This book explores the relationship between art and philosophy. Andrew Benjamin argues for a reworking of the task of philosophy in terms of the centrality of ontology. It is in relation to this centrality, understood through the differences between modes of being, that art, mimesis and the avant-garde come to be presented. A fundamental part of this book is the original interpretations of important contemporary painters and their paintings: Lucian Freud's self-portraits, Francis Bacon's use of mirrors, R.B. Kitaj and Jewish identity, Anselm Kiefer and iconoclasm. Apart from painting, Benjamin considers architecture, literature and the philosophical writings of Walter Benjamin and Descartes in elaborating the various aspects of ontological difference. The theory of the avant-garde which is developed in the book, in which the avant-garde is a philosophical category rather than a historical marker, is a major contribution to art criticism. It brings the worlds of contemporary art criticism and contemporary philosophy closer together.

Combining a range of content with self-reflexive examination by scholars and practitioners, this edited volume interrogates the contemporary significance of the avant-garde. Rather than focusing on a particular region, period, or movement, the contributors bring together case studies to examine what constitutes the avant-garde canon.

This book focuses on avant-garde literature and art in Europe and America during the first quarter of the twentieth century. It examines five movements that shaped our response to the demands of the modern age and contributed to the creation of a modern sensibility: Cubism, Futurism, the Metaphysical School, Dada, and Surrealism. Each of these arose in response to recent scientific, technological, and/or philosophical developments that drastically affected modern civilization. In turn, each was responsible for a major paradigm shift that altered the way in which we view—and respond to--the world around us. The final chapter is comparative in nature and studies the role of the mannequin in literature and art during the same period.

Pronouncements such as “the avant-garde is dead,” argues James M. Harding, have suggested a unified history or theory of the avant-garde. His book examines the diversity and plurality of avant-garde gestures and expressions to suggest “avant-garde pluralities” and how an appreciation of these pluralities enables a more dynamic and increasingly global understanding of vanguardism in the performing arts. In pursuing this goal, the book not only surveys a wide variety of canonical and noncanonical examples of avant-garde performance, but also develops a range of theoretical paradigms that defend the haunting cultural and political significance of avant-garde expressions beyond what critics have presumed to be the death of the avant-garde. The Ghosts of the Avant-Garde(s) offers a strikingly new perspective not only on key controversies and debates within avant-garde studies but also on contemporary forms of avant-garde expression within a global political economy.

Convinced that all aspects of modern culture have been affected by avant-garde art, Renato 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.

The Poetic Avant-Garde compares three avant-garde groups active in the era between the world wars: those surrounding Jorge Luis Borges, W.H. Auden, and Andre Breton. These groups were composed of poets and writers who made use of the avant-garde's characteristic modes of self-expression: the publication of small journals, unorthodox attention-getting tactics, and interaction with the mainstream press. However, their differing aesthetic, social, and political agendas illustrate the surprisingly broad range of avant-gardism in the interwar era. Strong looks at the choices these three groups made when their radical goals collided with the forces of social and political change in the 1920s and 1930s, highlighting the disparity between their rhetoric and their actual achievements. The book focuses on the avant-garde's struggle to reconcile contradictory imperatives: a desire to be radically new while also finding an audience.