The Theory of the Avant-Garde [Paperback]

Renato Poggioli (Author), Gerald Fitzgerald (Translator)

Book Description

Publication Date: October 15, 1981 | ISBN-10: 0674882164 | ISBN-13: 978-0674882164

Convinced that all aspects of modern culture have been affected by avant-garde art, Poggioli explores the relationship between the avant-garde and civilization. Historical parallels and modern examples from all the arts are used to show how the avant-garde is both symptom and cause of many major extra-aesthetic trends of our time, and that the contemporary avant-garde is the sole and authentic one.

Product Details

• Paperback: 256 pages
• Publisher: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press (October 15, 1981)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0674882164
• ISBN-13: 978-0674882164
• Product Dimensions: 8 x 5.9 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 10.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #137,906 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

23 of 25 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A perfect gem of a book., February 9, 2005

By 

idle hands (washington, dc) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Theory of the Avant-Garde (Paperback)

Over 20 years ago while an undergraduate in college, I was roaming the library stacks looking for a book to use for my Art History class. I spotted Poggioli's "Theory of the Avant Garde" and sat down on the floor and opened it to the first page. About an hour later, I got up with sore muscles but an invigorated intellect. It was easily the most significant book on art theory I would ever read.

Poggiolli exams the avant-garde movement with a critical eye. He neither castigates it as foolishness, nor excuses it the nihilism embedded in the movement. Rather, he takes it apart bit by bit and holds it up for reasoned examination.

This is not an easy book to make your way through. I recently began re-reading it prior to giving a copy to an artist friend and was surprised at how much harder it was for me in my 40's than it was in my 20's. I suppose it was all those brain cells I sacrificed to good beer and even better wine. Still, if you care deeply about the intellectual influences that guided art for the last 150 years, then you'd best work your way through it. Though it's translated from the Italian, it still reads elegantly enough in English.