Table of Contents

Introduction; Looking and writing back; Composition and self-composition; Class, glass, and opacity; Modernism, the decay of collective style, and the past of art; . . . Not just interpreters, collaborators’? The subject object; ‘Narcissus looking interminably into the unclean mirror . . .’ 1 Modernism’s modern art 2 Pure formality: 1960s abstract painting 3 Pollock, or ‘abstraction’ 4 Cubism’s complexities 5 The materials of seeing: Cézanne and Van Gogh 6 Modernism’s Manet, Conclusion: ‘post’ script

About the Author

Jonathan Harris teaches Art History in the School of Architecture at the University of Liverpool. He has published widely on art and art history, specializing in twentieth-century American art, the rise of the ‘new art history’, and the relations between art history and social theory. His recent publications include Critical Perspectives on Contemporary Painting: Hybridity, Hegemony, Historicism (2003) and The New Art History: A Critical Introduction (Routledge, 2001).