Product Description

As public interest in modern art continues to grow, as witnessed by the spectacular success of Tate Modern and the Bilbao Guggenheim, there is a real need for a book that will engage general readers, offering them not only information and ideas about modern art, but also explaining its contemporary relevance and history. This book achieves all this and focuses on interrogating the idea of 'modern' art by asking such questions as: What has made a work of art qualify as modern (or fail to)? How has this selection been made? What is the relationship between modern and contemporary art? Is 'postmodernist' art no longer modern, or just no longer modernist - in either case, why, and what does this claim mean, both for art and the idea of 'the modern'? Cottington examines many key aspects of this subject, including the issue of controversy in modern art, from Manet's Dejeuner sur L'Herbe (1863) to Picasso's Les Demoiselles, and Tracey Emin's Bed, (1999); and the role of the dealer from the main Cubist art dealer Kahnweiler to Charles Saatchi.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #104489 in Books
• Published on: 2005-02-24
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 152 pages

About the Author
David Cottington is Professor of History of Art at Falmouth College of Art. His previous publications include: Cubism ('Movements in Modern Art' series), (Tate Publishing, 1998), and Cubism in the Shadow of War, (Yale University Press, 1998).

Customer Reviews

Short but packed with facts and thought-provoking propositions
This introduction does not provide the reader with the linear, ie. chronological, survey of modern art from the late 20th century onwards, as one would expect to find when reading Honour & Fleming or Gombrich, for instance.

However, Cottington has filled his very short introduction with plenty of factual information and thought-provoking propositions which can be of value for readers in their undergraduate course or anyone who wants to make sense of modern and contemporary art.

The argumentation usually starts from a specific case study of a work of art to fuel the discussion of a specific topic/problematic, and moves on to include further works, which are illustrated within the book either in black and white in the body of the text, or as black and white plates in between chapters.

Whereas the titles of the chapters could give the impression of a thematic approach, and considering that not all works discussed appear in chronological order (the first work under scrutiny is 'Monument', by Rachel Whiteread, for the Fourth Plinth), the book is nonetheless broadly chronological, and the themes elicited by the chapters' titles and sub-headings only reflect major issues tackled by artists at various points of the last decades.