Artists including Andy Warhol, Frank Stella, Jasper Johns, Willem de Kooning, Barnett Newman, and Robert Motherwell discuss the postwar art scene.

This survey of great contemporary artists is the perfect introduction to the exciting world of art today. Artists working after the Second World War faced a confounding array of challenges, as stylistic barriers were broken, technology advanced, and issues of sexuality and race came to the forefront. From painters and photographers to sculptors and performance artists, fifty of the most influential contemporary artists are profiled in this colorful and engaging book that traces the various artistic movements and radical changes of the second half of the twentieth and early twentyfirst centuries. Presented chronologically, each artist is featured in 2 or 4-page spreads that include brilliant reproductions of their most important works, an illuminating biography, key dates in their career, and informative background on major developments in the art world. Throughout the volume a timeline places each artist within the context of contemporary art. As diverse and inspiring as the artists themselves, this book is a voyage of discovery into art's cutting edge.

Thought-provoking and richly visual, Nature Morte brings together, for the first time, the poignant, provocative re-imaginings of the traditional still life by over 180 international contemporary artists. This visually stunning and timely book reveals how leading artists of the 21st century are reinvigorating the still life, a genre previously synonymous with the sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Old Masters. Michael Petry's careful selection celebrates works by emerging and established artists alike, from all over the globe, including John Currin, Elmgreen & Dragset, Robert Gober, Renata Hegyi, Damien Hirst, David Hockney, Gary Hume, Sarah Lucas, Beatriz Milhazes, Gabriel Orozco, Elizabeth Peyton, Marc Quinn, Gerhard Richter, Sam Taylor-Wood and Ai Wei Wei. Short and compelling introductions begin each chapter and are followed by dramatic, visually led spreads that pair each work with a perceptive reading of its significance to the still-life tradition. Petry's engaging, provocative text reveals how contemporary practitioners are revisiting the major motifs of the still life and translating them for the modern world. Petry explores the timeless themes of life, death and the irrevocable passing of time in these new works for our modern world; artworks that invite us to pause and reconsider what it means to be human.

Le revers de la jaquette indique : "With the rise of museums in the 19th century, including the formation in 1824 of the National gallery in London, the art of the past became visible and accessible (in Victorian England) as never before. Inspired by the work of Sandro Botticelli, Jan van Eyck, Diego Velazquez, and others, British artists transformed contemporary art through a creative process that emphasized imitation and emulation. Elizabeth Prettejohn analyzes the ways in which the Old Masters were interpreted by artists, as well as critics, curators, and scholars, and argues that Victorian artists were, paradoxically, at their most original when they imitated the Old Masters most faithfully. Covering Victorian art from the Pre-Raphaelites through to the early modernists, she vividly traces the ways in wich artist such as Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Edward Burne-Jones, and William Orpen engaged with the art of the past to produce some of the greatest art of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries."

This international survey of contemporary painting by a leading author features artwork from over 250 renowned artists whose ideas and aesthetics characterize the painting of our time. The twentieth century brought radical changes in art—including the shift from modernism to postmodernism—which were accompanied by fierce debates regarding the place of painting in contemporary culture. Contemporary Painting argues that the medium has not only persisted in the twenty-first century but expanded and evolved alongside changes in art, technology, politics, and other factors, developing a unique energy and diversity. Renowned critic and art historian Suzanne Hudson offers an intelligent and original survey of the subject, organized into seven thematic chapters, each of which explores an aspect of contemporary painting, from appropriation to the ways in which artists address and engage the body. Hudson’s inclusive and compelling text is sensitive to issues such as queer narratives, race, activism, and climate and demonstrates the continued relevance of painting today. Bringing together more than 250 eminent artists from around the world, such as Cecily Brown, Julie Mehretu, Theaster Gates, Kara Walker, Kehinde Wiley, Takashi Murakami, and Zhang Xiaogang, this is an essential volume for art history enthusiasts, students, critics, and practitioners interested in discovering how painting is approached, reimagined, and challenged by today’s artists.

From Cubism to cartoons, this book of eye-popping art and engaging activities introduces young readers to modern art.Picasso, Chagall, Calder, Lichtenstein, Hockney—these artists and the others profiled here offer a world of interest to children. This exciting exploration of modern, Pop, and postmodern art is designed to appeal to young minds. Large illustrations brimming with color; fascinating explanations and biographical information; do-it-yourself activities, quizzes and a helpful glossary and timeline are all part of the vibrant book. Children will be drawn to the stories and interactive opportunities as they discover these important artists who changed the world.

The classic and provocative account of how art changed irrevocably with pop art and why traditional aesthetics can’t make sense of contemporary art A classic of art criticism and philosophy, After the End of Art continues to generate heated debate for its radical and famous assertion that art ended in the 1960s. Arthur Danto, a philosopher who was also one of the leading art critics of his time, argues that traditional notions of aesthetics no longer apply to contemporary art and that we need a philosophy of art criticism that can deal with perhaps the most perplexing feature of current art: that everything is possible. An insightful and entertaining exploration of art’s most important aesthetic and philosophical issues conducted by an acute observer of contemporary art, After the End of Art argues that, with the eclipse of abstract expressionism, art deviated irrevocably from the narrative course that Vasari helped define for it in the Renaissance. Moreover, Danto makes the case for a new type of criticism that can help us understand art in a posthistorical age where, for example, an artist can produce a work in the style of Rembrandt to create a visual pun, and where traditional theories cannot explain the difference between Andy Warhol’s Brillo Box and the product found in the grocery store. After the End of Art addresses art history, pop art, “people’s art,” the future role of museums, and the critical contributions of Clement Greenberg, whose aesthetics-based criticism helped a previous generation make sense of modernism. Tracing art history from a mimetic tradition (the idea that art was a progressively more adequate representation of reality) through the modern era of manifestos (when art was defined by the artist’s philosophy), Danto shows that it wasn’t until the invention of pop art that the historical understanding of the means and ends of art was nullified. Even modernist art, which tried to break with the past by questioning the ways in which art was produced, hinged on a narrative.