TODAY’STRENDS IN ART PERIODICALS in the

United States must be viewed in the context of general cultural post-war directions. These directions can be characterized as (1) a more inclusive definition of the sphere of art activity, ( 2) a new and broader art market, ( 3) an internationalism of approach, ( 4) the widespread acceptance and appreciation of contemporary forms, and ( 5) the emphasis upon visual communication. Each of these tend-encies is having a profound effect upon the publishing of art periodi-cals, which in their short history have never responded to a more exciting and challenging milieu. The twentieth century has witnessed the breakdown in traditional concepts of art media and their relative importance. This began with the cubists ’ collage technique, in which elements of outer physical reality, such as newspaper clippings, were pasted on the canvas, and with the Dadaists ’ “ready-made ” and the surrealists ’ obiet trouub, both being complete objects found and used by the artist “as is. ” Calder’s mobiles are universally familiar, but more recent trends go further in destroying traditional concepts of what sculpture is: Yves Klein’s “Sculpture de Feu Bleu, ” exhibited in 1961 at the entrance to the Krefeld Museum in Germany, consisted of “a high-powered, brilliant jet of blue-colored gas projected from a specially constructed pipe-line. ” Recent theorists have attacked the idea of the “fine ” arts alto-gether. A. T. Schoener, for example, states that art should be created for use by people and not exclusively for display in museums: “The reactionary artist of our day is the man who is restricted to communi-cating his personal feelings, or maybe not even communicating any-thing at all, through the medium of paint and brushes.”2 This change in thinking is reflected on the title pages of the H. W. Wilson Com