Contemporary art can be baffling and beautiful, provocative and disturbing. This pioneering book presents a new look at the controversial period between 1945 and 2015, when art and its traditional forms were called into question. It focuses on the relationship between American and European art, and challenges previously held views about the origins of some of the most innovative ideas in art of this time.

Major artists such as Jackson Pollock, Robert Rauschenberg, Andy Warhol, Joseph Beuys, Gerhard Richter, Louise Bourgeois, Cindy Sherman, Jeff Koons, and Shiran Neshat are all discussed, as is the art world of the last fifty years. Important trends are also covered including Abstract Expressionism, Pop Art, Minimalism, Conceptualism, Postmodernism, and Performance Art.

This revised and updated second edition includes a new chapter exploring art since 2000 and how globalisation has caused shifts in the art world, an updated Bibliography, and 16 new, colour illustrations.

Introduction
1: The Politics of Modernism: Abstract Expressionism and the European Informel
2: Duchamp's Legacy: The Rauschenberg-Johns Axis
3: The Artist in Crisis: From Bacon to Beuys
4: Blurring Boundaries: Pop Art, Fluxus, and their Effects
5: Modernism in Retreat: Minimalist Aesthetics and Beyond
6: The Death of the Object: The Move to Conceptualism
7: Postmodernism: Theory and Practice in the 1980s
8: The 1990s: Fin de siècle?
9: Art and the New Millenium
Notes
Further Reading
Timeline
Galleries and Websites
Picture Credits
Index

David Hopkins, Professor of Art History, University of Glasgow

David Hopkins is currently Professor of Art History at the University of Glasgow. He is the author of numerous books on Dada, Surrealism, and post-1945 art including Dada and Surrealism: A Very Short Introduction (OUP, 2004) and Dada's Boys: Masculinity After Duchamp (Yale University Press, 2007).