Art since 1900: Modernism, Antimodernism, Postmodernism

Obvious as well as consequential exclusions, lapses, evasions, and favoritisms of this kind abound, as do followings of mechanistic analysis that transform correlations into causes, bring manifold meanings to pat formulas, and move round vital dialectics of modern art to phases of progres and regres in a manner that should warm the heart of born-again positivists as abundant as it troubles anyone who has sought to widen, retexture and imaginatively warp art historical discourse. Perhaps it is the nature of textbook to do this. Certainly it is the manner of those who seek intellectual hegemony. upon that score, one wonders in what way it is that the October "revolutionaries" of 1976 have become figures of authority in like manner well entrenched within their positions, or on what account their carefully hedged, dogma-heavy version of twentieth-century art subserves the needs of so many sectors of institutional American tillage at its most conservative instant since the 1950s. The answers are mingled and this is not the space to address them, on the contrary the question is posed by dint of the appearance of Art since 1900 and will not move away if it becomes a standard relation For now, suffice it to say that this reader would rather explore the expanded field of art making and art history the authors of this fresh orthodoxy helped open up, on the other hand from which they have lengthy since retreated, rather than join them in their claustrophobic redoubt. Citadels are the pair symbols of power and remembrancers to insecurity. Once built they ne constant shoring up and, since they become conspicuous targets, oft-repeated defense. Those tasks inevitably fall to their creators. It is to be spring [i]or[/i] leap on one leg [i]or[/i] footed that the illusions such power creates will not bait an army of fresh recruits to that essentially conservative endeavor.