Manos Stefanidis, “American Art Today: Impasses and Perspectives, or the Painful Quest for the Artistically New,” translated from Greek by Michael Eleftheriou, originally published in “Η Αμερικάνικη Τέχνη Σήμερα: Αδιέξοδα και Προοπτικές ή η Επώδυνη Αναζήτηση του Εικαστικά Καινούργιου”, in Η Αμερικάνικη Τέχνη στα Τέλη της Δεκαετίας του '80 (Athens: National Gallery, Museum Alexandros Soutzos, 1989), 9-15

doi:10.4324/9781003009979-5445

Chapter

Manos Stefanidis, “American Art Today: Impasses and Perspectives, or the Painful Quest for the Artistically New,” translated from Greek by Michael Eleftheriou, originally published in “Η Αμερικάνικη Τέχνη Σήμερα: Αδιέξοδα και Προοπτικές ή η Επώδυνη Αναζήτηση του Εικαστικά Καινούργιου”, in Η Αμερικάνικη Τέχνη στα Τέλη της Δεκαετίας του '80 (Athens: National Gallery, Museum Alexandros Soutzos, 1989), 9-15

Chapter

Manos Stefanidis, “American Art Today: Impasses and Perspectives, or the Painful Quest for the Artistically New,” translated from Greek by Michael Eleftheriou, originally published in “Η Αμερικάνικη Τέχνη Σήμερα: Αδιέξοδα και Προοπτικές ή η Επώδυνη Αναζήτηση του Εικαστικά Καινούργιου”, in Η Αμερικάνικη Τέχνη στα Τέλη της Δεκαετίας του '80 (Athens: National Gallery, Museum Alexandros Soutzos, 1989), 9-15

ABSTRACT

Manos Stefanidis reflects critically on contemporary American art and its institutional network of support on the occasion of the exhibition of “American Art of the Late 80s,” held in Athens in 1989 and organized by the Institute of Contemporary Art and the Boston Museum of Fine Arts. He criticizes postmodern art, and points to the problematic dynamics between art produced in the main art centers in Europe and art produced in the so-called peripheries. Between the Renaissance and the early twentieth century, art functioned as a subjective record of the world. Today, it is repositioning its aims and, though itself a social product, seeking to rise above society and its institutions, to formulate its reservations and phobias, to stand as a “partial ideology.” Even though the American artists themselves deny being postmodern in the interviews included in the exhibition catalog, the concepts of “post-,” “reworking,” and “historical perspective” are still relevant to their work.