Art Since 1900: Modernism, Antimodernism, Postmodernism

The second, expanded Russian edition of a comprehensive study of the modern and contemporary period in art history.

Innovative in its form and content, the volume Art since 1900 co-authored by Hal Foster, Rosalind Krauss, Yve-Alain Bois, Benjamin Buchloh, and David Joselit has been widely acclaimed as a milestone in contemporary art history. In 130 chapters it discusses the key works, exhibitions and texts from every single year of the last century, offering the reader not one, but many histories of art from 1900 until the present day. Progressing chronologically, the publication analyses every turning point and breakthrough in the development of modernism and postmodernism, as well as the contradictory antimodernist reactions.

The book’s flexible structure and abundance of cross-references allows readers to create their own course through twentieth- and twenty-first-century art history, focusing on one of many possible themes, such as the history of painting, the trajectory of art in a particular country, or a specific movement.

Apart from a detailed account of the key moments in the history of art (important works, exhibitions, and writings), the volume offers an overview of the main theoretical approaches to analyzing art: from psychoanalytical critique and the social history of art to structuralism and post-structuralism.

Each of these approaches is described in a separate introductory essay mapping out its history and explaining its vocabulary. Collisions between different paradigms are made explicit—and with each author leaning towards one of them, the book becomes a Bakhtinian dialogue: each idea emerges in response to what the other authors have said. An actual discussion involving all the authors is presented in a chapter based on the round-table discussion “The predicament of contemporary art”.

The second edition includes a new introduction dedicated to the art in the era of globalism, along with chapters on the history of synthetic cubism, early experimental film, Brazilian Neoconcretism, postmodernist architecture, Moscow conceptualism, South African photography, and current advancements in museum development.