From antiglobalist activists and corporate adbusters to online hackers and guerilla street artists, the influence of the Situationist International (SI) is writ large across our contemporary cultural landscape. Formed in 1957 as a merger of four European avant-garde groups with backgrounds in Marxism and Lettrism, the SI would over the next decade introduce many key intellectual and artistic concepts to us, including the society of the spectacle, pyschogeography, unitary urbanism, and at least one major work of critical and utopian architecture in Constant's New Babylon: City for Another Life. In 50 Years of Recuperation McKenzie Wark, the critically acclaimed author of A Hacker Manifesto,explores how our contemporary understanding of art, politics, and even reality itself has been shaped by these original culture jammers.

Product Description: The wild innovations of the early twentieth-century avant-garde have been widely celebrated for their influence on the course of experimental drama but rarely examined closely and systematically. Through an exploration of the plays from Germany, France, and England, The Aesthetics of Disturbance discusses modernism and the avant-garde, the relationship of drama to art movements such as expressionism, dada, and surrealism, and the interactions of visual, literary, and performance art...read more

Product Description: The New York based artists Arakawa and Madeline Gins have been collaborating on projects for over 30 years. This book is a predominantly visual exploration into architecture, carrying philosophical argument into the realm of construction...read more

Product Description: An analysis of a decade of art, which sees the 1980s as a time when painting, figuration and sculpture triumphed over modernism. The book is full of contemporary work from countries throughout the world, both familiar and unknown, aiming to typify a decade of change in art.

Product Description: Zurbrugg (English and cultural studies, DeMontford U., England) had completed the manuscript before he died suddenly in 2001. Over the course of 15 years he interviewed avant-garde poets, filmmakers, dancers, writers, composers, and performance artists...read more

Essays discuss modern art, the political aspects of art, architecture, futurism, French realism, Cezanne, Matisse, Derain, Picasso, and Raphael

Essays discuss modern art, the political aspects of art, architecture, futurism, French realism, Cezanne, Matisse, Derain, Picasso, and Raphael

Product Description: Children’s Literature and the Avant-Garde is the first study that investigates the intricate influence of the avant-garde movements on children’s literature in different countries from the beginning of the 20th century until the present...read more

The Cult of the Avant-Garde Artist examines the philosophical, psychological and aesthetic premises for avant-garde art and its subsequent evolution and corruption in the late twentieth century. Arguing that modernist art is essentially therapeutic in intention, both towards self and society, Donald Kuspit further posits that neo-avant-garde, or post-modern art, at once mocks and denies the possibility of therapeutic change. As such, it accommodates the status quo of capitalist society, in which fame and fortune are valued above anything else. Stripping avant-garde art of its missionary, therapeutic intention, neo-avant-garde art instead converts it into a cliché of creative novelty or ironical value for its fashionable look. Moreover, it destroys the precarious balance of artistic narcissism and social empathy that characterizes modern art, tilting it cynically towards the former. Incorporating psychoanalytic ideas, particularly those concerned with narcissism, The Cult of the Avant-Garde Artist offers a reinterpretation of modern art history. Donald Kuspit, one of America's foremost art critics, is a contributing editor to Artforum and the author of many books.

The Cult of the Avant-Garde Artist examines the philosophical, psychological and aesthetic premises for avant-garde art and its subsequent evolution and corruption in the late twentieth century. Arguing that modernist art is essentially therapeutic in intention, both towards self and society, Donald Kuspit further posits that neo-avant-garde, or post-modern art, at once mocks and denies the possibility of therapeutic change. As such, it accommodates the status quo of capitalist society, in which fame and fortune are valued above anything else. Stripping avant-garde art of its missionary, therapeutic intention, neo-avant-garde art instead converts it into a cliché of creative novelty or ironical value for its fashionable look. Moreover, it destroys the precarious balance of artistic narcissism and social empathy that characterizes modern art, tilting it cynically towards the former. Incorporating psychoanalytic ideas, particularly those concerned with narcissism, The Cult of the Avant-Garde Artist offers a reinterpretation of modern art history. Donald Kuspit, one of America's foremost art critics, is a contributing editor to Artforum and the author of many books. (view table of contents)

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Analyzes the art and artists of the futurist movement, focusing on its themes and background

Since the eighteenth century, artists--especially so-called avant-garde artists--have played a conflicting role in society. Part of the reason for their complex position, argue Raphael Sassower and Louis Cicotello, is the survival of the culture of idolatry in the modern age. In the twentieth century, artists can criticize the worship of material things or they can produce the things themselves. They can paint the scenes of worship of the golden calf--as the German expressionist Emil Nolde did in "Dance Around the Golden Calf" (1910), in which garish exaggerations reflect a condemnation of materialistic culture--or they can be the ones fabricating the idol for a fee.Part radical critics, part celebrity servants of bourgeois tastes, avant-garde artists such as Marcel Duchamp, René Magritte, Andy Warhol, the Christos, and Keith Haring have captured the twentieth-century imagination and inspired the artistic community to reconsider its social, political, and cultural roles. Charting the uneasy middle ground occupied by these artists and their work, Sassower and Cicotello argue that their success has as much to do with their complicity with capitalist forces as it does with their defiance of them. Indeed, the major theme of The Golden Avant-Garde is the inability of any cultural subgroup to withstand the overwhelming power of capitalism, commercialism, and science and technology.While some artists are paid by governments and institutions to construct national and religious monuments that express and honor society's most valuable principles and goals, the same society has fabricated a romantic myth of artists as revolutionary heroes who defy the authorities and pay dearly for their passion and vision. The Golden Avant-Garde is a unique collaboration between a philosopher and an artist, who bring their different perspectives to bear on how the avant-garde navigates the cultural, financial, and technological challenges presented by this postmodern dilemma. Often, Sassower and Cicotello conclude, avant-garde artists have become adept at manipulating the same forces that they seek to exaggerate and articulate in their work. (view table of contents)

Product Description: Great book for research, study, or review!

Product Description: Book by Kuspit, Donald, Gamwell, Lynn

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A study of Picasso's status in the art community and his influence on the avant-garde market follows his early year search for a gallery and his monumental rise to fame, noting his popularity among dealers and his commercial strategies.