'Twilight of Superstars': Barbara Rose on the 1972 Documenta / Stephen Shore and the Post-Serial Attitude

Location: Trent Building B4
Date(s): Wednesday 17th May 2023 (16:00-18:00)
Description: In the mid- to late-1960s, Barbara Rose was one of the most influential voices in American art. This influence was indexed to Rose’s conviction that the art of the 1960s would elaborate, extend, and ultimately better that which had come before it. After the 1960s, Rose dispensed with this conviction, and, as a result her influence waned. Her view that contemporary art was on a downhill trajectory had no place within postmodernism, whose own progressive account of post-1960s art remains dominant in art history today. By returning to one of Rose’s first public denunciations of contemporary art - her searing review of Documenta 5 - this paper will provide a divergent perspective on the art-historical transformations of the year 1972 (or thereabouts).

Centre for Research in Visual Culture

University of Nottingham
Lakeside Arts Centre
Nottingham, NG7 2RD

email: mark.rawlinson@nottingham.ac.uk