American art since the late 1970s has been characterized by both supporters and detractors as postmodern, but it is sometimes unclear whether the term refers to the contemporary social context of media-saturated global capitalism, or to new artistic styles. The question is complicated by the diversity of practices that the term has been used to identify Some leading artists have elaborated or departed from aspects of minimalism, pop art and conceptual art to develop art that is critical of both specifically artistic and broader social institutions. This work, often in hybrid forms known as installation art, and sometimes site-specific (made for a particular space), characteristically employs photography, ready-made objects and materials, and texts.

Key figures include Hans Haacke, Jenny Hoizer, Louise Lawler and Cindy Sherman.

Other artists have taken the proliferating commodities of consumer culture (see consumerism) as their material; among them are Ashley Bickerton, Jeff Koons, Allan McCollum. Critical supporters of these kinds of postmodern art see it as theoretically sophisticated, while detractors see it as mere illustration of theory. Some of this work was influenced by feminism. which provided one of the models for work in the 1990s grounded in and meant both to express and complicate specific ethnic or sexual identities, by African American artists, including David Hammons and Fred Wilson, Native American artists, including Jimmie Durham, and gay artists, including Robert Gober. But the 1980s also saw a return to painting, characterized alternately by a pastiche of historical styles (David Salle), or a full-blown and sometimes overblown expressionism (Julian Schnabel).