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Hal Foster et al., Art Since 1900: Modernism, Antimodernism,

Postmodernism, London (Thames and Hudson) 2005, 704 pages, 637
illustrations, 413 in colour, ISBN 0-500-23818-9

How does one begin to write a 2,000-word review of a 704-page book

covering one of the most complex and diverse periods in the history of art,
moreover one compiled by four of the most (if not the most) influential
figures in the field today? Clearly, one approach would be merely descriptive;
another might be to carefully examine a handful of texts, searching for both
new insights and errors. Still another – and this is the route I intend to go
down – would be to look at the book in the context of contemporary art-
historical practice, and to try to ask what its intent and impact might be: how
will Art Since 1900 affect us as researchers and, above all, as teachers of
twentieth-century art? How does it position itself and where does it leave
both us and the next generation of art historians it is intended to train?
The result of almost a decade of work, Art Since 1900 cannot be
described as anything but a monumental achievement, a product of the
storehouse of cerebration that since the 1970s has been October magazine.
Rather than examining the art of the last 100 years in terms of stylistic
developments (the rise, triumph and ‘evolution’ of abstraction, for example),
the authors have chosen a most unusual format: for nearly each year of the
century an important figure, work, book publication or exhibition has been
chosen as a starting point for a panorama of factual information, critical
investigation and theoretical reflection on objects, movements and the
broader cultural and political issues surrounding both art-making and art
history. Symbols in the margins allow the reader to make connections to
other entries in which similar or related themes are discussed, while boxes
illuminate important concepts, events, personalities (some of them, like Leo
Steinberg, still living), and even influential journals and magazines (among
them October itself). A variety of threads are followed through in a large
number of entries – for example the work of Greenberg or the concept of the
informe (formlessness), binding together disparate works and movements.
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The entries themselves often present different critical positions, which are
then steered in a new direction, made dialectical or synthesized to produce a
novel interpretation.
All this allows the authors to push forward many aspects of twentieth-
century art that have remained ignored or under-illuminated in the standard
survey – for example, there are detailed discussions of Russian
Constructivism, Precisionism, female photographers in Weimar Germany and,
probably most importantly (at least in an American context), post-war
European art. The reader is introduced to and is able to feel the intellectual
impact of books like Worringer’s Abstraction and Empathy, Camilla Gray’s The
Great Experiment in Russian Art, 1863-1922 or Jameson’s Postmodernism, or
the Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism; articles like Greenberg’s ‘Modernist
Painting’ or Mulvey’s ‘Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema’; journals like
Bataille’s Documents; shows like MOMA’s ‘New Images of Man’ (1959),
Szeeman’s ‘When Attitude Becomes Form’ (1969) or the Pompidou’s
‘Magiciens de la terre’ (1989); and the establishment of new galleries (Metro
Pictures in New York in 1980) and art institutions (P.S. 1 in 1976).
The entries thus provide a critical reading of both modernist art and its
historiography, making us aware of the interrelationship of that art and the
writings, etc. that have constructed its history. While not denying the
fragmentary nature of art production in the twentieth century, movements,
objects and individuals are shown to be intertwined and embedded in broader
historical processes. The reader (read: art-history student) is introduced to a
large number of names and concepts he or she might otherwise never have
heard, offered up as equals to the artworks and the men and women who
created them. The kaleidoscope effect is intentional – as we all know, there is
no such thing as a ‘master narrative’; for these authors, disorientation and
de-familiarization are obviously the first steps to true insight.
Perhaps the book’s most unusual feature, however, is its theoretical
open-handedness. Never before has a survey commenced with an outline of
its authors’ philosophical approach(s); never before has a survey so frankly
admitted its roots in a particular vision – in this case several of them. These
are set down in four lucid introductions dealing with the art historical
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methods applied throughout the book: psychoanalysis, social art history,

formalism and structuralism, and post-structuralism. Such candour would
have been previously unthinkable in a textbook; it is a testimony to the
changes wrought in academia by postmodernism and undoubtedly one of its
most commendable achievements. Together with the glossary at the back of
the book, these introductions provide the reader with the necessary tools for
understanding the complex issues grappled with in the body of the text. They
are not an easy read, of course; they ask a lot even of the informed reader,
and students will undoubtedly complain of their difficulty. Working through
them, however, is essential to grasp what the authors have to say when it
comes to the art itself.
Art Since 1900 can, however, come across as dryly academic; there is
a peculiar lack of enthusiasm (love of art?) among the four authors that
sometimes borders even on grimness (particularly in the case of the entries
by Benjamin Buchloh). Still, the writing is nothing if not precise and clear-cut
– a great help to the uninitiated – notwithstanding that one occasionally has
the feeling the art might have gotten lost in all the discussion of theory (there
is, for example, very little classic visual analysis). It is also somewhat
problematic to use interpretations as evidence, as this increases the
likelihood that beginning students will confound primary authors and critical
reception. Along the same lines, there is perhaps too much ‘boo-man’ rhetoric
vis à vis Alfred Barr and Clement Greenberg – is it permissible to hinge the
entire discussion of, for example, Abstract Expressionism on one writer?
Arguments about interpretation here threaten to take the place of a
discussion of the works themselves. One of the main aims of the book is, of
course, to correct the distortions imposed on modernist art by precisely these
‘father figures’ (by, among others, reinserting Surrealism into the discourse
and re-evaluating the role of Duchamp and the ready-made), but the tone at
times seems conspiratorial if not downright paranoid. Another point of
criticism might be that Art Since 1900 is oriented entirely to the West
(despite the inclusion of the Japanese Gutai group), to Europe and America
and then only to their major cities and art centres. Although African-American
and other black artists are included, one can’t help feeling their presence as
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somewhat token; on the other hand, the examination of women and feminist
art is more thorough than one could have hoped for, and this is one of the
book’s strongest points. Regarding the entries for the last decade (probably
the most contentious), we find no trace of hype, although there is no
mistaking a certain partisanship if one reads between the lines.
For all this, there is something troubling about Art Since 1900. In my
case, this stems in part from a feeling of nostalgia and loss: the book, after
all, makes the ‘oppositional’ art history I grew up with in some sense official.
Doesn’t the back of the dust jacket proclaim it a ‘landmark’ study in the
history of modern art? Landmarks, monuments – these are things that are
notoriously difficult to challenge. For authors otherwise so concerned with
‘who’s speaking for whom’, who see art and art history as a series of
problems or texts whose ideologies must always be questioned, there is
remarkably little deconstruction of their own authorial voices. Despite the
proclamation that the introductory essays were designed to make the
underpinnings of the project transparent (p. 14) and the use of the subjective
personal pronoun ‘I’ throughout them, despite the fact that the entries are
signed and the denial of a ‘master narrative’, there is still something self-
aggrandizing about this project. For one thing, we only learn who these
individual ‘Is’ in the introductions represent when we read the final
roundtable on the ‘predicament’ of contemporary art, where the authors
address each other by their first names and we are forced to bear witness to
the complexity of their own interrelationships. All this has the paradoxical
effect of making the book seem simultaneously de-masking and critical and
authoritarian and clique-y. And what are we to make of Yves-Alain Bois’
closing remark on the book’s possible ‘liberatory effect’? Can anything be
more alarmingly hyperbolic? And of the fact, as the quartet admitted
(seemingly without a trace of irony) in an interview in The Guardian (3 April),
that these days their best students only wanted to write dissertations on
them?
Is there room to question the authority of these four great intellectuals,
these pop stars of art history? And, if so, how might we go about it? The
response to the ‘October road show’ of the spring and summer – with well-
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attended book presentations and debates at, among others, Tate Modern and
the Centre Pompidou – would seem to suggest that Foster et al. have now
attained the status of those they once sought to overthrow. And it is only
natural that they should want to leave their stamp on the next generation. Of
course, their practice is a thousand times preferable to that of their
forefathers (note the gender here) – richer, deeper, and more stimulating –
but dogma, in whatever form, no matter how complex and (self-)questioning,
is always dangerous. Once one has reached the top of the intellectual heap
one may rightly expect to be taken down a notch. Where are the (future)
academics (other than downright reactionaries) willing to take on this task?
And how will this be possible in the face of a book like Art Since 1900, which
even in its diversity and intricacy presents itself as a kind of Fukuyamian ‘end
of art history’? These are the questions we must ask ourselves as we think
about how to use this brilliant book most advantageously, mining it for its
intellectual and factual treasures, and – one hopes – letting its (literal and
figural) weight stimulate rather than stifle the art history that is still to come.
[1,688 words]

Rachel Esner
Universiteit van Amsterdam