This study is concerned with the change from modernism to postmodernism in visual arts as it occurred in the 1950s and '60s and with the impact of this shift on contemporary academic criticism of art. It particularly analyzes the differing attitudes of artists and critics toward art, which are best demonstrated by artists such as Picasso, Pollock, Davis, Rauschenberg and Warhol, and by the critics such as Greenberg, Huyssen, Graff, Kozloff and Kuspit. The analysis suggests that many influential critics have failed to recognize the new ideas and perspectives that these artists brought into art, and that their response to these new ideas or perspectives has been a mystification or normalization rather than an explanation. Three critical approaches used by these critics are critiqued here: (1) they make no reference to the artists' creative process, assuming that the artists feeling or idea has no impact on his work; (2) they normalize the artists' works and ideas, reaffirming outdated principles and values and refusing to recognize any radical changes made by the artists; (3) they mystify the artists' intentions, imposing their own theories upon the artists as though they were the artists' own. / Offering an alternative approach, this study focuses on the artists' intentions as expressed in their various statements and remarks, and tries to reconstruct their views about art with references from the time and situation in which they lived. It repudiates the theories that identify modernism with formalism and academicism and postmodernism with an attempt to revitalize modernism with a new emphasis on the relationship between art and life. Instead, this dissertation argues that modernism represents a long-established belief in the superior power of art in revealing reality and uplifting society and that postmodernism involves a radical revolt against such a belief. / Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 56-03, Section: A, page: 0739. / Major Professor: Karen Laughlin. / Thesis (Ph.D.)--The Florida State University, 1995.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:fsu.edu/oai:fsu.digital.flvc.org:fsu_77387 |
| Contributors | Zhang, Yuyu., Florida State University |
| Source Sets | Florida State University |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Text |
| Format | 186 p. |
| Rights | On campus use only. |
| Relation | Dissertation Abstracts International |
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