Okwui Enwezor’s 2016 exhibition Postwar: Art between the Pacific and the Atlantic, 1945–1965 redefined the history of art produced in those two decades. Nearly a decade later, Postwar Revisited returns to these debates to present an image of a historical period in which Western conceptions of art, aesthetics, and philosophy are all thrown into intense flux after Auschwitz and Hiroshima, while the cultural energies of decolonization generate myriad artistic and intellectual practices across the globe, which re-engage the connections of art to life itself. Focusing on modernist artists, artist collectives, and architects central to dissonant regional traditions, as well as influential exhibitions and patronage systems, the contributors produce a new understanding of emergent postwar global art. Provoking new ways of thinking, engaging, and narrating art history, Postwar Revisited is essential reading for those interested in debates on global art history and global modernism, the intersections between art and decolonization, the cultural aspects of the Cold War and the Non-Aligned Movement, and modern and contemporary art more generally. Contributors. Iftikhar Dadi, Okwui Enwezor, Patrick Flores, Hal Foster, Boris Groys, Atreyee Gupta, Elizabeth Harney, Jennifer Josten, Vivian Li, Tara McDowell, Alexandra Munroe, Nada Shabout, Terry Smith, Jenni Sorkin, Ming Tiampo  

Table of Contents:
List of Illustrations  xi Preface / Atreyee Gupta  xvii Introduction / Atreyee Gupta  1 Part I. Europe in Transition 1. Creaturely Cobra / Hal Foster  19 1. Decolonizing Modernism/s: Transversal Histories and the Slade School of Fine Art / Ming Tiampo  35 Part II. The Soviet Bloc and Communist China 3. Soviet Art before and after the Thaw / Boris Groys  65 4. Rent Collection Courtyard, the “Atomic Bomb of the Art World” / Vivian Li  79 Part III. Pacific Passages, Atlantic Oscillations 5. Godzilla’s Schizophrenia: Americanization and Amnesia in Postwar Japan / Alexandra Munroe  99 6. The Work of Salvage: Jess, Allegory, and the Atomic Bomb / Tara McDowell  119 7. “The Eternal Modernity of the Church”: Art in the Sugar Mill and the University in the Philippines / Patrick Flores  135 8. Antipodean Vision: Postwar Arts in Australia and the South Pacific / Terry Smith  155 9. IntegraciÓn plÁstica: The Postwar Synthesis of the Arts as Seen from Mexico in 1952 / Jennifer Josten  173 10. Ancient Modernisms: Illegibility, Women, and 1950s Weaving / Jenni Sorkin  195 Part IV: Decolonizing Constellations 11. Postwar Abstraction: Similarities, Differences, and Other Ophthalmologic Conundrums / Atreyee Gupta  215 12. Enemy of the People: Jewad Selim and the Baghdad Group for Modern Art / Nada Shabout  237 13. Decolonization and Calligraphic Abstraction / Iftikhar Dadi  253 14. Postwar Imaginings: NÉgritude Legacies and Thwarted Universalisms in Dakar and Paris / Elizabeth Harney  277 Bibliography  295 Contributors  321 Index