For the USA, 1945 was a victory not over only the Axis powers, but over the hegemony of European power and culture too. This book explores how, since then, American social and artistic history has shaped what we know as contemporary art, and how American art has responded to the unique cultural conditions of recent times. For fifty years following World War II, New York was the capital of art, influencing artists well beyond the USA. As Katy Siegel argues, since America lacked the European traditions underlying art, American art instead responded to extreme social conditions native to the country. Artists' preoccupations ranged across a broad spectrum that encompassed issues of race, mass culture, the individual, suburbia, apocalypse, and nuclear destruction, and Since '45 discusses how these themes came to find their place in art. Siegel's narrative moves fluidly from discussion of the art world--artists, works, museums, galleries--over the decades to cultural influences and momentous historical events. Rather than arguing on nationalist grounds, or viewing American culture as representative of a now-devalued nation, Siegel explores how that culture not only shaped art practice in the U.S., but created conditions that now, after the full globalization of the art world, affect artists in every continent.--Book Jacket.