Valeria Kosyakova is a PhD candidate in cultural studies, an associate professor at the Russian State University for the Humanities' School of European Cultures, the founder of the Punktum Center, and a visual culture researcher. Dmitry Pozdnyakov is a specialist in the history and theory of cinema and visual art, and a cultural studies scholar.
Why is 20th-century art so inexplicable and diverse? It amuses, frightens, sometimes restores a sense of beauty, and then takes it away. How can we understand what constitutes art today? What is the difference between contemporary and modern art, modernist and postmodernist?
This publication, dedicated to the visual culture of the 20th century, offers answers to these and many other questions. The authors have collected and analyzed works of art from both the past and present centuries. The 20th century is so diverse that it is impossible to describe its culture in a single word or reduce it to a few main trends, but this is precisely its essence and diversity. Today, society has discovered a multiplicity of forms in art. This book doesn't simply list phenomena, major masterpieces, or outrageous exhibitions; it interprets and explains a unique worldview of new and emerging aesthetic practices. It encompasses the most interesting and radical postmodern transformations that occurred in the second half of the 20th century and the early 21st.