Hills’ essay traces Alfred H. Barr Jr.’s formulation of Abstract Expressionism as the embodiment of US values of freedom and artistic quality during the Cold War. Drawing on the Museum’s archives and Barr’s handbook to the collection “What is Modern Painting?” published in multiple editions and languages, she analyzes this influential guidebook to the collection, … Continue reading “Truth, Freedom, Perfection” Alfred Barr’s What Is Modern Painting? As Cold War Rhetoric
Art History
Introduction: Canons and Art History
Brzyski’s essay provides a useful framework to analyze the evolution of art historical canons. She argues that scholars need to interrogate the mechanisms through which often unquestioned hierarchies of artistic value are created by art historians and curators. In other words, she calls for the study of “the mechanics of the canonical system: how and … Continue reading Introduction: Canons and Art History
By Whose Rules? Contemporary Art and Geography of Art Historic Significance
Brzyski provides a useful methodological approach for those analyzing the definitions and reception of non-Western and Eastern European Cold War and contemporary art. Her discussion of conventional Western interpretations of Chinese contemporary art is particularly productive since she points to blind spots in curatorial and scholarly approaches, among them: the dissonance between Eurocentric temporalities of … Continue reading By Whose Rules? Contemporary Art and Geography of Art Historic Significance
