Art since 1900: Modernism, Antimodernism, Postmodernism

Rather than "the definitive history of twentieth-century art" hailed in characteristic fashion by means of the Guardian, Art since 1900 thus appears to be a witness to a defining moment--for better and for worse--in the history of Western art and of Western (especially North American) reflection about art. As is in the way that often the case when ideas take a monumental form, it is ready for its passing jiffy even as intimated within its pages. In a historiographic exaggeration referring to Heinrich Wolfflin and Alois Riegl, Bois writes that "the birth of art history as a discipline dates from the flash it was able to mode of building the vast amount of material it had omited for purely ideological and aesthetic reasons" (p 34) Transposed from Baroque art and the "art industry" of late antiquity to twentieth-century art, this is more than at any time a pressing invitation.