Chapter 1: Things Must be Pulverized:
Abstract Expressionism Charts the move from figurative to
abstract painting as the dominant style
of painting (1940s & 50s) Key artists discussed: Willem de Kooning, Barnett Newman Jackson Pollock, Mark Rothko Chapter 2: Wounded Painting: Informel in Europe and Beyond Meanwhile in Europe:
abstract painters immediate responses to the horrors
of World War II (1940s & 50s) Key artists discussed: Jean Dubuffet, Lucio Fontana, Viennese Aktionism, Wols Chapter 3: Post-War Figurative Painting Surveys those artists who defiantly continued to make figurative work as Abstraction was rising to dominance - including Social Realists (1940s & 50s) Key artists discussed: Francis Bacon, Lucien Freud, Alice Neel, Pablo Picasso Chapter 4: Against Gesture - Geometric Abstraction The development
of a rational, universal language
of art - the opposite
of the highly emotional Informel or
Abstract Expressionism (1950s and early 1960s) Key artists discussed: Lygia Clark, Ellsworth Kelly, Bridget Riley, Yves Klein Chapter 5: Post-Painting Part 1: After Pollock In the aftermath
of Pollock's death: the early days
of Pop, Minimalism and Conceptual painting in the USA (1950s and early 1960s) Key artists discussed: Jasper Johns, Robert Rauschenberg, Frank Stella, Cy Twombly Chapter 5: Anti Tradition - Pop Painitng How painting survives against growth
of mass visual culture: photography and television - if you can't beat them, join them (1960s and 70s) Key artists discussed: Alex Katz, Roy Lichtenstein, Gerhard Richter, Andy Warhol Chapter 6: A transcendental high art: Neo
Expressionism and its Discontents The continuation
of figuration and
expressionism in the 1970s and 80s, including many artists who have only been appreciated in later years (1970s & 80s) Key artists discussed: Georg Baselitz, Jean - Michel Basquiat, Anselm Kiefer, Julian Schnabel, Chapter 7: Post-Painting Part II: After Pop A new era in which figurative and
abstract exist side by side rather than polar opposites plus painting expands beyond the canvas (late 1980s to 2000s) Key artists discussed: Tomma Abts, Mark Grotjahn, Chris Ofili, Christopher Wool Chapter 8: New Figures, Pop Romantics Post-cold war, artists use paint to create a new kind
of «pop art» - primarily figurative - tackling cultural, social and political
issues (1990s to now) Key artists discussed: John Currin, Peter Doig, Marlene Dumas, Neo Rauch, Luc Tuymans
Since then, whenever the art sought to break or depart from the aesthetic and artistic
issues of feature more cerebral, this trend was resumed on new foundations: the American
abstract expressionism (decade
of 1950) and the German neo-
expressionism (decade
of 1980), for example., by revaluing the drives emanating from the insides
of the human condition, brought with them the recovery
of brushstrokes and traces
of gesture agile, whose ordination in the works, does without the project.