This ambitious reference work charts the major works and movements, the most important theoretical developments, and the historical, social, political, and aesthetic issues in contemporary art since 1945, primarily in the Euro-American context. Dual chronological and thematic coverage of the major issues enables the reader to engage with multiple perspectives on current art movements and conceptual issues, and to consider future directions in the field. Topics covered include culture wars, public space, diaspora, new technologies, the artist, identity politics, the body, poststructuralism, and visual culture. The Companion also covers debates central to contemporary art practice and theory such as those addressing formalism, the avant-garde, and the society of the spectacle. Bringing together leading cultural critics and scholars from art history and allied fields to comment on the crucial historical and theoretical issues and debates that have conditioned our understanding of the contemporary visual arts, this volume offers new approaches toward the analysis of the visual arts in general. A stellar reference work, it is written for students and scholars of contemporary visual culture, art history, and visual theory, as well as the general reader interested in the development of this interdisciplinary field.
1. Writing contemporary art into history, a paradox? by Amelia Jones.
2. "America" and its discontents : art and politics 1945-60 by Gavin Butt.
3. The 1960s: a decade out-of-bounds by Anna Dezeuze.
4. "I'm sort of sliding around in place ... ummm ...": art in the 1970s by Sam Gathercole.
5. Pictures and positions in the 1980s by Howard Singerman.
6. 1990-2005 : in the clutches of time by Henry M. Sayre.
7. Form and formless by Caroline A. Jones.
8. Re-thinking the "Duchamp effect" by David Hopkins.
9. Regarding beauty by Margaret Morgan.
10. Avant-garde : a historiography of a critical concept by Johanne Lamoureux.
11. Fracture for change : US activist art since 1950 by Jennifer Gonzalez and Adrienne Posner.
12. "The senators were revolted" : homophobia and the culture wars by Jonathan D. Katz.
13. Crowds and connoisseurs : art and the public sphere in America by Grant Kester.
14. The writerly artist : beautiful, boring, and blue by Carol Mavor.
15. Diaspora : multiple practices, multiple worldviews by Steven Nelson.
16. Power and pleasure : feminist art practice and theory in the United States and Britain by Laura Meyer.
17. Queer wallpaper by Jennifer Doyle.
18. Implications of blackness in contemporary art by Pauline de Souza.
19. The paradoxical bodies of contemporary art by Christine Ross.
20. A shadow of Marx by Neil Cummings and Marysia Lewandowska.
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