After the Fall Art since 1900: Modernism, Antimodernism, Postmodernism by Hal Foster; Rosalind Krauss; Yve-Alain Bois;

Benjamin H. D. Buchloh Review by: Charles Harrison Art Journal, Vol. 65, No. 1 (Spring, 2006), pp. 116-119 Published by: College Art Association Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/20068454 . Accessed: 29/03/2014 03:23
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After
Charles
Hal Bois, since Foster, and

the Fall
Harrison
Rosalind Benjamin Krauss,Yve-Alain H. D. Buchloh. Antimodernism, Thames color and ills., Art

vulnerable

for Art since 1900 render the book highly to hostile characterization of its Buchloh's contri

October, each has a substantial vidual

record of indi

of particularly juicy targets. But the authors might respond some justice that in aiming to treat the with art with due history of modern one necessarily risks confirming conservatives dices of intellectual seriousness the preju and

expository style. Benjamin butions present a number

art in twentieth-century publication and all hold senior history and criticism, posts in substantial university departments New York. On in or within reach of of art and art history the authority of the jacket copy they are "arguably the four most art historians of important and influential our time." (The presumed of condition this claim indeed to be arguable allowing is that it is the art of the twentieth alone that is at issue.) Their aim than to consolidate the extensive century is no less critical

/ 900: Modernism, London: 704

Postmodernism. Hudson, 224 b/w. 2004. $95.

pp., 413

This

to categorize. is not an easy publication In its single-volume, format it hardbound has the physical aspect of a glossy coffee table book aimed at the retail market, where the affiliation that comes

philistines. They may not be too concerned? may even feel a kind of satisfaction?if Art since 1900 disappoints those would-be come to the publication enthusiasts who for amore confident consumption hoping canon of modern art. It is of the established clear enough from the care that has been and tracing of illustra taken in the selection tions that something than a reinforcement authors concerns book can quite else is intended of the canon. And the

enterprise of modern menced

of replacing modernism's history art?an that com enterprise

automatically to mind iswith the type of bland ency survey that used to emerge from clopaedic like Larousse. The houses French publishing seem to be presup purchaser who may thus a dream of by posed is someone possessed who might be enlightenment, Art since 1900 by the admirable and design and by the quantity is likely and who illustrations, tle more attracted to clarity of its quality of its

at the close of the 1960s, impelled in part by the art of that decade and in part by the newly available resources of princi pally European In shaping critical theory. the character of Art since to is the

so far as justifiably claim that the the checkable information

and the level of scholarship provides, to detail is far in excess of what of attention might be expected of the typical ency (To be picky: Jacob monograph.

seem 1900, two factors in particular have been decisive. The first of these authors' theoretical common occupation

of a certain

to require lit of the accompanying prose than and informative that it be comprehensible

clopaedic

lines. along relatively well-rehearsed But for anyone who approaches Art since of this order, a ran 1900 with expectations dom sample of the text is liable to prove if not wholly discourag seriously troubling, text consists For of a succession of that ing. more-or-less uningratiating tory essays "theoretical the twentieth (14) and self-contained academic setting methods out papers in an style: four introduc the authors' favored

Epstein's original Rock Drill is not "long-lost," the but was dismantled by the artist [266]; is it... in ? what Richard Hamilton's Just rug is derived but from while not from a Pollock a photo of crowds is not "the face of Mars" the ceiling but Earth seen from an early high-altitude 's exhibition of rocket [390]; Seth Siegelaub by Robert Joseph Kosuth, staged in January and itwas Barry, Douglas Huebler, and Lawrence Weiner was 1969, not 1968 [^27]; rather than Rome that drip painting on a beach,

identifiable ground?a ground the editorial tendency of October and out in their various separate publi mapped cations. Among the points of reference by with which the book's art ismost Barthes's of twentieth-century are Roland oriented clearly Walter critique of Enlightenment, view

account of the work of art in the Benjamin's Theodor of mechanical age reproducibility, on the culture Adorno and Max Horkheimer on the society of the industry, Guy Debord on the theory of and Peter spectacle, B?rger If there is a single artist who the avant-garde. is seen to loom over Duchamp, reputation was it isMarcel whose the art of the century, of the resurgence

works

of framing the art of centuries" and twenty-first of roughly equal to a detailed according

Florence

107 chapters

stood for the values of disegno conventionally in contrast with Venetian colore [6r;o]. But errors can that straightforward supposing from grounds for properly be distinguished this is a very small harvest of disagreement, errors to reap from so large a book.) In fairness to the authors' endeavor, it

New York art world on this account

length, arranged To these are added two "round chronology. tables" or quasi-conversational symposia, one for the conclusion of each half, and a are not so much tech glossary of terms that nical as topical with respect to a highly kind of cultural analysis. Itmay sophisticated of art books can be be that the lay consumer persuaded concept she may means that she needs of desublimation, to understand for instance, the but

As is customary serves Greenberg dominant critical

amajor factor in the of the 1960s, and who could virtually do no wrong. in such enterprises, Clement for the most part as the of a superseded

be said that the representative image of Art since 1900 is not really provided by its hardback version but rather by its alternative is two-volume format in paperback, which aimed not just at the high street presumably and the set-book but at the student market list. And unlike bookstores, from within have how the browsers in the retail this work

could

representative order.

may

of the resulting history out along the following lines. At the beginning of the twentieth be sketched

A crude outline

it still struggle to grasp just what as a socially to say that it is "identified and historically factor of cul determining tural decline tions" caused by mass-cultural forma

art is destabilized?and figurative the effects of photography. "deskilled"?by that open up The practical alternatives century, are those of mechanical abstract benefit of reproduction, the art, and of the readymade. With of hindsight each of these may be of resistance to the "culture imagery to the public

those who

(683). It has to be acknowledged strategy

that the and publicity

will mostly some idea of what to expect and of itmight the be put to use. Besides association as editors of the journal

approach the academic world

seen as amode

authors'

apparent marketing

of the spectacle"?i.e.,

I 16 SPRING 2006

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are pursued in various ways factions by avant-garde seeking to bring art close to "the praxis of life." Maintenance of capital. They of such resistance becomes a condition of in art in "radicality" (i.e., of critical virtue) can develop only so far general. Abstract art in the its "paradigms" before it establishes grid and the monochrome toward serial production. sents a retreat from sphere" medium" and is driven It otherwise

most before

difficult

and creative work

is done

contributions.

Krauss's

introduction

on is

in the any text is actually written, conversational the process of matching of the subject diverse and complex material structure of the work, against the imagined against the interests and competen cies of the contributors. The system these and both

"Poststructuralism followed

and deconstruction"

by twenty-six chapters with one shared, the subjects pretty evenly distributed over the the period. She also carries much heaviest text boxes authors for the occasional responsibility that serve as summary glosses and issues. Bois's is on and struc and he is the in on

repre the "proletarian public into "the values specific to the to of painting, and a submission for spectacle. After the Second of bourgeois the hegemony cul becomes associated increasingly the modernist of the aesthetic, concept and on the

introduction "Formalism

art since 1900

Reviews
no contribution is responsible shared, the

turalism," author

the demand World War, tural values on

of twenty-two chapters, though he makes

after the year 1967. Buchloh for twenty chapters with one

the one hand with

of the autonomy other with culture sumerist

to the 1920s greater part of these devoted is on "The and the 1960s. His introduction social history of art." (Worthy but pedestrian and the chapters on the Mexican muralists are credited to Ann Harlem Renaissance Dempsey.) The allocation introductions offers

industry.

the development of a rapacious In the face of the "con

associated with the soc recycling" a of the iety spectacle, "neo-avant-garde" aims to restore broken connections with and to restore some avant-garde of of pasts."The "reclamation possibility the and the pervasive of readymade legacy ness of the photographic image serve to the original undermine ality. The notions of origin is radical of practice tendency cate directed the fixed against increasingly conservative

of responsibility for the some guide to the dis

volume Hudson ThwiMf?

tribution of year-topics the authors, among so that specific applications and extensions of the four different methods of framing are to some extent braided together as the larger narrative workhorse conscience, unfolds. Foster of the book Krauss as the emerges and perhaps as its as its most intellectually

authors

and sculpture, toward the gories of painting and the site-specific, anti-aesthetic and, in art movement, the wake of the Conceptual toward modes (As Duchamp's Broodthaers, and Michael of "institutional critique." supposed heirs, Marcel Hans Haacke, Daniel Buren, Asher dominate the 1970s.) as a "net itself

period and each decade

to articulate have employed the is to divide the book into decades

into a number of signifi cant years. The year then serves as the effec tive title of a chapter, with a subhead in the

manner

its of a news bulletin advertising text is peppered The resulting highlights. with index points serving to direct the reader to possible thematic connections and convergences topical pathways out the book. so that in other chapters, can be followed through

as itsmost deter energetic voice, Buchloh art the mined summary (That ideologue. narrative historical sketched out above is more readily identified with Buchloh's tributions than with the other authors' due con is

As the institution work comes which of discourses,"

of art is revealed that network

to the relatively bold-character perhaps effect of his analyses.) Bois's contributions? later ones in particular?are marked by from the critical edifice of disengagement modernism that his French origin no doubt his a explains. (It is hard to imagine an American critic suggesting that Fran?ois Morellet Frank Stella in deducing his anticipated structure from an "arbitrary gener pictorial ative element" [516].) This disengagement on Bois's part serves to just how highlight much of of a shadow the Anglo-American casts over how hard the work form of that critical edifice

to be envisaged the critical work account

as the "site" within of art is to be located.

to the point of is summary is claimed travesty, of course, and no more the kind of for it here than that it represents This that Art since 1900 might leave in afterimage the mind of a responsive student reader. It that not one of the may be acknowledged individual could be authors' contributions altogether out some assimilated substantial to that account with remainder?which the second

for the several chapters is Responsibility in an unemphatic credited style and manner, that the marking of individual implying a has been accorded authorship relatively low priority. But for all the shared theoreti cal presumptions is likely to notice sheer of the authors, telling variations the reader in the

readability of the prose. Foster is the major contributor, introductory modernism

In the event, with an in by of

introduces acknowledgement factor serving to characterize

essay on "Psychoanalysis and as method," followed the majority

the other to deploy a manner

three?and the crucial untainted

it is for them

tion of Art since 1900. This of topics decided of labor and allocation the authors. Anyone who has among in a collaborative engaged rable scope will appreciate

the composi is the division

separate chapters, thirty-six to the period these devoted coverage of the years since much credit allowed the dominant that some to show voice,

since 19^0. In 1980, his is very and it is to his uncertainties his concluding are

of autonomy. it is this difficulty account One

in concept of medium notions by modernist Indeed, it could be said that above all that stalks their

project of compa that much of the

significant through

of the period since the 1970s. of the book's more dramatic moments in the concluding symposium when

occurs

I I7 art journal

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Krauss declares

now, responsibility from this attack on

that if she as a critic has any it is "to dissociate myself the medium, and to is to say for by which to a consid

ual movements troubling positive ensures

and artists, but

this is not

in itself. It can be argued on the side that the structure of the book some critical resistance to that era

as pastiche in her book that is elaborated is virtually while The Picasso Papers, Bonnard a column of text and ignored, scoring half small picture (this in a book that finds space for illustration of eight works by come Mark Rothko's paintings Broodthaers). one relatively late in the supposed development to thus be thought of abstract art and might for the idea that the grid and pose problems the monochrome termini. They account, represent unavoidable are briefly assimilated to the as seri classified however, by being

speak for its importance, which the continuance of modernism," she means

the work "returning Foster of the rules" (674). Though some at this with apparent point responds to his own contribu alarm, the conclusion eration tion on lar note. intrinsic involuted the year 1992 strikes a not dissimi "Granted, a strict focus on its own

sure of to which art significant difference historical conduces. There are categorization nevertheless some cases where a determina tion to "rescue" their supposed criticism in some cases artists and groupings from mod by marginalization and art history (amounting to no more than their absence exhibition and publication) of a kind of indi

ernist

can lead to an art that is problems and detached, but a strict focus debates can lead art to forget of forms, its own mem

from American results

in the extrusion

on extrinsic its own

repertoire the critical ory of meanings?to relinquish own its semi-autonomous of possibilities sites" (629). structure the chronological Predictably, at some the authors works better adopted by points all years get a some get more than one. The chapter, while year 1959 gets four. Some chapters clearly benefit from the close focus on a historically than at others. Not

gestible radical lump. Much of this is down to Buchloh, for whom marginalization, like seems to lead inexorably to "deskilling," a particularly earnest "radicality." He does the often whimsical and job in reforming messy with anarchy that was Fluxus. The trouble the art-historical of explain equivalent it to is that tends ing jokes require of one's interlocutors that they inhabit a world with

Foster does a compe al production. While tent job on the English material that catches the authors' attention, neither Walter at all. Sickert nor Roger Hilton ismentioned Etant donn?s?which Duchamp's nothing in which wrought

is surely to the institution if not congenial it is housed?becomes "a newly a "total and devastating paradigm,"

out bathos.

on specific issue. Bois is particularly good in 1900, Auguste Rodin and Henri Matisse and on Matisse again in 191o. Krauss writes on in 1918 and on compellingly Duchamp Donald On Judd and Robert Morris hand, in those cases where with academic the other in 1965;. she is also the principal space devoted peers over the

Ifwe once come to suspect not that there is nothing the author might treat with comparable gravity, the nature with his subject must of his engagement inevitably art world be rendered In an questionable. snake-oil populated by

itself operates critique of how the aesthetic and is legitimized" and is credited (497), with providing the energizing for precedent institutional critique. Although subsequent apparatus the book establishes the welcome dis entirely to warrant Barney, robing of Edward Kienholz, Matthew is raised to what and Bill Viola, no objection seems might be thought the thoroughly spectacular of Buren, Haacke, and exhibition-gambits Broodthaers that these last have (allowing been the critical

heavily one looks for reassurance that salespersons, one's guide has the wit both to resist and to work the con. The issue that is unavoidably raised at itmust be in the assessment this point?as of any significant work of critical art history ?is the nature between ments on authorial implication and judge preferences the one hand, and the developing narrative on the other. The of the mutual

offender

to argument interpretation might more

for the emergence of a given tendency. Thus, much of her discus to the sion of collage (in 1912) is devoted rehearsal of an old battle with Patricia

usefully basic accounting

of specific bodies of work have been traded for some

mous

subject to a high degree of posthu account of Buchloh's management). art rests upon a na?ve political Conceptual analysis, and it is partial to the point of false hood. Elements of the movement that criti the collapse of modernism cally confronted to that account are in ways not submissive both and misrepresented. disparaged someone associated with the work (As of Art

theoretical account it touches, narrative

the latter part of her account Leighten, while of Jackson Pollock's allover drip paintings (in 1949) is largely taken up by an engage ment cases, leads with the work of T. J. Clark. In other to the need for coverage submission to degeneration into lists only tenu to the year in ously justified by connection question. Having drawn a couple of short straws, Foster video and labors and performance through art indexed the former accounts of to 1973

that drives Art since 1900 fits where of course, as did the modernist that it has But largely supplanted. it depends for its coher

like that narrative,

ence and its consistency on the adjustment of descriptions and on the effective cancella tion of exceptions. For Greenberg the ten dency of major painting under modernism was toward the elimination To the objection roundly modeled that Dal? artist. is not of modeling. that Salvador Dal? painted

I should declare an interest at & Language to this point. It could only be damaging the integrity of the authors' critical theory were fies it to be claimed ignorance or falsification that that theory justi of the work

in question.) The clearly partisan character of the is not in itself what is problematic; writing nor is it that preference, theory, tive are subject to a fair amount adjustment. How else ismodern and narra of mutual

1974 respectively, in its failure deficient

seriously to acknowledge the

work of Gerry Schum, which pioneering has still to register on the consciousness of New York, though Schum has been dead now for over There provision thirty years. unevenness is considerable material on in the individ

the response was figures, to be counted as amajor account detailed in In the revisionist

Art since 1900, Pablo Picasso's work of the the 1920s is an anomaly, as is virtually entire career of Pierre Bonnard. on Krauss's the work

art history to proceed without to everyone boring death? But unless readers are to take Art since survey, the 1900 as a truly comprehensive are are just how to bound ask questions they the subject material gets singled out in the

of expansive

1919 accordingly chapter recycles condemnation of Picasso's post-Cubist

I 18 SPRING 2006

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narra first place, how far the art-historical to properties in the art of tive is responsive be noticed the period that might indepen how far the theory of the and theory, dently the very critical virtues it actually constitutes Itmight claims to discern. be thought that Art since 1900 is no more vulnerable in this survey. respect than any other art-historical a concept an art?or But the problem with of art?that has no independent being apart from the "network of discourses" resistance is that it to that net can have no effective work. At worst

the occluding surfaces. Art since of 1900 is a product of the generation elsewhere those who did so?described by as the "midthat Buchloh 1960s generation look behind had recognized the historical failure of the and visual modernist concepts of autonomy in which discourse The world of pleasure."2 is accord art its being he and his colleagues It is one place, however. congenial in which dissent is not easily accommodated as potentially constructive criticism, but is a far from rather reduced heresy. to the status of pitiable In this respect Art since 1900 is sim of the monumentally?symptomatic As the to con is amoment the one hand,

Resembling, Dismembering, Remembering

Tim
David

Barringer

Getsy. Body Doubles: Sculpture New Haven: Yale in Britain, 1877-1905. Press, 2004. 248 pp., 150 b/w

University ills. $6f;. Sue

it is client

to the account

Malvern.

Modern

Art, Britain,

and

it. It has traditionally represent in its bearing upon the limits been precisely is describable and of language?of what that would art has done its most invalu sayable?that able imaginative work. And this has had its being made, and something not just thought up. In the words of Niklas of difficul Luhmann, "Only the overcoming a work ties makes significant. Hoc opus, hie ' are if labor est." And the difficulties nothing are some not at point practical. they a concern Perhaps itwas lines that led Foster to worry its own repertoire of forms," along these lest art "forget and Krauss to do with

ply?if time and place of its production. seem almost authors themselves in question on of exhaustion?exhaustion clude, the moment

the Great and

War:Witnessing,Testimony, New Haven: Yale Remembrance. 244 pp., 40 color

Press, 2O04. University ills., 108 b/w. $50. The meeting?ultimately body and modernity the essential books. subject

over we might say, of New York's hegemony the culture of art, on the other of the imagi in the intellectual work nation of socialism of the American Left.

a collision?of in British art is

the

male

1. This is the conclusion to Niklas Luhmann's Art as a Social System, trans. E. M. Knodt (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2000), 315. 2. Benjamin Buchloh, "Hans Haacke: Memory and Instrumental Reason," inNeo-Avantgarde and Culture Industry (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2000), 212. Charles Harrison has been associated with the practice of Art & Language since 1971. He is author of English Art and Modernism 1900-1939; Essays on Art & Language; Modernism; Conceptual Art and Painting; and Painting the Difference: Sex and Spectator in Modern Art, and is coeditor of Art in Theory 1648-1815, and 1900 1815-1900, 2000. He is Professor of the History and Theory of Art at the Open University in the U.K. and a contributor to the two four-volume series, Modern Art: Practices and Debates Twentieth Century. and Art of the

after perusing David more Getsy's aptly luscious study of late Victorian sculpture, one can't avoid connect so grace the ing gilded and lissome youth, fully captured in bronze after bronze, with and dehumanized the damaged bodies by theWar Artists of represented The limbs Frederic Leighton's of 1914-18. Athlete Struggling with a Pythonmay be straining searingly in mortal being modernism's found combat, but the athlete's Itmay seem remain whole. body and that high

pages and the FirstWorld War

two sumptuous the Leafing through strangely glossy of Sue Malvern's history of British art of these

to speak at the very end of the book of to a consideration the work of "returning the rules." If so, these are welcome signs of the possibility of some continuing vitality in the critical project that Art since 1900 repre sents. They are the more welcome given that, the impressive intellectual the book bears witness,

notwithstanding industry to which

is to acad its possibly unavoidable tendency it emicize the very revisionist enterprise seeks no way to consolidate. inconsistent This tendency the book's either with of a radical is in

of the body fragmentation in the trenches, where its fulfillment of mechanized warfare visual on the flesh

the terrible harvest seemed devices

to play out the disruptive and Futurism of Cubism

century or self project's own political It is in the manifest disfavor image. patrician with which Art since 1900 treats anomalies with the critical and counterinstances, lieved solemnity, of the untidinesses offering of virtue modernist in its virtually unre in its rhetorical management

thoroughgoing thread in the art of the twentieth

elaboration

of infantrymen. Yet, faced with the carnage of Ypres and the Somme, British artists, as Malvern academic rejected. chronicles, devices returned so recently to many of the and defiantly a painting provide of bodies and identi

Did history

of practice, and in its of a codification of the conditions that is not critical as the just as inflexible that it seeks apparatus harder practically in the that it art is to to

putting-together-again ties, a Leightonian pageant stepping back from the abyss to a world of corporeal or amaking icons of modernist wholeness, for the collective memory? an important of British contribu

to replace, but actually engage with. It has been

Getsy provides tion to the history revising, Beattie's

a persistent motif of modernism critique Greenberg's in which served to hide the world made. But one could

sculpture, Susan if not altogether replacing, account of The New established

at least learn how

Sculpture and arguing for the centrality of fig in the development of mod urai sculpture ' ern British art. The discerning reader will

I I9 art journal

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