In the not-too-distant past, the radical diversity that now characterises art was perhaps more likely understood in relation to one of the historically romanticised twin faces of modern art. These broad allegiances can be characterised as, on the one hand a progressive tendency toward reduction and abstraction, and on the other an iconoclastic tendency toward association, quotation and juxtaposition. And for the most part, these oppositional tendencies developed through very different formal and conceptual methodologies. Today, however, we are more likely to encounter art as a series of granular and sometimes contradictory oscillations between and around these once heated debates.

In the not-too-distant past, the radical diversity that now characterises art was perhaps more likely understood in relation to one of the historically romanticised twin faces of modern art. These broad allegiances can be characterised as, on the one hand a progressive tendency toward reduction and abstraction, and on the other an iconoclastic tendency toward association, quotation and juxtaposition. And for the most part, these oppositional tendencies developed through very different formal and conceptual methodologies. Today, however, we are more likely to encounter art as a series of granular and sometimes contradictory oscillations between and around these once heated debates.