U of Ideas of General Interest -- March 2000
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Contact: Melissa Mitchell, Arts Editor, (217) 333-5491; [email protected]
ART HISTORY
New edition of popular text includes update on art of the 1990s
CHAMPAIGN, Ill. -- The 1990s are barely behind us, but already the art of the 20th century's final decade has been chronicled in a just-published second edition of Jonathan Fineberg's "Art Since 1940: Strategies of Being" (Harry N. Abrams Inc.).
Fineberg, a University of Illinois professor of art history, said the book's first edition, published in 1995, is the most widely used textbook for university courses on contemporary art. Along with a new chapter on art created in the '90s, the recent edition has been beefed up throughout, with expanded treatments of various artists and new considerations of their place in the art history of the period.
"From Chapter 11 -- which covers the '70s -- forward, a fair amount of material has been added," Fineberg said. "The augmentation represents not only a more thorough treatment, but also includes things that weren't as clearly defined five years ago. For example, the new edition includes a broader treatment of the place of feminism, and more prominence is given to performance art and installation."
In both editions, Fineberg's primary focus has been "on the work of extraordinary individuals." As he notes in the book's introduction, "I have subordinated the role of 'movements' and collective cultural constructs. This approach expresses my belief that the innovations of the individuals, in response to what they themselves encounter in the world, play the most significant role in driving the narrative of art history (though I do not wish to discount the impact of vernaculars, tradition, social, political, or economic factors in defining 'what the artist encounters')".
Fineberg selected the year 1940 as a launching point for his survey of contemporary European and American art because "it was then that a large part of the Paris art scene moved en masse to New York, definitively transforming it into the art capital of the world." Ironically, one of the defining elements of '90s art, he said, was "the broadening of the art world. There is no longer as much of a focus on New York artists. Important figures are coming out of Asia, Third World countries, Europe and other parts of the U.S."
Who are these newer figures? And how will they stand up against the likes of Willem de Kooning, Jasper Johns, Andy Warhol and other artists who made their marks from the '40s through the '60s? From such close range, the calls are not always easy to make, Fineberg concedes.
"I have to be a kind of fieldworker," he said, noting that he is "constantly listening to artists and looking at what's really important to them. As I understand better what the artists are doing now, I also understand better what was important in the recent past and attempt to adjust the account I have given of it." Whereas art historians who embark on new explorations of earlier periods have various sets of footprints to follow, "there was no map for art since 1940, until I wrote this book," Fineberg said.
"This book is about the art of my own lifetime," Fineberg said. "I was born just before Jackson Pollock's first drip picture, and it has been enormously helpful to me to have known many of the artists personally, from Robert Motherwell to the young artists of today, like Ann Hamilton and Roxy Paine."
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