Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Tables
- Preface
- Introduction: And Now for Something Completely Different
- 1 The Back Story of Twentieth-Century Art
- 2 The Greatest Artists of the Twentieth Century
- 3 The Most Important Works of Art of the Twentieth Century
- 4 The Greatest Artistic Breakthroughs of the Twentieth Century
- 5 The Greatest Women Artists of the Twentieth Century
- 6 Creating New Genres: Conceptual Artists at Work and Play in the Twentieth Century
- 7 And Now for Something Completely Different: The Versatility of Conceptual Innovators
- 8 You Cannot Be Serious: The Conceptual Innovator as Trickster
- 9 Painting by Proxy: The Conceptual Artist as Manufacturer
- 10 Co-Authoring Advanced Art
- 11 Language in Visual Art
- 12 Portraits of the Artist: Personal Visual Art in the Twentieth Century
- 13 The Rise and (Partial) Fall of Abstract Painting in the Twentieth Century
- 14 The Globalization of Advanced Art in the Twentieth Century
- 15 Artists and the Market: From Leonardo and Titian to Warhol and Hirst
- 16 The State of Advanced Art: The Late Twentieth Century and Beyond
- Notes
- Bibliography
- Index
4 - The Greatest Artistic Breakthroughs of the Twentieth Century
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 June 2012
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Tables
- Preface
- Introduction: And Now for Something Completely Different
- 1 The Back Story of Twentieth-Century Art
- 2 The Greatest Artists of the Twentieth Century
- 3 The Most Important Works of Art of the Twentieth Century
- 4 The Greatest Artistic Breakthroughs of the Twentieth Century
- 5 The Greatest Women Artists of the Twentieth Century
- 6 Creating New Genres: Conceptual Artists at Work and Play in the Twentieth Century
- 7 And Now for Something Completely Different: The Versatility of Conceptual Innovators
- 8 You Cannot Be Serious: The Conceptual Innovator as Trickster
- 9 Painting by Proxy: The Conceptual Artist as Manufacturer
- 10 Co-Authoring Advanced Art
- 11 Language in Visual Art
- 12 Portraits of the Artist: Personal Visual Art in the Twentieth Century
- 13 The Rise and (Partial) Fall of Abstract Painting in the Twentieth Century
- 14 The Globalization of Advanced Art in the Twentieth Century
- 15 Artists and the Market: From Leonardo and Titian to Warhol and Hirst
- 16 The State of Advanced Art: The Late Twentieth Century and Beyond
- Notes
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
Breakthroughs
[The artist] has to make an enormous effort to lift himself above his contemporaries. This results in what we often call the “breakthrough,” that every artist on the path to success has to make.
Sir Alan BownessThe true subject of art history is the narrative and analysis of the succession of innovations that have changed the practices of artists over the course of time. This is a source of considerable confusion not only among the public at large, but even among many art scholars, for there is a persistent belief that art history is the story of the lives of great artists. However widespread, this belief is mistaken. Artists' contributions to their discipline do not consist of their entire body of work, but rather only that part of it that embodies inventions that are subsequently deemed useful by other artists. The chief curator of painting and sculpture at New York's Museum of Modern Art, perhaps the world's preeminent museum of twentieth-century art, recently expressed this succinctly in explaining the mission of his institution: “MOMA is a museum interested in telling the story of successive innovations rather than a museum interested in the longevity of individual careers.” Scholarly surveys follow this same model, as for example in the statement that opens the preface to their recent textbook, Art Since 1900, Hal Foster, Rosalind Krauss, Yve-Alain Bois, and Benjamin Buchloh declare not that their work is arranged around the careers of artists, but rather that “This book is organized as a succession of important events, each keyed to an appropriate date, and can thus be read as a chronological account of twentieth-century art.”
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- Chapter
- Information
- Conceptual Revolutions in Twentieth-Century Art , pp. 79 - 92Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2009