The aim of this volume is to offer a more detailed survey of modern art theory than is provided in Art Theory: An Historical Introduction, and one that might be characterized as more critical in its approach: though still organized chronologically, and still taking care to set ideas in historical context, it will be more explicit in articulating how those ideas have held up under subsequent critical interrogation and in weighing their actual and potential relevance to contemporary artistic practice.
Part of the intention is to provide a book that can be used, along with the volumes in Blackwell's Art in Theory series, in courses on art theory specifically, but also one that can be used in courses on modern art generally, either as a supplementary textbook or, in some cases, as a principal text. There is enough overlap, in terms of the primary sources, with the Art in Theory anthologies that students should be able to orient themselves easily; at the same time, my discussion of those sources, as well as others of a philosophical, political, literary, or scientific nature, will contextualize them and bring out their implications in a way that the anthologies do not do, and that should serve the aims of teachers interested in generating classroom discussion and a deeper substantive engagement with the ideas involved. I am taking particular care to make it compatible with the extraordinary new survey of 20th-century art by Hal Foster, Yves-Alain Bois, Benjamin Buchloh, and Rosalind Krauss, a book that will certainly transform the teaching of modern art, and perhaps the very idea of what an art-history textbook should be.
My text is divided into an introduction and six chapters, along with a bibliographic essay. The arrangement of the chapters is roughly chronological, and though such a structure may seem to reinforce a rather traditional narrative of modernism, the individual chapters are divided into subsections, most of which are organized around the discussion of a particular issue or idea, though a few are devoted to especially significant thinkers. The emphasis is on how ideas recur and vary in the different historical phases or movements, how there is continuity where there often seems to be none, and how apparent sameness often conceals significant differences. Thus, while it uses well-established art-historical categories -- such as Symbolism or Surrealism -- as containers, so to speak, it also undermines any sense of their self-sufficiency as explanatory principles. This structure should also allow for easier adaptability to a variety of teaching styles.
Each chapter begins with a section in which the particular phase is characterized in a general way, touching on familiar ideas while also pointing the reader in a new direction. The subsequent subsections then examine specific points in detail. The following outline is provisional. I should be able to come up with snappier titles for some of the chapters and subsections.
