Postwar and Postmodern Art
Postwar art moved from Abstract Expressionism through Pop, Minimalism, and Conceptualism into the postmodernism of the 1980s, which questioned originality, authorship, and the boundaries of high art.
Definition
The art of the decades following the Second World War and the subsequent postmodern turn, characterized by the questioning of modernist values such as originality, medium, and the autonomy of art.
Scope
This topic studies American and European art from the late 1950s through the 1980s, including Pop art's embrace of mass culture, Minimalism's literal objects, the rise of postmodern appropriation and pastiche, and the critical theories of the October circle that reframed the period against modernist assumptions.
Core questions
- How did Pop and Minimalism react against Abstract Expressionism and modernist painting?
- What did postmodernism mean for ideas of originality and authorship?
- How did appropriation and pastiche challenge the modernist canon?
- How did critical theory reshape the writing of recent art history?
Key theories
- Critique of originality
- Rosalind Krauss's argument that modernist myths of originality and the unique avant-garde gesture are undermined by the structural role of repetition, the copy, and the grid.
- The anti-aesthetic
- The postmodern position, gathered in Hal Foster's anthology, that art and criticism should abandon claims to autonomous aesthetic value in favor of cultural and political critique.
History
The critical reframing of postwar art was driven by the journal October and its circle, whose anthologies and the survey Art Since 1900 reread the period through structuralist and poststructuralist theory, displacing the formalist narratives of Clement Greenberg.
Debates
- Modernism versus postmodernism
- Scholars debate whether postmodernism marks a genuine break from modernism or a continuation of it, and how to characterize the shift in art of the 1960s through 1980s.
Key figures
- Rosalind Krauss
- Hal Foster
- Benjamin Buchloh
Related topics
Seminal works
- fosteretal2016
- krauss1985
- foster1983
Frequently asked questions
- What is postmodern art?
- A broad tendency from the late 20th century that questioned modernist ideals of originality and progress, embracing appropriation, pastiche, and the mixing of high and popular culture.
- How did Pop art differ from Abstract Expressionism?
- Pop art turned to imagery from mass media and consumer culture with cool detachment, reacting against the gestural, expressive seriousness of Abstract Expressionism.