A Companion to Contemporary Art Since 1945

List of Figures ix

Notes on Contributors xiv

Series Editor’s Preface xviii

Acknowledgments xix

Part I: Introduction 1

1 Writing Contemporary Art into History, a Paradox? 3
Amelia Jones

Part II: Decades 17
1945–60

2 “America” and its Discontents: Art and Politics 1945–60 19
Gavin Butt
1960–70

3 The 1960s: A Decade Out-of-Bounds 38
Anna Dezeuze
1970–80

4 “I’m sort of sliding around in place . . . ummm . . .”: Art in the 1970s 60
Sam Gathercole
1980–90

5 Pictures and Positions in the 1980s 83
Howard Singerman
1990–2005

6 1990–2005: In the Clutches of Time 107
Henry M. Sayre

Part III: Aesthetics 125

Formalism
7 Form and Formless 127
Caroline A. Jones

Art as Idea
8 Re-Thinking the “Duchamp Effect” 145
David Hopkins

Beauty
9 Regarding Beauty 164
Margaret Morgan

Part IV: Politics 189
Avant-Garde

10 Avant-Garde: A Historiography of a Critical Concept 191
Johanne Lamoureux

Activism
11 Facture for Change: US Activist Art since 1950 212
Jennifer González and Adrienne Posner

Culture Wars
12 “The Senators Were Revolted”: Homophobia and the Culture Wars 231
Jonathan D. Katz

Art and Its Public(s)
13 Crowds and Connoisseurs: Art and the Public Sphere in America 249
Grant Kester

Part V: Identity/Subjectivity 269

The Artist
14 The Writerly Artist: Beautiful, Boring, and Blue 271
Carol Mavor

Diaspora
15 Diaspora: Multiple Practices, Multiple Worldviews 296
Steven Nelson

Feminism
16 Power and Pleasure: Feminist Art Practice and Theory in the United States and Britain 317
Laura Meyer

Queer
17 Queer Wallpaper 343
Jennifer Doyle

Race/Ethnicity
18 Implications of Blackness in Contemporary Art 356
Pauline de Souza

Embodiment
19 The Paradoxical Bodies of Contemporary Art 378
Christine Ross

Part VI: Methods/Theories 401

Marxism
20 A Shadow of Marx 403
Neil Cummings and Marysia Lewandowska

Poststructuralism
21 Poststructuralism and Contemporary Art, Past, Present, Future . . . 424
Sarah Wilson

Postcolonial Theory
22 “Fragments of Collapsing Space”: Postcolonial Theory and Contemporary Art 450
Mark Crinson

Visual Culture
23 Visual Culture Studies: Questions of History, Theory, and Practice 470
Marquard Smith

Part VII: Technology 491

Mass Culture, High/Low
24 “That’s All Folks”: Contemporary Art and Popular Culture 493
Nick Mirzoeff

Photography/Index
25 Image + Text: Reconsidering Photography in Contemporary Art 512
Liz Kotz

Spectacle/Appropriation
26 Imagine There’s No Image (It’s Easy If You Try): Appropriation in the Age of Digital Reproduction 534
Dore Bowen

Digital Media
27 “Life-like”: Historicizing Process and Responsiveness in Digital Art 557
María Fernández

Index 582