Art since 1900: Modernism, Antimodernism, Postmodernism

In short, what Art since 1900 tenders up as twentieth-century art is a canonical view of modernism, augmented with a dose of "anti-modernism" and with compatible aspects of postmodernism. Granted, any history implies a selection. The nature and the satisfied of this one are far down grounded in what Hal nurse defines as the authors' "double status as modernist art historians and contemporary art critics" (p 679) This uneven phrase may mean that they consider themselves to be historians of modernism and critics of contemporary art, on the other hand the fact is that they act as modernist critics through every part of Granted again, there is no absolute distinction between art criticism and art history, and the latter always involves an uncompounded body of judgment, but these historians practice it with a rare absence of doubt. A remark of the like kind as "still today, after its great inflation and equally great deflation, it is difficult to diocese this sculpture clearly" (p. 270)--made about the works of Henry Moore and Barbara Hepworth--is exceptional. More pervasive is the attitude that Benjamin Buchloh discussing Peter Burger's Theory of the Avant-Garde, defines as the "traditional German task to give grades to history" (p 326) This makes for exciting and sometimes entertaining reading, as when Edward Kienholz is plucked to pieces for creating "one-liners beated into the beholder's head with a skull-crashing baseball bat" (p 420) The underlying criteria, allowing remain too implicit for the good senses not to smack of arbitrariness: on what account should Robert Motherwell be damned for giving in to the "signature style" (p 352) while Cy Twombly for instance, is not level confronted with the possibility of of the like kind an interpretation?