ONE MORE TIME—WHAT IS ART? This year has brought two very good films on the art world, first, The Art of the Steal about the Barnes Collections (reviewed on this site) and, now, Exit Through the Gift Shop. The title refers to the museum blockbuster, which routes...
POSTMODERNISM Coining the Term “Postmodernism” was a term coined by Arnold Toynbee (1889-1975) early in the century to refer to the last quarter of the 19th century, a time where capitalism and imperialism and Western civilization in general began to...
HOW OBJECTS BECOME “ART” In writing The Artworld, art writer and philosopher, Arthur Danto, laid out a history of how art history had to change its theories of what art was supposed to be in the face of new objects. He said, “Suppose one thinks of...
ART AS IDEA—IDEA AS ART At mid-century, the question of what is art? was raised again for the first time since Emmanuel Kant wrote the Critique of Judgment in 1781. Starting in the mid-fifties, Neo-Dada art and Minimal Art challenged the presumed Modernist...
EURO POP American art history has tended to assume that something called “Pop Art” existed in Europe and has introduced a select group of European artists as examples. However, only London wholeheartedly embraced American popular culture, while other...
