Pop Art And The Origins Of Post Modernism

Examines the critical reception of Pop Art, identifying the American roots of deconstructive post-modernism.

British Pop Art was seen as an integral, even central, part of social change in the Sixties. It was a movement that developed innovative ways of dealing with reality, both reflecting on and participating in the culture. Its aesthetics was often homogeneous with the industrial, with the mass-produced, and, hence, with the artificial, manufactured character of the urban environment. This discontinuity in the traditional approach towards artistic creation furthered the globalization of diversity, which constitutes the abiding concerns of postmodern art. Drawing from postmodern thought and cultural analysis, this book critically examines British Pop Art within the broad interdisciplinary domain of the social and cultural changes that led to flexibility in conceptualization, and provides a contribution to the artistic processes which form and deform the cultural sphere, confirming its relevance to current debates in which questions of postmodern aesthetics prominently figure.

Traces the genesis, consolidation and consequences of the postmodern idea. Beginning in the Hispanic world of the 1930s, the text takes the reader through to the 70s, when Lyotard and Habermas gave the idea of postmodernism wider currency and finally the 90s, with the work of Fredric Jameson.

"One of the most comprehensive and intelligent postmodern critics of art and literature, Huyssen collects here a series of his essays on pomo . . . " —Village Voice Literary Supplement " . . . his work remains alert to the problematic relationship obtaining between marxisms and poststructuralisms." —American Literary History " . . . challenging and astute." —World Literature Today "Huyssen's level-headed account of this controversial constellation of critical voices brings welcome clarification to today's murky haze of cultural discussion and proves definitively that commentary from the tradition of the German Left has an indispensable role to play in contemporary criticism." —The German Quarterly " . . . we will certainly have, after reading this book, a deeper understanding of the forces that have led up to the present and of the possibilities still open to us." —Critical Texts " . . . a rich, multifaceted study." —The Year's Work in English Studies Huyssen argues that postmodernism cannot be regarded as a radical break with the past, as it is deeply indebted to that other trend within the culture of modernity—the historical avant-garde.

Leo Steinberg’s classic Other Criteria comprises eighteen essays on topics ranging from “Contemporary Art and the Plight of Its Public” and the “flatbed picture plane” to reflections on Picasso, Rauschenberg, Rodin, de Kooning, Pollock, Guston, and Jasper Johns. The latter, which Francine du Plessix Gray called “a tour de force of critical method,” is widely regarded as the most eye-opening analysis of the Johns’s work ever written. This edition includes a new preface and a handful of additional illustrations. “The art book of the year, if not of the decade and possibly of the century. . . .The significance of this volume lies not so much in the quality of its insights—although the quality is very high and the insights are important—as in the richness, precision, and elegance of its style. . . . A meeting with the mind of Leo Steinberg is one of the most enlightening experiences that contemporary criticism affords.” —Alfred Frankenstein, Art News “Not only one of the most lucid and independent minds among art critics, but a profound one.”—Robert Motherwell

Pop Art and Beyond foregrounds the roles of gender, race, and class in encounters with Pop during the Long Sixties. Exploring the work of over 20 artists from 5 continents, it offers new perspectives on Pop's heterogeneity. Featuring an array of rigorous chapters written by both acclaimed experts and emerging scholars, this anthology transcends the borders of individual and national contexts, and suspends hierarchies creating a space for the work of artists like Andy Warhol and the women of the Black Arts Movement to converse. It casts an inclusive look at the intersectional complexities of difference in Pop at a moment that gave rise to a plethora of radical social movements and identity politics. While this book introduces revelatory non-canonical artists into the Pop context or amplifies the careers of others, it is not limited to the confines of fine art. Chapters explore the intersecting variables of oppression and liberation in rituals of youth subcultures as well as practices across media with Pop sources and parallels ranging from Native American objects, Harlem advertisements, and Cordel literature, to stand-up comedy, music, fashion, and design. Pop Art and Beyond thus widens the conversation about what Pop was and what it can be for current art in its struggle for social justice and critiques of power.

Now in paperback, Fredric Jameson’s most wide-ranging work seeks to crystalize a definition of ”postmodernism”. Jameson’s inquiry looks at the postmodern across a wide landscape, from “high” art to “low” from market ideology to architecture, from painting to “punk” film, from video art to literature.