Art Since 1940 (3rd Edition)
Fineberg's new edition is the book to learn modern art from--many times over. No other study is as truly comprehensive. Always sensitive to the political context of modern and contemporary art, Fineberg resists playing ideological favorites. Every artist, every medium, receives a sympathetic, informative view in accessible prose that never dodges the inherent complexities. Follow Fineberg as he moves from accounts of the careers of Willem de Kooning and Jackson Pollock to the fantasy world of Maya Deren's filmmaking, to Alfredo Jaar's manipulations of public information, to Kerry James Marshall's drawings of black superhero comics, to the cultural appropriations of Nikki S. Lee, and on and on. It's all there, and it's all succinctly, yet deeply, authoritatively, considered. ---RichardShiff,The University of Texas at Austin The great value of Fineberg’s account of the art of the past seventy years is its attentiveness to what happens for artists in the course of their work, how the play of individual circumstances makes breakthrough moments possible, and how the life of art is always as well an experiential record of ways of living. ---Franklin "Buzz" Spector,Washington University in St. Louis