ART SINCE 1900. Modernism, Antimodernism, Postmo

Here's an exceptional rarity: a large, sweeping art history text book so well-done it almost makes the reader wish she or he were back in school. It's rather amazing that it took so long for a book like Art Since 1900: Modernism, Antimodernism, and Postmodernism to exist: a balanced, seven hundred page historical tome written with multiple perspectives in mind. As any undergrad knows, H.W. Janson's ubiquitous History of Art was written as if art history were some sort of race to colonize ideas and imagery; you'll likely not miss Janson's fetish for pointing out who did what first. Penned by a nimble crew who all teach at Ivy League universities, Art Since 1900, which mirrors the development of psychoanalysis and the creation of a huge international art scene, is on a smaller scale a history of contemporary theory and the art world almost as much as it is the art itself.