The Story of Contemporary Art - by Tony Godfrey (Hardcover)

About the Book

What does it mean? Is it really art? Why does it cost so much?" While these questions are perpetually asked about contemporary art, they are not the questions that E. H. Gombrich set out to answer in his seminal book 'The Story of Art'. Contemporary art is very different from what came before. From the 1960s, where Gombrich's account concludes, artists began to abandon traditional forms of art and started to make work that questioned art's very definition. This is where Godfrey picks up the story. Developments in contemporary art have followed no straightforward line of progress or sequence of movements. Recognizing this, Tony Godfrey creates a narrative from a series of often dramatic creative conflicts and arguments around what art is or should be. From object versus sculpture and painting versus conceptual to local versus global, gallery versus wider world, The Story of Contemporary Art traces a history in terms of drastic changes in social and political life over the last sixty years. How do we experience being human in a world that seems to change so quickly? In exploring art's relationship to this question, Godfrey asserts that multiple voices must be heard: critics, theorists, curators and collectors, but also audiences and artists themselves. Key to the book is the story of how a perception that art was made almost exclusively by white men from North America and Western Europe has been radically overturned.

Book Synopsis

An instant classic--a lively new introduction to contemporary art that stretches from Andy Warhol's Brillo boxes to Marina Abramovic's performance art to today's biennale circuit and million-dollar auctions.

Encountering a work of contemporary art, a viewer might ask, "What does it mean?" "Is it really art?" and "Why does it cost so much?" These are not the questions that E. H. Gombrich set out to answer in his magisterial The Story of Art. Contemporary art seems totally unlike what came before it, departing from the road map supplied by Raphael, Dürer, Rembrandt, and other European masters.

In The Story of Contemporary Art, Tony Godfrey picks up where Gombrich left off, offering a lively introduction to contemporary art that stretches from Andy Warhol's Brillo boxes to Marina Abramovic's performance art to today's biennale circuit and million-dollar auctions. Godfrey, a curator and writer on contemporary art, chronicles important developments in pop art, minimalism, conceptualism, installation art, performance art, and beyond.

Review Quotes

"Godfrey writes in an accessible and blessedly jargon-free manner, and he ranges widely, featuring contemporary artists from all corners of the globe." - The Washington Post Book World

About the Author

Tony Godfrey is the author of Conceptual Painting and Painting Today and has contributed to Art in America, the Burlington Magazine, and numerous exhibition catalogs. Formerly Programme Director of the MA in Contemporary Art at Sotheby's Institute in London, he is a curator based in Manila.