Modern Art: A Very Short Introduction

Public interest in modern art continues to grow, as witnessed by the spectacular success of the Tate Modern in London and the Bilbao Guggenheim. Modern Art: A Very Short Introduction engages general readers, offering them not only information and ideas about modern art, but also explaining its contemporary relevance and history. The book focuses on interrogating the idea of "modern" art by asking such questions as: What makes a work of art qualify as modern, or fail to? How has this selection been made? What is the relationship between modern and contemporary art? Is "postmodernist" art no longer modern, or just no longer modernist? In either case, why--and what does this claim mean, both for art and the idea of "the modern?"

Cottingham examines many key aspects of this subject, including the issue of controversy in modern art, from Manet's Dejeuner sur L'Herbe (1863) to Picasso's Les Demoiselles, and Tracey Emin's Bed (1999). He also looks at the role of the dealer from the main Cubist art dealer Kahnweiler, to Charles Saatchi.

About the Series: Combining authority with wit, accessibility, and style, Very Short Introductions offer an introduction to some of life's most interesting topics. Written by experts for the newcomer, they demonstrate the finest contemporary thinking about the central problems and issues in hundreds of key topics, from philosophy to Freud, quantum theory to Islam

• Contemporary Art: A Very Short Introduction
• Art Theory: A Very Short Introduction
• Art History: A Very Short Introduction
• The Emancipated Spectator
• Modern Art 1851-1929: Capitalism and Representation (Oxford History of Art)
• Nadja
• Leonardo da Vinci: a psychosexual study of an infantile reminiscence
• On Dreams (Dover Thrift Editions)
• Nietzsche: The Birth of Tragedy and Other Writings (Cambridge Texts in the History of Philosophy)
• Postmodernism: A Very Short Introduction