Author Description

"This book presents and examines iconic works that capture the mood, energy, and critical themes that distinguished the art of the '80s in one of the world's greatest metropolitan centers. 'Urban theater: New York art in the 1980s' explores this environment through a broad range of media, including painting, performance, sculpture, prhotography, and installation. Representing in turns a cool irony, reflections on media culture, consumerism, cartoons, and street art, the work collected here re-creates the tense energy of a grittier New York. Richly illustrated with compelling works by the decade's most critically acclaimed artists, this book includes selected artists' writings and original essays that provide context and highlight common themes in the works. The authors examine the diverse and competing aesthetics that were the topical subjects of magazine articles, as well as museum and gallery shows during the '80s: the 'Bad Boys' of painting, feminist conceptualism, appropriation and the Pictures Generation, 'abstraction and culture', political activism, the graffiti movement, and Warhol and the decade of art celebrity." --solapa.