Book: Art in Theory 1900-2000

The book Art in Theory 1900-2000, edited by Charles Harrison and Paul Wood, is a compilation of pieces of texts by artists, art critics, philosophers, politicians, and literary figures who discuss art theories in relation to art from 1900-2000. The 1187 page book (excluding the bibliography) offers a total of 371 texts, which are all presented in pieces to provide us with the most relevant and important information. Furthermore, each text included in the book offers us with new information and ideas, making the book the ultimate resource for any art historian (or just art lover) interested in 20th century art.

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Over the past few months, I have gotten the opportunity to read many of the texts and I can definitely say that the book has given me more insight into modern art than I could have gotten from any other individual text. Although there is no way to sum up the eclectic collection in any reasonable amount of time, here are some of my favorite quotes from my favorite texts:

"The painter no longer approached his easel with an image in his mind; he went up to it with material in his hand to do something to that other piece of material in front of him. That image would be the result of this encounter."
-Harold Rosenberg on Abstract Expressionism, from The American Action Painters

I have spent the past four years completely fascinated by the "encounters" that Rosenberg is talking about. Too many people don't understand the significance of Abstract Expression. They say, "My kid could have done that." I say, "But they didn't--Pollock did."

Jackson Paints a Picture, by Hans Namuth

Now for the art historian I consider to be both the most intuitive, intelligent and most frustrating: Clement Greenberg.

"The essence of Modernism lies, as I see it, in the use of the characteristic methods of a discipline to criticize the discipline itself - not in order to subvert it, but to entrench it more firmly in its area of competence."
"The arts could save themselves [] by demonstrating that the kind of experience they provided was valuable in its own right and not to be obtained by any other kind of activity."
"The limitations that constitute the medium of painting - the flat surface, the shape of the support, the properties of pigment - were treated by the Old Masters as negative factors that could be acknowledged only implicitly or indirectly. Modernist painting has come to regard these same limitations as positive factors that are to be acknowledged openly."
"It is not in principle that Modernist painting in its latest phase has abandoned the representation of recognizable objects. What it has abandoned in principle is the representation of the kind of space that recognizable, three-dimensional objects can inhabit."

-Clement Greenberg on Modernism, from Modernist Painting

Those incredible ideas by Greenberg are only a tiny tidbit of what the book has to offer. Anyone even remotely interested in 20th century art would LOVE this book.