In Terms of Painting

This book reconsiders the role of painting during the 1960s and 1970s. The assembled essays examine how "painting" was present and practiced during this defining period of postmodernism: as an embattled parameter in the evolving antiformalist discourse of the 1970s, as a parallel activity within an artist's oeuvre, or by being conceptually integrated into another medium. Besides a reconsideration of artists such as Donald Judd, John Baldessari, and Robert Morris, this book provides in-depth analyses of lesser-known artistic positions, for example, those of David Novros, Roy Colmer, Mary Heilmann, and Jo Baer, and of positions whose relation to painting has remained largely unexamined up to now, such as Bruce Conner's, Walter De Maria's, and Fred Sandback's. By treating the activity, the material foundations, and the concept of painting as symptomatic of the post-medium condition, this book reframes the history of postmodernism and provides historical and theoretical approaches for the current discourse on contemporary painting.