Modern Art Despite Modernism (Hardcover)

Throughout the 20th century, the evolution of mainstream modernism in the arts has been shadowed and complicated by alternative expressions, intended either to set back the clock or to redirect the stream of "progress". This book, published in conjunction with the second of three cycles of millennial exhibitions (MoMA2000) at The Museum of Modern Art, New York, explores the anti-modernist impulse as exhibited in painting and sculpture through the social, political, and cultural conflicts of the 1920s, 1930s, and 1940s.

Curator Robert Storr reminds the reader of the strengths of some of this work -- by Otto Dix, Lucien Freud, Francesco Clemente, and even Pablo Picasso -- and of the enduring popularity of such artists as Pavel Tchelitchew, whose Hide and Seek, along with Andrew Wyeth's Christina's World, are among the public's favorite pictures. Storr also discusses taste and vulgarity and their implications, both past and present, for institutions like The Museum of Modern Art that are thought of as canon-builders.