Since 1950

In a series of compelling and finely argued essays on late twentieth-century art and the critical perspectives it has generated, Charles Harrison offers an acute analysis of the seismic shift that took place when the modernist formalism that had underpinned thinking about art in the first half of the century came to be seen as a spent force. Harrison's principal concern in this book is with the circumstances and consequences of that shift – in thought about art, and in criticism. He asks how the diverse art of this period is to be understood and on what basis judgments are to be made about the merits and importance of specific works.The twelve essays that compose the book were written over a period of twenty years and range from a revaluation of the work of Ben Nicholson, through a detailed account of English sculpture in the 1960s and 1970s, to commentary on the recent expansionist tendencies of modern art institutions. They represent a sustained attempt to examine the nature of modernism in art – both its successes and its failures – and to understand the changes that have followed the international Conceptual Art movement of the late 1960s and early 1970s, among them a massive growth in the market and audience for modern art, and an erosion of the barriers between fine art and popular culture. Harrison considers the implications of these changes for the judgment and criticism of art.This is an original and incisive contribution to the discussion of modern and post-modern art and of the theories by which it has been influenced and explained, from someone who has been closely involved in the art of this period as practitioner, teacher, critic and historian.