Since the end of World War II, art in New York has been animated by powerfully conflicting tendencies - between romanticism and empiricism; abstraction and representation; spontaneity and reflection; nihilism and tradition; the artist and the public. New York City's melting pot excitement gave a new kind of weight, thrust and velocity to debates that had had their origins in Europe, and the dialectic in all its variety - ranging from Hegelian idealism to Kierkegaard's Either/Or to Hans Hofmann's Push and Pull - was shaping the artist's sense of self and society in the rush-hour city of the postwar years. This course will present a reading of American art since 1945 by focusing on five themes, each of them tied to a specific period.