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.