lutionary

tained.

of cultural

forms

can assume

production ... [then

figures tween

eth

the while

Krauss

and

agency

revo

ascer actually be would include examples Courbet and Honor? Daumier in

These

Rosier, in the

Hans second

under

1900

3g3

of

assertions

unself-critical of art and

ideas

that

consti

importance more tute nothing or less than the construc a new master tion of a new canon, narrative, a new at just the and, indeed, orthodoxy moment

one

when,

freed finally the old formalist

had

by Krauss's

mentor,

As

father

been as

just and

raised

hypothesized canon The Greenberg. since 1900 looks very much some with adjust strategic Marcel Duchamp figures,

and

Picasso

Pablo

is downgraded are upgraded.

painting

photography a bad altogether

thing.

Finally

lowered,

and This

collage is not the

Dada,

Russian

non-Bretonian avant-garde, issue get ism and their post-1945 Francis

though

comrade-in-impudence modernist

is held

surreal their

due,

Dada Duchamp's and arguably the

Picabia,

first-generation on post-1960s that of Sigmar

such

most

influential

in Europe painting Polke and Gerhard

at arm's

(notably, Richter) the requi

length. Overall, demanded and critiques are performed with recalibrations

vengeance. when major ing?Joan 1960s?but

by a

told Thus, we are repeatedly artists rebelled against paint Mir? in the 1920s, Richter in the the fact that

that they the medium

remained

has contin painters to artists with ued rich aesthetic provide are all too and critical options conveniently skirted. silence is as funda editorial Conspicuous and

as litanies to the authors' of strategy for selected artists and writers. And praise the book's so, given subtitle, "Modernism, it is note Antimodernism, Postmodernism,"

Haacke half

of

that Balthus, the most notori among worthy ous and (like him or hate him) enduring unmentioned, goes entirely a writer his brother, Pierre Klossowski, more to the au draftsman amenable

antimodernists, while

thors' be

theoretical that

assumed

on

as the

taste

tions model ations,

been

has

tastes, gets a nod. (Lest it the Greenbergian emphasis true arbiter of aesthetic ques in the Kraussian superseded intellectual consider

by higher-level the fact is that

and Allan the

demonstrate

twenti

2, p. 26)

deem

it has merely been on taste in

accent

to those who given she and her colleagues its lack.) More is the glaring what

to be

treatment

The

between

implied Sekula

Rosier,

parity in our day with Courbet in theirs Daumier is not a generally but how is the unsuspecting fact, upon to whom dent this idea is suggested and

know? tive

how

Moreover, to

woman) about

toward

this

or

could for

Haacke, and agreed stu to

sensi anyone that matter, mod

aesthetic

and

social

the great man (or not think twice theory of history the use of words like "inevitably" and

"a few heroic

similar

or,

postmodern

ern

skepticism determinism

of

"mainstream"

by Art proposed like the old one,

has

art history hoped, from the undertow

had

itself

by an equal replaced ideas, with no quarter

1, p. 26; vol.

(vol.

century,

I take at the general

and

the

and

be

the nineteenth and century, K?the Kollwitz in the first half of the John Heartfield twentieth such as and artists century

the

bald

ON ART SINCE

mental in the blatantly doc social histories. There,

obvious

section

If we

STORR

site demotions

chapter

movements,

themes,

books:

ments.

and

some of represent them: psychoanalysis

by Krauss.

Sekula

Adorno

that horizon. aimed

that

2)

Martha

borrowing (who wrote

Baudelaire

up. All

and

students, prot?g?

permanently

contingent,

textbook

the

headings, on major

What

art factory" have found the paradigms these theo

conjured

her

unsigned methodolog is not identi authorship round table at the end of

among

tion

lit

in their work toiling as of new critical models, adapters shop have of a looming inter the bricks shaped to edifice intended domi pretative plainly nate

her

uses

in

(whose

pedagogical

made

Thus,

Theodor

other

cited

of art by the social history by Foster; and structuralism formalism Buchloh; by and deconstruc Bois; and poststructuralism

in an

for worse

been

her

been

are

professional Foster and

duced

Fou

"academics industry"), inhabit the different

who

of our

workshops

and

for better

a century before of the "culture

spoke of every

on

ical essays fied until

scientific

they primarily is understandable.

of art history has by their presence.

horizon

them

That

were

has

the presiding mind. umes four open with

for

lagged to the

social

by her the others?Hal and

Buchloh

collaborator

of Ro

cohort

significantly contributions

judging name or writings

Bois

Gustave

erary,

psychoanalytic, in which disciplines

their

but

with

Benjamin Yve-Alain

it is in part a use a deeply prob are given of by the number

such,

re

the appearance Michel Derrida, and

entity.

two volumes

the key concepts that frame in the field. discourses

exceptions

As

measure larger Its four authors

billing, Krauss's

the

at Columbia Krauss cently University, gath ered a team of colleagues and graduate can be credited students who with dissem of inating many the postmodernist

proselytizing

term enterprise. ful but in still

equal times

school graduate as is the popularizing of that product long

first-year since 1900

Art

reader, well

academic

Greenberg's her mark

made

and

graduate

REVIEWS:

toward

figures"? example

pronouncements

to represent throughout

many these

received by Max Beckmann, as a melancholic is crudely dismissed "humanist" of "the emblematic geois to conduct

(or refusal) inability of political situations"

who bour liberal

an

analysis In (vol. 1, p. 204). not to say sweep of this damning, support one ing judgment, only early painting by is dis the artist, The Night (1918-19),

cussed?for

its ambiguous

political symbol is said of Beck nothing his triptychs, his

ism alone?and mann's

portraits, or his

printmaking, erally, what shrift, hand

but with

that, the

extensive

(Gen writings. to say gets short of course, in goes hand

artists

have

elevation

of

the

critic-theo

ART

384

BULLETIN

LXXXVIII

2006 VOLUME

JUNE

has long been October's cultural rist, which account is a careful of the po Nor project.) at the heart of the litical contradictions Neue

Sachlichkeit

leav

tendency presented, with greater ing students prejudices against art that bears this label than they have ac substantive

quired ity in which munists, together. above,

By the way, was Kollwitz, not a "humanist" also?

is to invoke as an

influence

is that Guston's difficulty mode the works postdate most

resemble

them

when

in this

paintings by Baselitz

the authors

that

a decade.

by almost errors of

art historical

Simple up even

lumped hailed

attention given to the same tra belongs his late grotesque figura on The Baselitz. Georg

who

Guston,

dition,

Com

this kind

crop the artists; to have been the

favor

G?tz is said thus, Karl-Otto teacher of Polke, and Gerhard In 1961

at the Kunstakademie

D?sseldorf,

Richter

started

Ferdinand

Macketanz,

the

and

cent

of

their

G?tz.

with

By 1962, inaccuracies

Other

are

less

inno

as

in New York or to the happening into aca of Piet Mondrian's legacy at the hands of artists like dogma

was

what spread demic

and Max Bill." Kelly Georges Vantongerloo and while it is a pivotal artist of this period, new ground, it is pa is true that he broke was unaffected tently false that he by Paris as his work of 1949-50 neoconstructivism, unmistakably surely know. Paris

Kelly's aware

that

shows

as the authors

and

Indeed,

Bois,

should years, as a young man

a

given tongerloo's artist that he still by the Belgian painting owns and proudly In short, the displays. exists on all levels, but it is the connection

of

influence.

Or

is it the desire

rather

than

the anxiety to tailor art

to dogmatic that makes this preconception art so is of Kelly's version Kelly misleading? of a dem here used as the unwilling subject S. Peirce's

onstration

of Charles

the

one

of Krauss's

and

its derivatives

The

index, noun

like a mantra two columns of

the

ing with

late

no of

fewer

favorite

than

text devoted

1940s

October's

is cited Duchamp tus as a neo-Dadaist.

and

early

are ten

For

States.

concept ideas.

of

repeated times in

to Kelly's work In keep 1950s.

genealogies, preferred sta twice to assure Kelly's Calder Of Alexander

and Jean and Sophie Taueber Arp, whom met in Paris around the same time he Kelly nor not a word is written, did Vantongerloo, to the mod said of his relation is anything Henri ernist masters Matisse, Beckmann,

the

even

a gen correcting in most material

published

in the United

time,

Fautrier

the first

Jean well as Jean Dubuffet is considered Viennese length, while Art Informel,

as

at Action are dealt

ism, British Pop, and Situationism in a cogent way. For reasons the treatment only to the authors,

with

known of Yves

one of the seminal Klein, fig indisputably ures of this is widely scattered rather period, than focused, and a tone of disdain inflects most of what is said about him and his work,

that Klein's

suggesting

was

dandyism bilizing them to handle demotion

It also

sion

the

on

the

of Lucian

the latter by the stage for a general of London" "School figura David

and Hockney, in involvement

of

requisite "otherness"

and

paintings

now-common

them

post

twenty years. are the lapses venture into areas at

has

previously study: Latin

any in-depth tempted American art, African After

and and

some

problematic the authors

none

where

Benjamin

to "difference"

references a

and

art.

and Asian

art,

of

gloss

the basic

of postcolonial they slip critique, principles into all the usual Eurocentric traps, betray a lack of curiosity about mod ing profound ernisms

made

ally "other" mainstream

actu by artists and art worlds the from than or "different" that

cal montage. the standard ism?and we

be

runs

should by this time, how grateful historians in this that modernist

have finally country on ment something Krauss and company features est

that

to them:

with

contacts

film

(whose October

montage

its own

like

terms??

aesthetic entirely be of the greatest inter David principally, Siqueiros's

result

of his

the move

examined

miss

should

involvement

gave

their histori through a of recapitulation of Mexican mural

Following account

filmic

commemorating and its name)

based

on

as a

composition

with

Eisenstein Sergei the revolution his use

collaboration

of photo

with

they

a glance

Josep

the very Siqueiros Portrait of the Bour to the sec it comes

reproduce, When

they cast neo

twentieth

century, and Venezuelan

at Brazilian

the former constructivism, influenced heavily by the aged Max Bill, and briefly

been

having elsewhere

dispar on work

touch

in

that vein

Oiticica. by Lygia Clark and Helio to Yet the scantest of attention is paid Clark's and Oiticica's environ pioneering and performance works. Are the au in discomforted Clark's exercises by car or Oiticica's sensual self-awareness truly

ments

thors

from Mikhail (with no help nivalesque into the Rio slums? The be Bakhtin) forays in the canon of these artists lated inclusion a simultaneous thus performs their most radical achievements, of

the

exclusion

of

in violation

canon's

rules. Meanwhile, Gertrude as to the (known Gego), equal in innovative these artists spatial abstraction, art of the last is left out. On Latin American

Goldschmidt

twenty years, As for Asia,

Pop

is nothing.

there the

sole

tendency

is Gutai?no

Conceptualism, to process equivalent is thrown

Gutai

cally determined Latin American of Hans

given

con

post-1960 Japanese no Mono-ha, Japan's and minimal art?and

or

into

the

same

chronologi "1955," as the artists, with one

chapter, geometric

of Jackson Pol pictures as the lead re-Americanizing in the West, Of Asian artists working Namuth's

in action

lock image.

the grade, but the Kusama makes On Kawara does not, and equally important ne there is no way of knowing why. Other the North from outside glected avant-gardes

Yayoi

American-European Sots Art of Russian tualism, Andrei

American

of

importance

(1939-40). geoisie ond half of the

sideration

processes through printing into talismanic simulacra of

covers

when

ex

of

the originals antedate modern practices by made

discus

in the dialogue the long before

allegorical

politically transformation

cor

than

the

Freud,

whose

in

and Alberto

rather

R. B. Kitaj, the last of whose the early 1960s with Walter

of book

for

of

any serious precludes relation between painterly and photography?Bacon

1980s appropriations sets former?and

tion

lines

to Dubuffet spiteful

pressionism an role played important between the two mediums

blackout

ten

and

reproduction

rective. of

simply

The intellectually. stunning Francis Ba the often overrated

of

to a

desta

radically too much

signal

painting

as the au

with

credited of essential

Far more

be specifically Kelly visited Van

of this misinformation purveyor from is suffering the artist who

be

neglect standard textbooks

on

he was

where

studio,

an expert

can

comparison seems Giacometti

in the process of they occur untenable up rigid but basically shoring we read, For example ideological positions. no connection to had "[Ellsworth] Kelly insofar

in Europe also so hidden agendas,

are

Both

Heartfield.

addressing hidden betrays

art

of John counterpart key to understanding

the Catalan

Renau,

significant

development. of other chapters

vidious

Kon group, all three were

had

his

slant

postwar or not

con

with studying Polke with Hoehme,

third member

rad Lueg, with G?tz.

that

Hoehme

of Richter.

2

all of whom

Picasso, on

eral

the only

Meanwhile, Philip tion

understanding

and

bearing The

thors

of a real

proto-Nazis, revolutionary were and much in between

NUMBER

axis

the whole

include of Moscow

and

concep and Ilya Kabakov means imbalance

most

inexcusably, This Monastyrsky.

is effectively avant-garde as the Golden mod of Russian Age of Social with a capsule ernism, description in the hands of Isaac Brodsky ist Realism that

the Soviet

treated

but the complex Deineka, artists after 1970 to the by Russian col initial dominance through avant-garde's state and with the revolutionary laboration and Aleksandr response

its eventual suppression "to the dustbin signed omissions alone render culturally instantly interested

con by that state is These of history." not only the books

and politically suspect as a resource obsolete

but

also

for

anyone or has re

art is going in where cently been. a thousand If a picture is worth words, to represent of the career then the decision an Norman abstraction Lewis, early gestural artist to American ist and the only African 35 panel convened attend the 1950 Studio a by figu Expressionism, us a great deal about tells painting of the writers. That cultural insularity

to define rative the

decision

Abstract

is exacerbated

by

locating

that

im

to Lewis lines of text devoted age and seven on black artists in a ghettoizing chapter on Abstract rather Ex than in the chapter where he belongs. It makes pressionism, one

wonder

they have ever really to read about?Ralph read?as El opposed lison's Invisible Man. conse The sections whether

to contemporary artists from the Afri are but better, diaspora marginally to modern token concessions art's actual

their

carefully

since

the

and

of Art

Art

textbook more

since

1900

than

deceptive

is in many

previous,

respects bi

frankly

ased

surveys. Theoretical

well.

How

anomalies

is it that

Robert

fused

attract

as suspicion have neatly "Antiform" with

the authors

Morris's

a to create "Informe" Bataille's Georges tidy new formalist classification inexora leading from Surreal bly, not to say schematically, ism

to Pollock

to postmodernists the thrust of both

when

Kelley to break ties?

down

boundaries be mentioned

(It should

own

and

like Mike was

concepts

puri pollute that in his

theoretical

dis essays, Kelley vigorously sanitized October-brand of readings

the

putes

In particular, how is it that Ba Bataille.) taille's Sadean of desire, defile economics and waste have been of his cleansed ment, actual

chauvinist

sadism,

deeply, Are these

ualistic

religiosity? tial qualities of Viennese

rit

perversely not the essen

Actionism,

which,

is handled with only astonishingly enough, to Bataille, reference his is passing though the best, most twisted congruently paradigm in the matter And of unacknowl available? how is it that the "queering" taboos, edged as of American art history figures regards such as Charles Marsden Demuth, Hartley, and Jasper Johns Andy Warhol, by scholars such

as

Katz, Kenneth Silver, and over is passed in si Jonathan Weinberg are written lence? aesthetics" into "Queer Jonathan

the

story told in these volumes only at the to affect art prac point when AIDS begins a reg tice directly, and only Douglas Crimp, ular

October

on

is credited

the

volved

is posed and will

a standard

becomes

are

complex, them,

the appearance go away if it

by not

For

reference.

suf

now,

it to say that this reader would rather the expanded field of art making explore and art history the authors of this new or

fice

to insecurity.

need

constant

become fense.

conspicuous Those tasks

ators.

It is to be

Once

built

they

and,

since

they de

up

shoring

targets,

frequent fall to their

inevitably that hoped

the

fresh

cre

illusions

by Jodi Hauptman new

Art

textbook,

Rosalind

public

since

vibrantly stands in marked

of modern of distrust history as morgue, its displays lery petrified. museum with mausoleum, equating the

vealed

may

as

have most

the gal In The re

succinctly that hangs

of death

specter

for

living things. contrast to a

long

Adorno

and

Bois,

exhibitions present events, opportunities

discourse, view

Hal

1900,

Yve-Alain

Krauss,

Buchloh

Benjamin

odor

over

es but many others, collecting an com artists, have made pecially equally at the moment of the case.1 Almost pelling modern museum's Hubert Rob inception, institutions,

ert

imagines

ruin, ultimate

as an

the Louvre not

foregrounding fate but

also

only

enormous its?and

our?

the

exclu consequential and favoritisms of lapses, evasions, as do sequences this kind abound, of mech anistic

seums:

theoretical

side. as well

Obvious

as

sions,

into

that transform analysis reduce manifold causes, and

pat formulas, art modern

turn vital

correlations meanings dialectics

to of

to phases of progress and re in a manner that should warm the

gress heart

as it as much positivists to widen, who has sought art histori warp imaginatively

of born-again

troubles re texture,

anyone and

cal discourse.

it is the nature of Perhaps to do this. Certainly textbooks it is the method of those who seek intellectual hege On that score, one wonders how it is mony. that

the October

have

become

"revolutionaries"

figures

of authority

of

1976

so well

cemeteries!"

and warns

against of worship

(and

degraded

degrading) ourselves? past: "Why poison Why Rather than merely describing as a other

taken

the the

rot?"3

the gallery as a coffin, many

the vitrine

graveyard, artists have

on

this conundrum.

with to pre the problem of how Wrestling serve and em art works of without display alternatives them, balming they have offered art objects, and texts. installations, through can a work How of art remain alive in the museum express out of

the

of archival

sites

of finality others

and

in a variety

terms,

of exhibition

Daniel

(Ivan Puni, the adoption

Buren); to reveal

methods

collecting's as museologi

as well

desires

and stereotyping (Claes Old Hans Haacke, Cornell, enburg, Joseph Ren?e Fred Wilson); the wholesale Green, creation of museums and the restaging of museum to illuminate the institu practices tion's

in a complex

role

of entertain

web commerce

(Marcel and finally, Fraser); of accepted and expected the alteration of display methods Fred (Marcel Duchamp, El Lissitzky).

Kiesler,

such

Though terial, and

in scale, ma

differ

projects a theme

runs

that

site, through on the is the attempt part of the artist to activate the viewer. From this perspective, a dead the best way to resuscitate is object

or

to change how we look at it. The Russian artist El Lissitzky in one of the engaged as he most efforts to, interesting explained, the man "make "to es active."4 Attempting the museum-as-mausoleum and cape both the bourgeois sumption," noisy Raum

can the exhibition gallery? How and thought?the process working in constituencies ideas, the many

realm Lissitzky

of

so-called

con

private

"the bright, sought of the theater."5 In his

interactivity konstruktive

in Dresden

Kunst

f?r

(1926) and his Kabinett derAbstrakten in a the artist created (1927-28), screens and textured walls system of moving to enliven ex the perceptual and corporeal of exhibition The the effect, space. perience Maria facilitated "the visitor's writes, Gough Hannover

active

of

differentiation their

through or ment,

and

their

through

within

the

reformula

induced

within

display

reconceal

incessant

shifts

by parergonal tor's own movement

on

the works

revelation

tion

At work

foisted "pastness" on works of art at the very moment they to our become Closer part of a collection.2 own in "The Founding day, F. T. Marinetti, and Manifesto of Futurism," "Mu proclaims

contributor,

3g5

most

STORR is Rosalie Solow Professor of art at the Institute of Fine Arts, New York University [1 East 78th Street, New York, NY. 10021].

public Their

Asher,

erick

Robert

catalysts,

of

and spectacle, Andrea Broodthaers,

modern

Foster,

of

ment,

endeavor.

In their

mation Michael

meanings cal hierarchies

creates will not lure an army of power to that recruits conservative essentially

such

a variety

and

open up, but from which thodoxy helped rather than they have long since retreated, in their claustrophobic them redoubt. join are both Citadels of power and symbols monuments

in art's making?instead and mastery? These questions asked and answered have been

1900

techniques, (such recent investigations a name: have been institutional cri given the transfer and transfor tique), including

moment

to address

space

ON ART SINCE

HAUPTMAN

of ways using and strategies

American

answers

The the

the question since 1900

Review

cultist

eroticism,

and

authoritarianism,

1950s. is not

this

but

ers

or positions, why version dogma-heavy art serves the needs of

twentieth-century so many sectors of institutional at its most culture conservative

can

with high awkwardly coupled rhetoric of oth about the attempts mean as a to redress that inequalities,

REVIEWS:

their

hedged,

of

crated

diversity, minded

within

entrenched

BOOK

by

the

the visi

space."6 and having

institution

the shortcomings of already recognized then-current curatorial Hannover's practice, and art historian Provinzialmuseum director Dorner

Alexander his Kabinett

to design Lissitzky This experience an alterna theorize

invited

der Abstrakten.

Dorner himself helped tive to the traditional

exhibition

space?like of the experience " Dorner calls "Art, beyond that would be both physically

Lissitzky, focusing In The Way viewer. for galleries

on

the

and politically Ac liberating. to Dorner, Kabinett der cording Lissitzky's Abstrakten was "the first attempt to overcome challenging

the fixity of the gallery the period and room, into

dynamism unmooring reflected and

led

freedom.8

and

the

semistasis

to introduce

the museum."7

Such

the ("mobility exploded "the dynamism of modern to

psychic, Exhibitions,

physical room") life"

and political, he wrote, "could

social,

of

modern

civic be

ART BULLETIN

386

2006 VOLUME

JUNE

into

incentives liberating for our public energies

turned ductive

LXXXVIII

2

the new

of

and pro life."9 For

NUMBER

art with of avant-garde synthesis . . . But more on the other. spe Berlin Dada in radical also stood

technology

of art Dorner, argues, works Joan Ockman but points "were not idols to be worshipped, of departure for public discourse, catalysts to new ways of and experiencing the seeing world."10

cifically, to the local opposition avant-garde, model the hegemonic of German fet's

(p. 168). For "1946," "confirms the exhibition

In linking and public,

new

trend":

and

space private experience, and liberation, Lissitzky looking not only offer a way out of the

and Dorner

museum-as-mausoleum the potential

the

influence

life on

Art

1900

lief

since

exhibitions

such

show

of

shame,

hibits

be

intellectual

out

Pointing "reader's

in the

sentence

first

of

might which

approach will "suit

vidual the

to explain Art since

project. the

from

transnational,

themes

of

way

indi to

the national

media

bilities, "follow

the Paris

World

exhibition a hint

the book's

of

the

exhibition's

War

role.

key

and

this number

when

exhibitions

headlined.

does

not

Those

exhibitions

titles include chapter 0.10: The Last Futurist

Kazimir

but

is

Of

and in

Malevich's the

(1915), the Bauhaus

and

in the numerous

the

and

too brief). (these are sometimes the Dada the "1920" Headlining chapter, of a Fair "situated itself at the intersection passing

critical on

revision

the one

hand,

of

traditional and

modernism,

a manifest

embracing

the

driving in and

both

both

within

in

role

shifts

of

time.

public event.

I should

note

the au

that

role of art the public to per exhibitions beyond mani (Francis Picabia's Rel?che),

("The

of

over

time

of Fu

and Manifesto

Founding

(Surrealistjournals), their accomplish

publications

Gertrude and

how

Stein), reception

Fontana),

(Lucio

political

AIDS). (feminism, It is through exhibitions and related are able to show events that the authors

that

and

contentious,

diverse involving interests with varied that multiplicity, a crucial course, in the darkness up at images ers in Plato's

concerns.

attention lesson of

on

and

the

the

cave),

for

lecture

screen students

That

to process, students. hall, (like are

its

and revolutionary to regressive and politically exhibition follows (p. 30). The in one

introduced

for

chapter in another

efforts, force of

is, of

institution

tragedy realism

the war

of of

of

had

pro

the human

into

if we

And there

believe no

is clearly

in "1976," the argument for the display of hope or the very in the museum

art revolutionary notion of a revolutionary The museum's contents, are "derealized, simply

museum

at all.

in late

capitalism,

simulacral

spectacle"

(p. 579). on the emphasis this pessimism, are not that the authors shows

completely its objects' involved

resigned reactionary in curatorial

to the museum's

efforts

been

in one

form

them

another,

and

have

fate. All

making perhaps to understand than many scholars equipped the exhibition's stakes, complex problems, it is in the and vast potential. Ironically,

more than of this book?sometimes pages in the galleries themselves?that the exhibi the au tion maintains its promise. Thus, thors' focus on the frame may be a kind of challenge tors as well.

from

to students, but to cura just us to Art since 1900 encourages to present?works of for curators,

not

Dorner

things

once

again) an activated

Such parture. in an activated fact result only hope. throws off instead

In the book's the mantle

but

(to borrow of de points in reader may can viewer. We as

final

Bois

words,

of pessimism,

arguing

for possibility:

I don't

staring the prison

think

we

should

delude

that we are going thinking the global colonization change into

to

or

better

Sitting

hostage

as

the discussion

example,

see?and, art not as finished

of art is a consumption and changing process and institutions players

the production dynamic,

this

Despite exhibitions

the pub foregrounds of art. The book, again

and figures important ments (Sergei Diaghilev, of works the reception changes activism

over

is the at

radical:

1959. (p. 421)

out

and

the

a of the culture in ism became product . . . almost kind any dustry promot[ing] as was the case with the exhi of realism, the bition "New Images of Man," which in of Modern Art mounted Museum

the factors

exist

of

at

any logic on?it

count

subject of the full certainty . . . the that followed "existence" years were to turn existentialist aesthetics . . . into farce. As the forties be postwar . . . existential came the Cold War fifties

of his

illuminating reception, its debut life or revealing

conception extends

turism"),

other

works exhibited, players, so on to brief mentions

circumstances,

thors'

this 1900

examines

public

festos

is presented either the exhibition examples, a series of historical as a spark that ignites or as a events of broader representation status quo. Ap to the aesthetic challenges of from pearances range analyses in-depth

significance,

that

the work

of

again,

objects formances

in Japan Les ma (1955a), at terre and la de (1989), giciens Utopia Station to mention the Venice Biennale (2003), just In these

that since

the object's as a

Exhibition

allows

the messiness

has

here, can

revolutionary the site and

if the

duced

anxieties

demon the book Second, strates of art are living things that works role in the unfolding that play an active and

See,

thrown

more.

Art

alization.

But

the artist:

history

of

we

and

so much

stage it becomes

economic,

to frame

work

the artwork,

the

abroad.

to demonstrate

pattern

emancipatory

as a

"glitzy" to national

from

competition shift from

of

Third, licness

not

headlined

criticism

we

existentialism:

aes from contemporary to rela debates political personal from and private ambitions, tionships to notions of value?and market conditions

exhibition

a few.

about

thetic

first public exhibition of El Lissitzky's Room Demonstration (1923), International Film und Foto (1929), (1926), the first Exhibition (1942b), of Surrealism Gutai

of belt-tightening

presented

reactionary" a similar path:

this

functions

as

persistent compromise most "from extreme,

the day, excesses in

of

the

times

side

I,

instances

include

are mentioned

the exhibition

from

around

chapters, specifically in the running either exhibitions, in one of the accompanying boxes?

highlight titles or

"As for

writes,

a (p. 196). Such beginning reader's discuss curiosity: Why that was such a travesty? What

tory. First, we see cultural production

60

107

an artist's

with

of competing and interests, attitudes, it also is the locus of the authors' publics, in The book may ever-increasing pessimism. If his fact be read as an act of mourning.

all?any

ex

the key disdain:

competing political, aesthetic interests of

and

authors

the propagandistic of displays to the postwar forms of blockbuster and international survey." This

through 1937 ...

of

the

into

social,

This

(including to

photography) and methods

before

Salons

the

something learn is that

(mass media) (social these possi psychoanalysis). Among the authors that the reader suggest the history of the art exhibition,

history,

from

as

such

modes,

needs

or a mention

Rodchenko

piques

one

the many ways 1900, each of

the particular (p. 12): from

readers"

newer

but

on

go

of

instead

an horror"

is "organized that the book guide" as a succession of important the events," authors

?puration Deco

not worth it's probably Exposition, it. built such Even pavilions! seeing They it's from afar they are ugly and from close

of exhibi

the value

foreground to their collective

political of the Art

is a

1900

nexus

tory,

famous

emphasiz promise, its public life. It is inter ing, in particular, in fact, to note that the authors esting, tions

but

Aleksandr

in the exhibition's

themselves

"Mi

a not with (1925) begins the show, a statement of

in Paris

review glowing its importance,

life,"

a similar

demonstrates

of

criticism

self-righteousness, The discussion

(p. 337). exhibition

"might well scale."11

a tremendous

intense

Expres

Jean Dubuf existence of a

to a and Cie" "points Macadam, nexus of collective Paris": postwar particular

"Once

sphere. context

the

seem embalmed. objects played If the exhibition in Art since

namely

robolus,

to contribute

exhibition

to the political in the practical

writes,

also

but

bind

of

significantly set to work Dorner

sionism"

the "masterpieces" that flicker by. This book an alternative to the canonization promotes and dis and finality that make projected

ourselves to of

the

BOOK

cultural

a limited of time, period only with it claims no limitation the former, of a it is not the work in space. Unlike both, it up that make but the essays single author, a are left with are not and readers signed, in its pages?connois not discussed method it deals

but I don't by spectacle, sphere either. After should whine all, to re in our desire united been

think we we've shuffle

ca only to revisit . . .but also to retrieve

not

the cards, moments

nonical

of the cul many aspects of these past hundred tural production or de that had been ignored plus years . Who . it knows, liberately repressed.. some effect, have liberatory (p. might from

oblivion

HAUPTMAN

is associate

Department of Drawings Modern Art [Department Museum Art, ofModern 10019-5497]. York, NY.

curator

of Drawings, 11 West 53

in the of the

from

"to retrieve cultural

Street, New

oblivion of

production that had

deliberately more much

many these

been

years

dred-plus

and

past

or

ignored

complex when

were stu [they] refer in par claim may (p. 679). This to the inclusion of photography and ticular under the term "anti of aspects subsumed to

1. Theodor W. Adorno writes, "Museum and are connected than pho mausoleum by more are the family sep netic association. Museums ulchers of works of art." Adorno, "Val?ry in Prisms, trans. Samuel We Proust Museum," ber and Shierry Weber (1967; Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1994), 175.

[them]

2. See Hubert Robert's Vue imaginaire de la Grande Galerie en ruines, 1796, Mus?e du Louvre, Paris. see Kynaston McShine, For an illustration, ed., The Museum as Muse: Artists Reflect (New York: Museum of Modern Art, 1999), 193. and Manifesto "The Founding 3. F. T. Marinetti, of Futurism" (1909), in Let's Murder theMoon shine: Selected Writings, trans. R. W. Flint and ed. R. W. Flint (Los An Arthur A. Coppotelli, 1991), 50. geles: Sun and Moon Classics, 4. El Lissitzky, "Exhibition Rooms," typescript in Han the Nieders?chsisches Landesmuseum, nover, in Die Zwanziger fahre inHannover 1962), trans, in Sophie Lissitzky (Hannover, (Lon K?ppers, El Lissitzky: Life?Letters?Texts and Hudson, don: Thames 1968), 366, "El Lis in Magdalena Dabrowski, quoted The Museum as Muse, 46. sitzky," in McShine, El Disoriented: "Constructivism Gough, and Hannover Demonstra Lissitzky's Dresden in Situating El Lissitzky: Vitebsk, tionsr?ume," Berlin, Moscow, ed. Nancy Perloff and Brian Reed Institute, (Los Angeles: Getty Research 2003), 77.

5. Maria

109.

Ibid.,

" The Way beyond 'An, Prob 7. Alexander Dorner, no. York: 3 lems of Contemporary Art, (New Schultz, Wittenborn, 1947; rev. ed., New York: New York University Press, 1958), 116, quoted "The Road Not Taken: Alex in Joan Ockman, ander Dorner's Way beyond Art," in Autonomy in and Ideology: Positioning an Avant-Garde America, ed. R. E. Somol (New York: Mona celli Press, 1997), 94. 8. Dorner, Ockman, 9. Dorner, Taken," 10. Ockman, 11. Dorner, Ockman,

in

The Way beyond "An, "116, quoted "The Road Not Taken," 94. quoted 96.

in Ockman,

the post-World that is, mainly modernism," Socialist Re I retour ? l'ordre and Soviet

War

But

as foes

the

twentieth

in

by Dario Gamboni

against

the background from textbooks,

of art history Handbuch der Kunstgeschichte

the history Franz Kugler's

to Petra

Chu's

Art,1 Art since Nineteenth-Century European Like the latter, 1900 cuts a peculiar figure.

to enter con

not

tableau, easily anti is to the dichotomy of pro versus as dismissed (such as the "hybrid" quickly of Jacques Raymond Lipchitz, sculpture or Henri Laurens, p. 59) Duchamp-Villon, or

"kitsch"

(Art Deco,

p.

chronology, Regarding an effort to delve into meaning War World

the

of

departure?a of round allure and

ization,

slate

clean

and

special rhetoric of the the avant-garde than to art historical reasoning.

stricted

to Western

America

is a more

in Russia of

academic

the main

extended

examination

art produced it has entered

outside the

Union.

before

one

and

is amazed

is not con or af Simi

regimes. "the West,"

even art

international

with is acknowledged circuit, is almost city: Latin America sent,

of in

The

however, to a broader

"antimodernism,"

to open the way enough of Eastern sideration Europe, ter the fall of the Communist larly, when

re

art twentieth-century North and Europe the Soviet

and

to the

addition

scar

extreme

completely to see no trace

for a brief hint (except in Britain, p. 642) diaspora to deal with art to the claiming or Africa

present?not like "aboriginal A

to mention art" on

new canvas

ab of at in a

vations.

phenomena in Australia.

at the

The

photographie or dustrial

included photography from detached d'auteur,

with

is artistic the

uses of the me "documentary" of the current dium that provide history issues. with such innovative photography

in

century monuments

exist

statues

? la Antoine

"invisible"

or anti

which

Alfred

or Rachel

Gerz,

in this

the

of

as the

nor

"site-spe heri

Hrdlicka, re

have

Whiteread

to a few is limited Design the doomed wrong by projects "utopian" turn taken by history, and the hierarchical the genre.

the

distinction

marginalizing to have survived

seems

arts"

"applied

all

transgressions, the the stage where beyond Rodin's of Auguste sculp copies multiple "to the type of tures could be said to point art industry?with its traffic in replicas?that not

straying

the decorative,

the

than

rather

fine, arts" (p. 216). In short, what Art since 1900 offers up art is a canonical view twentieth-century modernism,

augmented and with

modernism"

this one

of

Foster

Hal

and

in deeply grounded as the authors' defines art historians

art critics"

(p. 679). This that they consider may mean to be historians of modernism

of contemporary act as modernist they there Granted again,

art, but

critics

is no

art criticism

between

the

fact

critics

is that

tinction

"anti

of

are

contemporary

phrase themselves

out.

a dose

compatible

as modernist

status

odd

and

with

as of

of aspects im Granted, any history The nature and the con

postmodernism. a selection. plies

through dis absolute

and

art his

an involves tory, and the latter always but these historians element of judgment, of doubt. A it with a rare absence practice such as "still today, after its great remark it is great deflation, equally this sculpture clearly" of Henry the works about (p. 270)?made and Barbara Moore excep Hepworth?is and

inflation

to see

difficult

tional.

More

ger's "traditional

German

beholder's

head

that

is the attitude

pervasive

Buchloh, discussing Theory of the Avant-Garde,

Benjamin

Peter

Bur

defines

as the

to to give grades makes for This exciting history" (p. 326). as and sometimes reading, entertaining to pieces is pulled when Edward Kienholz into the "one-liners for creating pounded ball

of the various coverage or media, techniques) (disciplines, these obser their hierarchies confirms

look

in the form

neither

to

1970s

creating considerable

In this account,

"double

by provoked it neces they do not find the value of 1900 as a point of to the that owes more choice

for geography, accounts of usual

clusion

importance

numbers,

the of

despite the first half

the

until

artists

pages

tage of domain.

what

"caesura"

As

art

make

the

to wait

has

in these

cific" works,

tent

196). the authors

II, but

to justify

sary

and of

allowed

does

form

"arts"

Review

are

one

States,

characterizes of

tendencies

the African

120.

The Way beyond "Art," 116, quoted "The Road Not Taken," 94.

iconic

century and what

the

book

"The Road Not Taken,"

or

mimetic,

"realist,"

China

"The Road Not

this oppositional it is only under and foils, that the numerous

alism. guise,

Diego

Jochen vived

"a thus presenting tableau than the one

repressed,"

ex

as if they were canvases) introducing in the United Rivera's intervention

duced

monuments

hun

387

in En

is usual

of architecture

absence

1900

the art but with glish-language history,2 murals Mexican of three (repro ception

Bourdelle

of

aspects

dents"

Notes

Seen

ex by "united

the book

concludes

The

find

be

have been that the authors plaining to reshuffle the cards" in [their] desire

served

6.

Bois

Yve-Alain

the

at theMuseum

to distinguish involved.

they wish four hands

seurship?if tween the

679) JODI

like

but

ON ART SINCE

GAMBONI

REVIEWS:

task

with The

bat"

a

skull-crashing

base criteria,

underlying (p. 420). too implicit remain for the judg though, ments not to smack of arbitrariness: Why for be damned Motherwell should Robert in to the "signature style" (p. 352) is not even for instance, Cy Twombly, confronted with of such an the possibility

giving while

interpretation? these Within that Art

since

it is fair to say parameters, achieve 1900 is a remarkable

BULLETIN

388

ART

ment.

It puts textbook

the ing boxes,

2006 VOLUME

JUNE

the didactic

expectations to creative use,

format

LXXXVIII

of

lion.

deploy

duces

the

index

and

text

that

the use

complements Some of the

of

introduc glossary. on one like the tory essays, psychoanalysis, treatments of individual works and many are on

when excellent, particularly the formalist and structuralist

of close

they draw tradition

"reading."

them.

around problems this compositional

time,

At

device

same

the

situ synchronie temporal development, of the ating Art since 1900 in the lineage first "history of modern art," Julius Meier der modernen

Entwicklungsgeschichte The quartet formation,

Kunst.4

introduces

an element

the

tables?a

round

to the

textbook

it is true,

of polyphony, less convincing

addition into

format?give allowed into

"tensions"

tions flicts Pablo

of, historiographie of interpretation?for Picasso's

changes

and

(p. 115)

re

his

tour ? l'ordre

is the (p. 162). Of special merit of abstraction, which does not or a "materialist" for an "idealist"

treatment take

sides

but

interpretation abstraction

tried ties

is a paradoxical

paintings

in Jackson abstract Pollock's to mention the findings omits in 1998, and by Pepe Karmel

published Frank Stella's hoch! with

use

of

than

tion

titles

as Die Fahne

such

to Nazi Germany, as a "reference more

its allusion

innocuous

mal

sus

that

without

the

thematic"

of Anna

(p. 409)

Chave's

ism as a "rhetoric

is for men

of Minimal

rereading

of

power."5 recalls that one

Krauss

Rosalind

without

way by students university was by insisting rejected "presuppositions" their professors with "on addressing the inti

which

mate

French

post-1968

'tu '?and person? their of One by (p. 41). tu favorite "D'o? was, indeed, questions a (where do you speak from?), parles?" in of of view involved the point questioning a statement and of the basis for its legiti

macy. 1900, York

of

form

their

first

the

second

names"

were If this question asked of Art to be New have the answer would City

(or

the East after

States) shortly no secret of their and

having

been

Coast

1968.

being marked

of

since

the United

The

authors

make

based

in New

York

1968

rebel

by

the

came

the staple not just of poststructuralism of postmodernist painting" (p. 47). favors a structuralism introduction Bois's

As for the societies.6 capitalist" ex of reference, it is clearly to "theory" in the role they attribute time

pressed and in the

to which

theories

swear

they

alle

which

the

visual

sign the

inclusion

which

each

of four

introductions

"describes

author

of a particular its relevance

development and explains

in

these

the historical

other

Dilly, Wolfgang and Martin Sauerl?nder

as well

the

choice

a con

between

an

and

almost the

tory been

simply

out

The within

glish.

The least satisfactory of these introductory of art. is the one on the social history essays Of strict Marxist observance, inveterately and deterministic, it dualistic, finalistic,

Michael

dekamp,

century), Joseph chita. The geography of a century quarter

whose

Kaufmann,11 could have

fieldwork

appara conceptual so much to done

have

au of the partial is not field," and elsewhere in pass here, only are the crucial omitted ing (p. 629). Also of Harrison and Cynthia White, analyses Howard Martin Becker, Moulin, Raymonde

ward

the

of

tonomy mentioned

comprehension the "artistic

and Oskar

Warnke,

In the

B?tschmann.8 of

the history and no

part, chronological tions is sorely missing, at analyzing made systematically

institu

actors involved? the various linking critics of all sorts, curators, and

tion

as well

in a state

is left blanket

allowed

the

Krens's to subsume

"blockbuster

and

of

condemnation

of Thomas

The

of caricature

of art, while

tion"

as artists.

other limited

is

(p. 577). are less biased

share

an

implicit

Plan

Corbusier's

logo

the

implicit

a look

Similarly, iconoclasm

of

would

interpretation as a harmless

Voisin

of Le

"pure the new iconol (p. 197). And provocation" ogy of materials by Monika Wag proposed to a realiza ner12 could have contributed of Krauss's

invite.

to revive

wish

the kind

But

ation?of

its

it although biases

is left unattended, avoid helped down this book.

weighing at the thriving studies not have allowed the

centre, of

to a

adventure

Museum Guggenheim with "the museum"

they

by John

re

art into English-language DaCosta Onians and Thomas

the notion

of

(p. 674). of these and omis shortcomings Many in cultural sions can be explained geo terms as a case of provincialisme du graphic

art market

propitious the "commodifica

franchising

mentality" introductions but

The

history

a

renovated

medium

ad

dealers,

ministrators

introduced

of art,

ago by Enrico Carlo Ginzburg and

and

cently

tion

is attempt the interac

(on the nineteenth br Victor Stoi

Fried Koerner,

Pierre tus and

the art

with

least translated into, En art his It is a parochial "modernist" no seems to have in which inspiration found in the work Bre of, say, Horst

Castelnuovo

Bourdieu,

it deals

if chronologi century?as were more than unbridgeable it is ones?and when mostly

of this historio chapters and completely neglects of the sociology of art.

entire

when

exclusively twentieth

tradition graphie the contribution

leaves

The turn" "ethnographic in the art its manifestation

disciplinary written in, or at

regere fines of the left unmentioned.

limitations?the

on

exclusively

the

of artistic agency understanding under scrutiny.10 same is true of recent developments art history is summoned itself, which

cal divides

are

162),

comes

of

"internal" explanation (p. these es outside discussed briefly as as the chro others says, while important and de nological, typological geographic, textual

almost

depend

disciplines, remains

extended

as

as

of.9 advantage in tools defined

the im of the 1990s but neither (p. 624), of anthropology for art historians portance to David and from Aby Warburg Freedberg nor Alfred an for Gell's Belting proposal

Kemp, Warnke

scope. Re chronological the prob about say grettably, they nothing while making the lems faced by the authors and some basic issues of historical book, such

taken

antecedents. major for is mentioned

or Robert in German, Donald Preziosi Nel son and Richard in Shiff These English.7 are more in the limited chapters just much oretical

not

they interdisciplinarity to the para bound mainly of the 1970s. To mention liter digms only one no finds here echo of the studies, ary or of the of reception" "aesthetics critique can yet boast art history for which g?n?tique,

by that of methodological the kind provided by Hans

Heinrich

are

interpretative

essays

advocate

methodology to the production

of the art of the period" reception (p. features of 14) is one of the most original the book. The is thus textbook function

partly augmented of introduction,

in

model looms large: linguistic to contribution is dis formalism Roger Fry's as a Konrad missed mode," "morphological Henri and George Kubier Fiedler, Focillon, re are forgotten more the and way, along a semiotics at cent attempts of the founding While

giance. The

typ "be

ideas

but

"late

historian?are

all par bringing examination of the role

the author

by to witness:

end

In many (p. 124). is instructed and

oppositions" the case instances,

of figuration

made

mode

such

pends other

"in the

concludes,

or

method,

about

instance,

collages

con

and

ical claim

task as a questioning De of authority. of two European spite the presence expatri ates among States-centrism them, a United colors its general focus on the definitely

Belting, Willibald

and

insights this "dialogical" re structure. Such disagreements, however, of a general main within the bounds agree on basic ment Most welcome assumptions. are references summa to, and sometimes the

of

in the

for instance, expressed, that Jacques Derrida's

centrism,

pro

automatically its "point

ex be questioned and made so when see the more its authors

all

plicit, their

of authority,

and

privileges

the

Graefe's

a textbook

since

authors'

year-by-year already approach, a in a more fashion adopted journalistic by French series meant for the general public,3 to is an effective way to give prominence and works, and to events, figures, specific

2

an effect

West

The

cluster

But

view" must

headlines, explanatory "telegraphic" and a system of cross-references

within

NUMBER

extreme

apocalyptic a time of

which

that dominant is also

"extended Foster

younger its most

ilation

there

and

put

"perpetual

to Buchloh's

it leads of

the

last decades

intensification

homogenization" a tacit laus

implies

positions of gener

question

as the generation," it in an interview.13 In

form,

assessment

a

of assim

(p. 673), acti. One

temporis

as

BOOK

sees how a tableau informed by such hardly a verdict, to sharing which "to Bois admits some extent," could "have some liberatory on anyone. re effect" Foster, who (p. 679) sists Buchloh's the

courage

also has Kulturpessimismus, to admit that "in the last sev

the

two primary years to articulate used different eral

war

art have

that

models

[they] of post and

aspects

become

dysfunctional" in the advocated

the methods

've

introduc

"are hardly thriving" (p. 679). than "the definitive of Rather history art" in hailed characteris twentieth-century by

thus

appears moment?for

the Guardian, to be a witness better

and

Art

since

1900

to a defining for worse?in the

art and of Western of Western (espe art. North about American) cially thought As is so often the case when ideas take a it is ready for form, even as intimated within

moment, In a historiographie

Heinrich W?lfflin

hyperbole

its passing its pages. to

referring

and Alois Riegl, Bois

that "the birth of art history from dates the moment it was pline structure the vast amount of material

writes

as a disci able

to

it had

for purely and aes neglected ideological thetic reasons" from (p. 34). Transposed art and the "art industry" of late Baroque to twentieth-century antiquity more than ever a pressing Dario art at

GAMBONi the Universit?

de l'Art, Uni-Bastions,

art,

CH-1211

is

invitation.

is professor de Gen?ve

this

in the history of [Unit? d'Histoire Gen?ve

5, 44

4,

Switzerland].

Notes 1. Franz Kugler, Handbuch der Kunstgeschichte 1842); and (Stuttgart: Ebner und Seubert, Petra ten-Doesschate Chu, Nineteenth-Century European Art (New York: Harry N. Abrams, 2003). is dealt with in a textbook on 2. Architecture the art of the nineteenth and twentieth centu in 1995 in the Flammarion ries published His toire de l'art series: and Philippe Dagen eds., Epoque contemporaine Fran?oise Hamon, XIXe-XXe si?cles (Paris: Flammarion, 1995). as but chronologically inclusive Typologically more focused is the most recent textbook in French: Daniel Soutif, ed., L'art published du XXe si?cle, 1939-2002: De l'art moderne ? l'an contemporain (Paris: Citadelles et Mazenod,

Dilly, Wolfgang Belting, Heinrich Sauerl?nder and Martin Kemp, Willibald Warnke, eds., Kunstgeschichte: Eine Einf?hrung (1985; 3rd rev. ed., Berlin: Reimer, 1988); Donald Preziosi, The Art of Art History: A Criti cal Anthology (Oxford: Oxford University and Richard Press, 1998); and Robert Nelson Shiff, eds., Critical Terms for Art History (1992; of Chicago 2nd enl. ed., Chicago: University 2003).

The French Press, 1993); Raymonde Moulin, Art Market: A Sociological View, trans. Arthur Goldhammer (1967; New Brunswick, N.J.: Press, 1987); R. Moulin Rutgers University with Pascaline Costa, L'artiste, l'institution et le march? (Paris: Flammarion, 1992); Howard Saul Becker, Art Worlds (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1982); Martin Warnke, The Court Artist: On theAncestry of theModern Artist, trans. David McLintock (1985; Cam Press, 1993); University bridge: Cambridge The Artist in theMod and Oskar B?tschmann, ern World: The Conflict betweenMarket and Self Press, Expression (New Haven: Yale University 1997). 9. See Groupe Mu, Trait? du signe visuel: Pour une rh?torique de l'image (Paris: Seuil, 1992). 10. See Aby Warburg, The Renewal of Pagan Antiq uity: Contributions to the Cultural History of the trans. David Britt (Los European Renaissance, Institute, 1999); Angeles: Getty Research David Freedberg, The Power of Images: Studies in theHistory and Theory ofResponse (Chicago: of Chicago Press, 1989); Hans Belt University ing, Bild-Anthropologie: Entw?rfe fur eine Bildwis senschaft (Munich: Fink, 2001); and Alfred Gell, Art and Agency: An Anthropological Theory Press, 1998). (Oxford: Clarendon 11. See John Onians, ed., Atlas of World Art (Lon don: Lawrence King, 2004); Thomas DaCosta Toward a Geography of Art (Chi Kaufmann, of Chicago Press, 2004) ; and cago: University Kaufmann and Elizabeth Pilliod, eds., Time and Place: The Geohistory of Art (Burlington, Vt.: 2005).

Hachette,

Ferrier with Yann Le Pich?n, de l'art au XXe si?cle (Paris: Ch?ne/ 1988).

13. Hal Foster, interview by Gaby Wood, "Avant Garde for All," Observer, April 3, 2005, at http://observer.guardian.co.uk/review/story/ 0,6903,1450871,00.html.

4. Julius Meier-Graefe, der Entwicklungsgeschichte modernen Kunst (Stuttgart: Julius Hoffmann, 1904; 2nd enl. ed., Munich: Piper, 1914-24); Meier-Graefe's influential book was translated into English by Florence Simmonds and George W. Chrystal as Modern An; Being a Contribution to a New System of Aesthetics (Lon don: Heinemann; New York: Putnam, 1908); it is not mentioned in Art since 1900. 5. Pepe Karmel, "Pollock at Work: The Films and Photographs of Hans Namuth," in Jackson with P. Karmel, exh. Pollock, by Kirk Varnedoe of Modern Art, New York (New cat, Museum York: Harry N. Abrams, 1998); and Anna C. and the Rhetoric of Chave, "Minimalism

SARAH

E.

in present-day of Abbot chapel

Cave

of visual

FRASER

618-960

to this re

the of

the Mu

Paris, and the British Museum, From this vast paper respectively. more than forty-two thou trail, numbering sand documents, Sarah Fraser has studied sketches

sixty-five

Performing artistic process rals and

to

related seeks

specific murals. to reconstruct the

of Dunhuang's the linkages

to clarify

mu

majestic between

local

com and the monastic patrons, workshops, The author defines her study as a munity. theoretical and historical "comprehensive art [that] was of the Buddhist interpretation at this site" made and deployed (pp. xiii that a detailed icono xiv) and cautions graphie

is not within

analysis themes

Major include

of

her

the first

half

of

scope. the book

the establishment

and composition as a collec functioning and artisans; and specialists met the workshops commis patrons'

of workshops; tive body of how

their

on a num by relying on that varied depending was exe the media the painting (whether or silk). In the sec cuted on wall surfaces sions

art

of religious of visual aids

ber

ond

part of the book, were ink sketches

that

the finished

Fraser

hypothesizes the forerunners of

monochrome

that

ink paintings

the Song traditional

(960 style. She bases the literary records of two art critics and contemporary

emerged

during 1279) as China's on her argument ninth-century

dynasty

like Daoism and Chan religious ideologies, or Buddhism. Besides these Contemplative to nu main the reader is exposed themes, merous issues of socioeconomic, secondary and architectural which character, literary, at times

break

the

continuity

of her

argu

ment. book's

subtitle The notwithstanding, in China of Buddhist Wall Painting and Central Asia, 618-960, should be readers aware that the book restricts itself to a dis

Practice

cussion

of ninth-

and

Dun tenth-century offers precious little in on Central Asia. Even Fraser's

murals

huang formation

and

Northern

which ruled from dynasty, the fact that the earliest Despite at the site are dated to the fifth cen Liang

to 439.

397

studies

and

evolve

from

the end

Hongbian,

s?e Guimet,

murals

University

tenth

the a di

London,

In the ninth

and

17, once

sketches, drawings, and manuscripts?related pounces, artistic placed production. They in the custody trieved evidence

tury, Fraser's investigation few ninthand tenth-century choice erroneously implies

Stanford

389

material?preparatory manuals, painting

342 pp.; 43 color ills., 82 b/w. $65.00

Stanford:

FRASER

art at of the grotto dating chronological about 480-1250?is skewed, Dunhuang?to caves were since the earliest the built under

Performing the Visual: The Practice of Buddhist Wall Painting in China and Central Asia,

ON

body

The

Das Material der Kunst: Eine 12. Monika Wagner, andere Geschichte derModerne (Munich: Beck, 2001).

2005). 3. Jean-Louis L'aventure

verse

HOWARD

the Visual

C. White and Cynthia A. White, 8. Harrison Can vases and Careers: Institutional Change in the French Painting World (New York: Wiley, 1965; of Chicago 2nd rev. ed., Chicago: University

Ashgate,

uncovered memorial

6. See, for instance, the offhand dismissal of French abstract painting of the 1950s as an art of "poseurs and composers" (p. 518).

Press,

history

monumental

64, no. 5 (1990):

7. Hans

tions

tic fashion

Power," Arts Magazine 63.

REVIEWS:

Press,

centuries,

2004.

toward

of

the Tang at (618-907), dynasty site of Dunhuang, Gansu Prov artisans and painters from local work

the Buddhist

the

ince, numerous mu and imposing shops created In 1906-7, rals in the grottoes. the scholar Paul Pelliot and Aurel Stein explorers

the

sixty-five late Tang

its artistic earlier sketches

addresses murals.

a

only The

that

the art

she

environment

did

not

practices. refer

Undoubtedly, to specifically and not to previous her decision to begin

period Nevertheless, at the her analysis of Dunhuang midpoint of the pre any explanation activity without times.