Abstract
While pluralism is considered politically correct today, this article tries to describe the trajectory of anti-pluralist criticism through some famous authors of October, specifically Hal Foster, who edited the seminal Anti-Aesthetic: Essays on Postmodern Culture. In the beginning of the 1980s, Foster categorized two types of postmodernism, one being the postmodernism of reaction and neo-conservatism, the other being postmodernism of resistance and post-structuralism. Aligning with the latter of the two types, major authors of October published a series of important essays to criticize “mainstream postmodernist art, ” especially neo-expressionist paintings. However, during the same period, Arthur Danto claimed“the end of art, ”embracing a new era of pluralism. Thus, the dispute between anti-pluralism and pluralism becomes one of the key topics in the debate over postmodernist culture, and this article explores this dispute through case studies of Foster and Danto.
Keywords
postmodernism, pluralism, neo-expressionism, Hal Foster, Arthur Danto
First Page
198
Last Page
207
Recommended Citation
Yang, Juanjuan. 2021. "Recoding Postmodernist Art Criticism: The Debate between Anti-Pluralism and Pluralism." Theoretical Studies in Literature and Art 41, (1): pp.198-207. https://tsla.researchcommons.org/journal/vol41/iss1/18
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