"Perhaps few words have been as overused and misunderstood in recent times as the term 'postmodernism'. This book presents a lively, wide-ranging and highly readable exploration of what postmodernism has come to mean in the context of contemporary art." "The postmodern revolution replaced the Modernist faith in universality, authenticity, and artistic progress with a world that turned artworks into texts, history into mythology, the artist into a fictional character and reality into an outmoded convention. Postmodernism examines the key developments in the history of postmodern art. It includes a discussion of Neo-expressionism, the 'anti-aesthetic' movement, the art of commodity critique, postmodern feminism and postmodern multiculturalism. In the process it touches on a number of intriguing questions, among them: What is art without an artist? Why is photography the quintessential postmodern medium? How did a movement grounded in denunciations of the commodification of art generate one of the most heated art markets in recent history? Postmodernism brings clarity to a confusing moment in contemporary art."--BOOK JACKET.Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved