artnet Magazine

Marcel Duchamp's, Fountain (1917),
Photographed by Alfred Stieglitz

A CRITICAL HISTORY OF 20TH-CENTURY ART
by Donald Kuspit
In the introduction to his new book, to be published in Artnet Magazine, the author examines the rise of the avant-garde.

Dec. 27, 2005

Introduction
Twentieth Century Art: An Overview of Critical Opinion
"The real problem of modernity is the problem of belief," writes Daniel Bell, the sociologist and political theorist. "To use an unfashionable term, it is a spiritual crisis, since the new anchorages have proved illusory and the old ones have become submerged. It is a situation which brings us back to nihilism; lacking a past or a future, there is only a void."(1) Modern art, in all its seemingless limitless variety, presents itself as one solution to the problem, indeed, as some think, the only important solution.
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A Critical History of 20th Century Art Contents

Jan. 10, 2006	A CRITICAL HISTORY OF 20TH-CENTURY ART by Donald Kuspit Chapter 1, part 1 & 2: New Forms For Old Feelings: The First Decade.

Jan. 26, 2006	A CRITICAL HISTORY OF 20TH-CENTURY ART by Donald Kuspit Chapter 1, part 3: New Forms For Old Feelings: The First Decade.

Feb. 3, 2006	A CRITICAL HISTORY OF 20TH-CENTURY ART by Donald Kuspit Chapter 1, Part 4: New Forms For Old Feelings: The First Decade

Feb. 17, 2006	A CRITICAL HISTORY OF 20TH-CENTURY ART by Donald Kuspit Chapter 2: Spiritualism And Nihilism: The Second Decade

Mar. 6, 2006	A CRITICAL HISTORY OF 20TH-CENTURY ART by Donald Kuspit Chapter 2, part 2: spiritualism and nihilism: the second decade.

Mar. 17, 2006	A CRITICAL HISTORY OF 20TH-CENTURY ART by Donald Kuspit Chapter 2, Part 3: Marcel Duchamp’s invention of the readymade.

Mar. 24, 2006	A CRITICAL HISTORY OF 20TH-CENTURY ART by Donald Kuspit Chapter 2, Part 4: Picabia, collage, Futurism, Orphism, Malevich and more.

Apr. 14, 2006	A CRITICAL HISTORY OF 20TH-CENTURY ART by Donald Kuspit Chapter 3, Part 1: automatism in Ernst, Breton and Surrealism.

Apr. 25, 2006	A CRITICAL HISTORY OF 20TH-CENTURY ART by Donald Kuspit Chapter 3, Part 2: from the Exquisite Corpse to Giacometti.

May 5, 2006	A CRITICAL HISTORY OF 20TH-CENTURY ART by Donald Kuspit Chapter 3, Part 3: from the peintres maudits and the Vienna Secession to the Bauhaus.

May 23, 2006	A CRITICAL HISTORY OF 20TH-CENTURY ART by Donald Kuspit Chapter 4, Part 1: Classicism and conflict in Klee, Pollock and Picasso.

June 1, 2006	A CRITICAL HISTORY OF 20TH-CENTURY ART by Donald Kuspit Chapter 4, Parts 2 & 3: Max Beckmann, Hannah Höch, John Heartfield and fantastic realism.

June 16, 2006	A CRITICAL HISTORY OF 20TH-CENTURY ART by Donald Kuspit Chapter 4, Part 4: Picasso, Braque, Léger, Matisse, de Chirico, Stanley Spencer and more.

June 27, 2006	A CRITICAL HISTORY OF 20TH-CENTURY ART by Donald Kuspit Chapter 5: From Abstract Expressionism to Expressionistic Symbolism, via Pollock, Gorky, de Kooning

July 7, 2006	A CRITICAL HISTORY OF 20TH-CENTURY ART by Donald Kuspit Chapter 6: The dialectic of myth and abstraction in Abstract Expressionism, Pop and Art Informel.

July 14, 2006	A CRITICAL HISTORY OF 20TH-CENTURY ART by Donald Kuspit Chapter 7, Parts 1, 2 & 3: Minimal and Pop art and the atrophy of the avant-garde.

July 21, 2006	A CRITICAL HISTORY OF 20TH-CENTURY ART by Donald Kuspit Chapter 7, Parts 4 & 5: The tragic beauty of Robert Smithson, Joseph Beuys and Eva Hesse.

July 28, 2006	A CRITICAL HISTORY OF 20TH-CENTURY ART by Donald Kuspit Chapter 8: Postmodernity from Polke and Judy Chicago to German Neo-Expressionism.

Aug. 9, 2006	A CRITICAL HISTORY OF 20TH-CENTURY ART by Donald Kuspit Chapter 9: The search for authenticity and the rebellion against Conceptual pseudo-art.

Aug. 21, 2006	A CRITICAL HISTORY OF 20TH-CENTURY ART by Donald Kuspit Chapter 10, Part 1: The decadence of advanced art and the return of tradition and beauty.

Aug. 25, 2006	A CRITICAL HISTORY OF 20TH-CENTURY ART by Donald Kuspit Chapter 10, Part 2: The Decadence of Advanced Art and the Return of Tradition and Beauty: The New as Tower of Conceptual Babel: The Tenth Decade.