Aesthetic Revolutions and Twentieth-Century Avant-Garde Movements

"At the crossroads of the aestheticization of politics and the politicization of art, a collision occurred that released the energy fueling the various avant-gardes of the 20th century. However unfulfilled their quest to revolutionize both art and life may now seem, the shock waves it set off still reverberate in our own time. Focusing on both familiar and unfamiliar avant-garde movements around the world, the provocative texts assembled by Aleš Erjavec in this scintillating collection demonstrate that they may still trigger new explosions in the years to come." - Martin Jay, coeditor of Empires of Vision: A Reader

"This is a quite remarkable collection that profiles the art/politics relationship as it was concretely negotiated at key moments throughout the twentieth century. No other study enables us to look so closely to see just what the art/politics relation amounted to—or, more exactly, what was the real relationship between artistic practice and revolutionary social transformation." - Terry Smith, author of Antinomies of Art and Culture: Modernity, Postmodernity, Contemporaneity

"By examining a range of aesthetic avant-garde developments, Erjavec and his contributing authors both inform and raise important questions pertaining to the role of aesthetic avant-garde projects." - Curtis L. Carter, Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism