Art Of The Postmodern Era: From The Late 1960s To The Early 1990s

Irving Sandler

Basic Books, Nov 13, 1996 - Art - 636 pages

This is the fourth volume of Irving Sandler's major history of American art since 1945. Sandler shows how, beginning in the late 1960s, new directions in art emerged - diverse postminimal styles, pattern and decoration painting, and new image painting. The 1980s brought other new tendencies - neoexpressionism and media, deconstruction, and commodity art. Sandler discusses the major and minor artists and their works; movements, ideas, attitudes, and styles; and the social and cultural context of the period. He covers postmodernist art theory, the art market, and consumer society. Unlike the previous volumes, this one also includes both American and European art and artists. Among the artists discussed are Robert Morris, Eva Hesse, Lucas Samaras, Richard Serra, Sol Lewitt, Joel Shapiro, Nancy Graves, Joseph Benys, Marcel Broodthaers, Louise Bourgeois, Hannah Wilke, Judy Chicago, Nancy Spero, Robert Kushner, Judy Pfaff, Robert Irwin, Nancy Holt, Susan Rothenberg, Robert Colescott, Jennifer Bartlett, Jonathan Borofsky, Julian Schnabel, David Salle, Eric Fischl, Elizabeth Murray, Leon Golub, April Gornik, Sean Scully, Francesco Clemente, Gerhard Richter, Anselm Kiefer, Barbara Kruger, Hans Haacke, Cindy Sherman, Jeff Koons, Philip Taaffe, Adrian Piper, Robert Mapplethorpe, and Magdalena Abakanowicz. The end of the postmodern era came in the early 1990s, and Sandler charts its finale.

About the author

Irving Sandler was born in Brooklyn, New York on July 22, 1925. He enlisted in the Marine Corps at the age of 17 and was sent to Franklin and Marshall College for an officer training program. He spent the rest of World War II with a stateside radar unit. After leaving the Marines in 1946 with the rank of second lieutenant, he received a bachelor's degree from Temple University in 1948 and a master's degree in American studies from the University of Pennsylvania in 1950. He became the manager of the Tanager Gallery, an important artists' cooperative, in 1956. He also became the programming coordinator for the Artists' Club, a weekly symposium attended by most of the major artists of the period. He started writing reviews for ArtNews in 1956 and was the magazine's senior critic until 1962. He also wrote for Art International and was a critic at The New York Post from 1960 to 1964. He taught at New York University and later at Purchase College, from which he retired in 1997. He wrote numerous books including The Triumph of American Painting: A History of Abstract Expressionism, The New York School: The Painters and Sculptors of the Fifties, American Art of the 1960s, Art of the Postmodern Era: From the Late 1960s to the Early 1990s, and Abstract Expressionism and the American Experience: A Reevaluation. He wrote two memoirs entitled A Sweeper-Up After Artists and Swept Up by Art: An Art Critic in the Post-Avant-Garde Era, a selection of his critical essays entitled From Avant-Garde to Pluralism: An On-the-Spot History, and a novel entitled Goodbye to Tenth Street. He received a lifetime achievement award by the International Association of Art Critics in 2008. He died from cancer on June 2, 2018 at the age of 92.

Bibliographic information

• Title: Art Of The Postmodern Era: From The Late 1960s To The Early 1990s; Art of the Postmodern Era: From the Late 1960s to the Early 1990s, Irving Sandler; Icon Editions
• Author: Irving Sandler
• Edition: illustrated
• Publisher: Basic Books, 1996
• ISBN: 0064385094, 9780064385091
• Length: 636 pages
• Subjects: Art / General