Avantgarde: twee klassiekers

Een 'echte' klassieker voor wie zich in theorie wil storten; ik zoek nog verder naar reflecties over hedendaagse interpretaties...


Theory of the Avant-Garde

Peter Bürger
Translated by Michael Shaw
Introduction by Jochen Schulte-Sasse



$19.50 paper
ISBN: 0-8166-1068-1
ISBN-13: 978-0-8166-1068-6



This volume sets before English-language readers for the first time a fully elaborated theory of the 'institution of art.' The author argues that it is the social status of art, its function and prestige in society, that provides the connection between the individual art work and history. Bürger's concept of the institution of art establishes a framework within which a work of art is both produced and received.

"Bürger provides us with an expansive and compelling explanation of an immensely complicated phenomenon. He offers American principals in the modernism debate a degree of theoretical and historical reflection uncommon even in this age of theory. It deserves a wide and thoughtful reading not merely among literary critics but by all concerned with the fate of art." —The Minnesota Review

Peter Bürger is professor of French and comparative literature at the University of Bremen. He is the author of The Decline of Modernism and The Institutions of Art. Michael Shaw has translated the works of Max Horkheimer, Karl May, and Hans Robert Jauss. Jochen Schulte-Sasse is professor in the Department of German, Scandinavian, and Dutch at the University of Minnesota.

150 pages | 1984January 2001, 7 x 9, 628 pp., 137 illus.
ISBN-10:0-262-02454-3 ISBN-13:978-0-262-02454-9
Out Of Print
Other Editions : Paper (2003)
SeriesOctober Books

Neo-Avantgarde and Culture Industry
Essays on European and American Art from 1955 to 1975
Benjamin H. D. Buchloh

Some critics view the postwar avant-garde as the empty recycling of forms and strategies from the first two decades of the twentieth century. Others view it, more positively, as a new articulation of the specific conditions of cultural production in the postwar period. Benjamin Buchloh, one of the most insightful art critics and theoreticians of recent decades, argues for a dialectical approach to these positions.

This collection contains eighteen essays written by Buchloh over the last twenty years. Each looks at a single artist within the framework of specific theoretical and historical questions. The art movements covered include Nouveau Realisme in France (Arman, Yves Klein, Jacques de la Villegle) art in postwar Germany (Joseph Beuys, Sigmar Polke, Gerhard Richter), American Fluxus and pop art (Robert Watts and Andy Warhol), minimalism and postminimal art (Michael Asher and Richard Serra), and European and American conceptual art (Daniel Buren, Dan Graham). Buchloh addresses some artists in terms of their oppositional approaches to language and painting, for example, Nancy Spero and Lawrence Weiner. About others, he asks more general questions concerning the development of models of institutional critique (Hans Haacke) and the theorization of the museum (Marcel Broodthaers); or he addresses the formation of historical memory in postconceptual art (James Coleman).

One of the book's strengths is its systematic, interconnected account of the key issues of American and European artistic practice during two decades of postwar art. Another is Buchloh's method, which integrates formalist and socio-historical approaches specific to each subject.

About the Author

Benjamin H. D. Buchloh is Andrew W. Mellon Professor of Modern Art at Harvard University.

Reviews
"This is a terrific collection of essays...."
—Blake Stimson, CAA.reviews



Awards
Named one of The Art Book's Best Books of the Decade (March 2003).