Modern Art: A Very Short Introduction

Public interest in modern art continues to grow, as witnessed by the spectacular success of the Tate Modern in London and the Bilbao Guggenheim. Modern Art: A Very Short Introduction engages general readers, offering them not only information and ideas about modern art, but also explaining its contemporary relevance and history. The book focuses on interrogating the idea of modern art by asking such questions as: What makes 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?

Cottingham 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). He also looks at the role of the dealer from the main Cubist art dealer Kahnweiler, to Charles Saatchi.

About the Series: Combining authority with wit, accessibility, and style, Very Short Introductions offer an introduction to some of life's most interesting topics. Written by experts for the newcomer, they demonstrate the finest contemporary thinking about the central problems and issues in hundreds of key topics, from philosophy to Freud, quantum theory to Islam


Author: David Cottington
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
Published: 05/26/2005
Pages: 152
Binding Type: Paperback
Weight: 0.30lbs
Size: 4.30h x 6.80w x 0.50d
ISBN13: 9780192803641
ISBN10: 0192803646
BISAC Categories:
- Art | History | Modern (Late 19th Century to 1945)
- Art | European
- Art | American | General

About the Author

David Cottington is Professor of History of Art at Falmouth College of Art and the author of Cubism.