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The study of contemporary art has persistently challenged art historians. First, in a discipline that is largely based on cultural or chronological categories (e.g., Pre-Columbian art), the ill-defined chronological boundaries of the contemporary period has given scholars pause. Heretofore, the functional definition of contemporary art (e.g., as it appears in university curricula) have been art since 1945, but with every passing year that time frame becomes increasingly problematic. A second issue facing art historians who deal with contemporary art is the lack of historical or critical distance. How does one utilize a historical methodology without the requisite historical distance? As a result of those two issues, the study of art of recent decades has been situated, often uncomfortably, in the nebulous space between art criticism and art history. In Since ’45, Katy Siegel (who is both an art critic and an art historian) acknowledges the tension between history and criticism, past and present. In this book, she seeks to bring together these two modes of practice. She does so by discussing the historical context out of which artworks of the recent past have emerged, but she also acknowledges that these objects have a life in the present. As such, she is able to illuminate how meaning (of an idea or artwork or event) changes over time. Further, Siegel prompts us to consider not just the art itself but also the methodological, conceptual, or disciplinary framework that we use to assess art (and which is itself subject to change).
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