Art Since 1900: Modernism, Antimodernism, Postmodernism (review)

Art Since 1900 is a survey of the ideas and particular approach to art history of its authors-Hal Foster, Rosalind Krauss, Yves-Alain Bois and Benjamin Buchloh. These art theorists have showcased their ideas in October, the journal founded in the U.S.A. in 1976. Art Since 1900 is an overview and a continuation of the October project. This means that the essays, discussions and discrete entries on particular subjects that compose the book focus on the art of Europe and the U.S.A., are preoccupied with critical theory and conceive of art as "texts" to be analyzed and problems to be solved. Duchamp, of course, is the towering figure in this view of art. To paraphrase Levi-Strauss, these authors believe that "art is good to think." In "thinking art" the authors invoke the grand narratives of psychoanalysis, structuralism, semiotics, modernism and postmodernism.

Unlike many, I have no quarrel with this theoretical focus. The authors are instrumental figures in the development of this way of looking at art; their work is extremely influential, and I doubt that anyone could seriously claim that it is not worth engaging. My view is that this is one highly influential approach to the study of how visual meaning is constructed and that as much can be gained from rejecting aspects-or indeed, all-of this approach as accepting it.

My expectation was that this survey would introduce the undergraduate and the more serious general reader to this way of engaging with visual art. In some respects this expectation is met. The organization of the material is a triumph. Some 107 essays are arranged chronologically from 1900 to 2003; each is well illustrated and supplemented by detailed timelines and side boxes on ancillary topics. Four theoretical essays on psychoanalysis, the social history of art, structuralism and formalism, and poststructuralism and deconstruction are placed at the beginning of the volume and lay the theoretical foundations for what follows. Easy-to-follow symbols throughout the text refer the reader to related essays and entries, so that nonchronological readings are possible. The reader can follow a traditional art-historical reading or break off at any point to follow a series of linked ideas that cut across time. This organization of the material encourages multiple readings of subjects, with illuminating results. It is a way of reading that is familiar to us because this is how the Internet creates relationships between ideas-by the use of hyperlinks-but it takes a high degree of skill to emulate so effortlessly this way of linking ideas in print with a subject as complicated as this.

The problems I perceive with this work are twofold. One is the inability of the authors to communicate their ideas in plain English. I see nothing intrinsic in the subject matter that precludes this. The book, however, is full of sentences like this: "Matisse resisted Rodin's metonymic fragmentation, and in some ways his sculpture represents the opposite approach."

The essays are full of jargon, such as "hierarchical canonicity" and "hegemonic media apparatus," and contain much of the vocabulary of Derrida and other theorists. Some of this jargon can be understood if the introductory essays are read first, but this precludes the kind of creative readings of the book made possible by the constant references to related ideas. A firm grasp of most of the complex theories the authors subscribe to is necessary before most of the essays can be read, and this is only very partly provided for in the introductory essays. In addition, I simply cannot see why much of this jargon is used. It seems possible to explain many of the authors' ideas without recourse to it, and those passages that I found unable to translate into jargon-free English were ones I suspected made little sense to begin with.

While the essays suffer from this use of jargon and barely comprehensible sentences, the text...