After Modern Art: 1945-2017 (Oxford History of Art)

Book was in great condition, shipped well in a bubble envelope. Wish the cover image was different, as it's a little awkward to carry it around to class. People are always a little concerned with what I'm reading haha. Just a textbook for my art history class, but it definitely looks a little different....

got it for a class, its dry but Its a textbook so thats to be expected

As books on Modern Art go, I suggest skipping this one unless a reference book is desired. Other books, such as The Shock of the New and What Are You Looking At, are infinitely better. Not that the tomb isn't packed with information, it surely is, but the presentation is lacking. It is very much like reading a textbook.Here is a sample: "This performance exemplifies Klein’s participation in the masculinist tradition of the dandy. The self-contained male, renouncing biological productivity (symbolized by the fecundity of the paint-covered women launching themselves at virginal paper surfaces), ultimately reproduces ‘cleanly’ via art." Hopkins, David. After Modern Art (Oxford History of Art) (p. 77). OUP Oxford. Kindle Edition.Of course, the well educated author is expressing a set of "facts", but maybe he isn't. It sounds like an opinion after the third reading, but who knows? Many of the passages in the book read in this way. At first glance it seems a rendition of facts to enlighten the reader, but on contemplation it might be a misleading statement of opinion from one of those "on high" types that tell us what we are seeing. Paint covered women throwing themselves against paper surfaces means what? Well... maybe. I can think of other interpretations.One paragraph is easy enough to take, but when they overwhelm the reader with this kind of analysis and fact mixed together it becomes about as clear as mud. For me, it is like trying to use your head to batter down a wall. Does everything have to be so complex?As one tackles the book and struggles along, the main themes in Modern Art do become clarified through the actions of individual artists and larger movements that awoke and then died along the path to our location in 2017. Does Modern Art survive? Does art itself survive? Is a used urinal art? With all the questioning of what art is, or was, in the post impressionist era a normal individual living in a modest home, working in an office five days per week, then traveling home and watching a flickering screen until bed, may well wonder if anything of the past survives, much less art. Are the odd massive monoliths sitting around outside Modern Art museums supposed to impress our office worker? How do they do that? Is art now for the super intellectuals alone?After Modern Art seems to raise these questions and concerns, but it doesn't seem to supply any real direction into the future. Maybe I missed it, but it seems the art world travels on without looking back or sideways and just happens. When the art appears to predict the future, which can only be discerned in the future, then it is labeled great. But the artist also has to break the norms of his present to be someday lumped into the great category. So, are we just waiting around to discover what art will be fifty years from now? It is all so tiresome, and this book just adds to my sense of fatigue.AD2

I purchased this book as a required textbook for college back in July when I received my syllabus for the Fall semester. I have only put in one hour into the book and the pages are falling out! Now I am unable to return the product or exchange it. Very disappointed with the quality of this books manufacturing.

As books on Modern Art go, I suggest skipping this one unless a reference book is desired. Other books, such as The Shock of the New and What Are You Looking At, are infinitely better. Not that the tomb isn't packed with information, it surely is, but the presentation is lacking. It is very much like reading a textbook.

The writer uses so many big words you will need to buy a dictionary, too.

Dense writer who weaves abreast of research and knowledge into eloquent sentences. Perhap too much of the minor canon. But that’s part of the project. USA and France or USA and the Uk. Very solid foundation in the historic period through post modernism

I like it. I used it for my research of my art theory.

Great book, super condition.