Pop Art and the Origins of Post-Modernism

Pop Art and the Origins of Post-Modernism examines the critical reception of Pop Art in America during the 1960s. Comparing the ideas of a group of New York-based critics, including Leo Steinberg, Susan Sontag, and Max Kozloff, among others, Sylvia Harrison demonstrates how their ideas - broadly categorized as either sociological or philosophical - bear a striking similarity to the body of thought and opinion which is now associated with deconstructive post-modernism. Perceived through these disciplinary lenses, Pop Art arises as not only a reflection of the dominance of mass communications and capitalist consumerism in post-war American society, but also a subversive commentary on worldviews and the factors necessary for their formation.

• Examines the origins of postmodernism in visual art and visual art criticism • Compares various perspectives on pop art and analyzes the perspectives themselves • Focuses on the writings of key critics in the New York art world during the sixties

Introduction; 1. Postmodernist assumptions; 2. Lawrence Alloway: pop srt and the ‘pop art-fine art continuum’; 3. Harold Rosenberg and the ‘de-definition’ of both art and self; 4. Leo Steinberg: pop, ‘Post-Modernist’ painting and the flatbed picture plane; 5. Barbara Rose: pop, pragmatism and ‘prophetic pragmatism’; 6. Max Kozloff: a phenomenological solution to ‘Warholism’ and its disenfranchisement of the critic’s interpretive and evaluative roles; 7. Susan Sontag: the aesthetics of silence and the new sensibility; Conclusion.