"Occasionally one comes across a book that is at once compelling and frightening, a book that excites and disorientates, a book with intimations of the sublime. Art in Theory is such a book. An indispensable source book." (Arlis News-Sheet)
"Occasionally one comes across a book that is at once compelling and frightening, a book that excites and disorientates, a book with intimations of the sublime. Art in Theoryis such a book. An indispensable source book." Arlis News-Sheet
Includes bibliographical reference (p. [1188]-1211) and index.
Preface and Acknowledgements.
A Note on the Presentation and Editing of Texts.
General Introduction.
Part I: The Legacy of Symbolism.
Introduction.
1. Classicism and Originality.
Paul Signac: from Eugène Delacroix to Neo-Impressionism 1899.
Paul Gauguin: letter to Fontainas 1899.
Sigmund Freud: from 'On Dreams' 1901.
Otto Weininger: from Sex and Character 1903.
Max Liebermann: 'Imagination in Painting' 1904.
Paul Cézanne: letters to Emile Bernard 1904-06.
Rainer Maria Rilke: from Letters on Cézanne 1907.
Maurice Denis (intro. Roger Fry): 'Cézanne' 1907.
Maurice Denis: 'From Gauguin and Van Gogh to Neo-Classicism' 1909.
Julius Meier-Graefe: 'The Mediums of Art, Past and Present' 1904.
Giorgio de Chirico: 'Mystery and Creation' 1913.
2. Expression and the Primitive.
August Endell: 'The Beauty of Form and Decorative Art' 1897-98.
Albert Pinkham Ryder: 'Paragraphs from the Studio of a Recluse' 1905.
André Derain: letters to Vlaminck c.1905-1909.
Ernst Ludwig Kirchner: programme of Die Brücke 1906.
Wilhelm Worringer: from Abstraction and Empathy 1908.
Henri Matisse: 'Notes of a Painter' 1908.
Roger Fry: 'An Essay in Aesthetics' 1909.
Wassily Kandinsky: from Concerning the Spiritual in Art 1911.
Wassily Kandinsky: The Cologne Lecture 1914.
Franz Marc: 'The "Savages" of Germany' and 'Two Pictures' 1912.
August Macke: 'Masks' 1912.
Emil Nolde: 'On Primitive Art' 1912.
Oscar Kokoschka: 'On the Nature of Visions' 1912.
Alexander Shevchenko: 'Neo-Primitivism' 1913.
Benedetto Croce: 'What is Art?' 1913.
Clive Bell: 'The Aesthetic Hypothesis' 1914.
Carl Einstein: 'Negro Sculpture' 1915.
Hermann Bahr: from Expressionism 1916.
Hans Prinzhorn: from Artistry of the Mentally Ill 1922.
Part II: The Idea of the Modern World.
Introduction.
3. Modernity.
Georg Simmel: 'Metropolis and Mental Life' 1902-3.
Max Weber: 'Asceticism and the Spirit of Capitalism' 1904-05.
Vladimir Ilyich Lenin: 'Party Organization and Party Literature' 1905.
Henri Bergson: from Creative Evolution 1907.
Alexander Blok: 'Nature and Culture' 1908.
Filippo Tommaso Marinetti: 'The Foundation and Manifesto of Futurism' 1909.
Umberto Boccioni et al: 'Futurist Painting: Technical Manifesto' 1910.
Robert Delaunay: 'On the Construction of Reality in Pure Painting' 1912.
Georgy Valentinovich Plekhanov: from Art and Social Life 1912.
Franz Marc: 'Foreword' 1914.
Fernand Léger: 'Contemporary Achievements in Painting' 1914.
Percy Wyndham Lewis: 'Our Vortex' 1914.
Henri Gaudier-Brzeska: 'Gaudier-Brzeska Vortex' 1914, and 'Vortex Gaudier-Brzeska' 1915.
Ludwig Meidner: 'Instructions for Painting Pictures of the Metropolis' 1914.
Karl Kraus: from 'In These Great Times' 1914.
Kasimir Malevich: From Cubism and Futurism to Suprematism: The New Realism in Painting 1915-16.
4. Cubism.
Jean Metzinger: 'Note on Painting' 1910.
Guillaume Apollinaire: 'The Cubists' 1911.
Guillaume Apollinaire: 'On the Subject in Modern Painting' 1912.
Guillaume Apollinaire: 'The New Painting: Art Notes' 1912.
Guillaume Apollinaire: from The Cubist Painters 1912.
Jacques Rivière: 'Present Tendencies in Painting' 1912.
Albert Gleizes and Jean Metzinger: from Cubism 1912.
Fernand Léger: 'The Origins of Painting and its Representational Value' 1913.
Olga Rozanova: 'The Bases of the New Creation' 1913.
Daniel-Henry Kahnweiler: from The Rise of Cubism 1916-20.
Georges Braque: 'Thoughts on Painting' 1917.
Pablo Picasso: 'Picasso Speaks' 1923.
Part III: Rationalization and Transformation.
Introduction.
5. Neo-Classicism and the Call to Order.
Amédée Ozenfant: 'Notes on Cubism' 1916.
Guillaume Apollinaire: 'The New Spirit and the Poets' 1918.
Oswald Spengler: from The Decline of the West 1918.
Carlo Carrà: 'Our Antiquity' 1916-18.
Léonce Rosenberg: 'Tradition and Cubism' 1919.
Giorgio de Chirico: 'The Return to Craft' 1919.
Charles Edouard Jeanneret (Le Corbusier) and Amédée Ozenfant: 'Purism' 1920.
Albert Gleizes: 'The Dada Case' 1920.
André Derain: 'On Raphael' 1920.
Percy Wyndham Lewis: 'The Children of the New Epoch' 1921.
Juan Gris: Reply to a Questionnaire 1921.
Gustav Friedrich Hartlaub: 'Reply to a Questionnaire' 1922.
6. Dissent and Disorder.
Hugo Ball: 'Dada Fragments' 1916-17.
Marcel Duchamp: 'The Richard Mutt Case' 1917.
Tristan Tzara: 'Dada Manifesto 1918' 1918.
Richard Huelsenbeck: 'First German Dada Manifesto' 1918.
Richard Huelsenbeck and Raoul Hausmann: 'What is Dadaism and what does it want in Germany?' 1919.
Richard Huelsenbeck: from En Avant Dada 1920.
Alexander Blok: 'The Decline of Humanism' 1918.
Novembergruppe: Draft Manifesto 1918 and 'Guidelines' 1919.
Novembergruppe Opposition: 'Open Letter to the Novembergruppe' 1921.
Walter Gropius: Reply to Arbeitsrat für Kunst Questionnaire 1919.
Max Beckmann: 'Creative Credo' 1918-20.
Max Pechstein: 'Creative Credo' 1920.
George Grosz: 'My New Pictures' 1921.
Francis Picabia: 'Thank you, Francis!' 1923.
7. Abstraction and Form.
Hans Arp: Introduction to a catalogue 1915.
Man Ray: Statement 1916.
Viktor Shklovsky: from 'Art as Technique' 1917.
De Stijl: 'Manifesto 1' 1918.
Theo van Doesburg: from Principles of Neo-Plastic Art 1915-25.
Piet Mondrian: 'Dialogue on the New Plastic' 1919.
Piet Mondrian: Neo-Plasticism: the General Principle of Plastic Equivalence 1920-21.
Kasimir Malevich: 'Non-Objective Art and Suprematism' 1919.
Kasimir Malevich: The Question of Imitative Art 1920.
Naum Gabo and Anton Pevsner: 'The Realistic Manifesto' 1920.
UNOVIS: 'Programme of a United Audience in Painting of the Vitebsk State Free Workshops' 1920.
Wassily Kandinsky: 'Plan for the Physico-psychological Department of the Russian Academy of Artistic Sciences' 1921.
Johannes Itten: 'Analyses of Old Master Art' 1921.
Oskar Schlemmer: Notes 1922-23.
Walter Gropius: 'The Theory and Organization of the Bauhaus' 1923.
Theo van Doesburg, El Lissitsky, Hans Richter: 'Declaration of the International Fraction of Constructivists of the First International Congress of Progressive Artists' 1922-23.
17 Wladyslaw Strzeminski: 'What is legitimately called the New Art...' 1924.
El Lissitsky: 'A and Pangeometry' 1925.
Hannah Höch: 'The painter' c. 1920.
José Ortega y Gasset: from The Dehumanisation of Art 1925.
8. Utility and Construction.
KOMFUT: 'Programme Declaration' 1919.
Vladimir Tatlin: 'The Initiative Individual in the Collective' 1919.
Lyubov Popova: Catalogue statement 1919.
Nikolai Punin: 'The Monument to the Third International' 1920.
Alexander Rodchenko: 'Slogans' and 'Organizational Programme' 1920-21.
Alexander Rodchenko and Varvara Stepanova: 'Programme of the First Working Group of Constructivists' 1922.
Alexei Gan: from Constructivism 1922.
El Lissitsky and Ilya Ehrenburg: Statement by the editors of Veshch 1922.
LEF editorial: 'Whom is LEF alerting?' 1923.
Osip Brik: 'The So-Called "Formal Method" 1923.
Osip Brik: 'From Picture to Calico-Print' 1924.
Vladimir Tatlin: 'Report of the Section for Material Culture's Research Work' 1924.
Part IV: Freedom, Responsibility and Power.
Introduction.
9. The Modern as Ideal.
Paul Klee: from On Modern Art 1924.
Amédée Ozenfant: from Foundations of Modern Art 1928.
Hans Hofmann: 'On the Aims of Art' 1931.
Abstraction-Création: Editorial Statements 1932 and 1933.
Wladyslaw Strzeminski: Statements 1932 and 1933.
Carl Gustav Jung: On the concept of the 'archetype' 1934 and 1938.
Alfred H. Barr Jr: from Cubism and Abstract Art 1936.
Henri Matisse: Statements to Tériade 1936.
Naum Gabo: 'The Constructive Idea in Art' 1937.
Piet Mondrian: 'Plastic Art and Pure Plastic Art' 1937.
Barbara Hepworth: 'Sculpture' 1937.
American Abstract Artists: Editorial Statement 1938.
Ibram Lassaw: 'On Inventing Our Own Art' 1938.
Ben Nicholson: 'Notes on Abstract Art' 1941.
10. Realism as Figuration.
Vladimir Ilyich Lenin: 'On Proletarian Culture' 1920.
AKhRR: 'Declaration' 1922.
AKhRR: 'The Immediate Tasks of AKhRR' 1924.
David A. Siqueiros et al: 'A Declaration of Social, Political and Aesthetic Principles' 1922.
Red Group: 'Manifesto' 1924.
Otto Dix: 'The Object is Primary' 1927.
ARBKD (Asso): 'Manifesto' and 'Statutes' 1928.
George Grosz: from 'My Life' 1928.
Alfred Rosenberg: from The Myth of the Twentieth Century 1930.
Georg Lukács: '"Tendency" or Partisanship?' 1932.
Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party: 'Decree on the Reconstruction of Literary and Artistic Organizations' 1932.
John Reed Club of New York: 'Draft Manifesto' 1932.
Diego Rivera: The Revolutionary Spirit in Modern Art' 1932.
Mario Sironi: 'Manifesto of Mural Painting' 1933.
Andrei Zhdanov: 'Speech to the Congress of Soviet Writers' 1934.
David A. Siqueiros: 'Towards a Transformation of the Plastic Arts' 1934.
Stuart Davis and Clarence Weinstock: 'Abstract Painting in America', 'Contradictions in Abstractions' and 'A Medium of 2 Dimensions' 1935.
Grant Wood: from Revolt Against the City 1935.
Francis Klingender: 'Content and Form in Art' 1935.
Adolf Hitler: Speech Inaugurating the 'Great Exhibition of German Art' 1937.
11. Realism as Critique.
Leon Trotsky: from Literature and Revolution 1922-23.
André Breton: from the First Manifesto of Surrealism 1924.
Louis Aragon: from Paris Peasant 1924.
Louis Aragon et al.
'Declaration of the Bureau de Recherches Surréalistes' 1925.
André Breton: Surrealism and Painting 1928.
André Breton: from the 'Second Manifesto of Surrealism' 1929.
George Grosz and Wieland Herzfelde: 'Art is in Danger' 1925.
Osip Brik: 'Photography versus Painting' 1926.
Sergei Tretyakov: 'We are searching' and 'We Raise the Alarm' 1927.
Siegfried Kracauer: from 'The Mass Ornament' 1927.
October (Association of Artistic Labour):'Declaration' 1928.
Georges Bataille: from 'Critical Dictionary' 1929-30.
Georges Bataille: 'The Lugubrious Game' 1929.
Salvador Dali: 'The Stinking Ass' 1930.
Gustav Klucis: 'Photomontage as a new problem in Agit Art' 1931.
Max Ernst: 'What is Surrealism?' 1934.
Walter Benjamin: 'The Author as Producer' 1934.
Bertolt Brecht: 'Popularity and Realism' 1938.
Fernand Léger: 'The New Realism Goes On' 1937.
12. Modernism as Critique.
Kasimir Malevich: Letter to Meyerhold 1932.
Pablo Picasso: 'Conversation with Picasso' 1935.
Herbert Read: 'What is Revolutionary Art?' 1935.
Meyer Schapiro: 'The Social Bases of Art' 1936.
Jan Mukařvoský: from Aesthetic Function 1934/36.
Walter Benjamin: 'The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction' 1936.
Theodor Adorno: Letter to Benjamin 1936.
Ernst Bloch: 'Discussing Expressionism' 1938.
André Breton, Diego Rivera and Leon Trotsky: 'Towards a Free Revolutionary Art' 1938.
R. G. Collingwood: Good Art and Bad Art' 1938.
Clement Greenberg: 'Avant-Garde and Kitsch' 1939.
Harold Rosenberg: 'The Fall of Paris' 1940.
Part V: The Individual and the Social.
Introduction.
13. The American Avant-Garde.
Clement Greenberg: 'Towards a Newer Laocoon' 1940.
Adolph Gottlieb and Mark Rothko with Barnett Newman: Statement 1943.
Jackson Pollock: Answers to a Questionnaire 1944.
Jackson Pollock: Two Statements 1947 and 1947/8.
Mark Rothko: 'The Romantics were Prompted...' 1947.
Mark Rothko: Statement 1947.
Adolph Gottlieb: Statement 1947.
Barnett Newman: 'The Ideographic Picture' 1947.
Barnett Newman: 'The First Man was an Artist' 1947.
Clement Greenberg: 'The Decline of Cubism' 1948.
Barnett Newman: 'The Sublime is Now' 1948.
Willem de Kooning: 'A Desperate View' 1949.
Jackson Pollock: Interview with William Wright 1950.
David Smith: 'Aesthetics, the Artist and the Audience' 1952.
Clyfford Still: Statement 1952.
Harold Rosenberg: from 'The American Action Painters' 1952.
Clyfford Still: letter to Gordon Smith 1959.
14. Individualism in Europe.
Wols: Aphorisms c. 1945-51.
Jean-Paul Sartre: from Existentialism and Humanism 1946.
Jean Dubuffet: 'Notes for the Well-Lettered' 1946.
Jean Dubuffet: 'Crude Art Preferred to Cultural Art' 1948.
Antonin Artaud: from Van Gogh: the Man Suicided by Society 1947.
Jean-Paul Sartre: 'The Search for the Absolute' 1948.
Samuel Beckett and Georges Duthuit: from Three Dialogues 1949.
Jacques Lacan: 'The Mirror-Phase as Formative of the Function of the I' 1949.
Jean-Michel Atlan: 'Abstraction and Adventure in Contemporary Art' 1950.
Francis Ponge: 'Reflections on the Statuettes, Figures and Paintings of Alberto Giacometti' 1951.
Albert Camus: 'Creation and Revolution' 1951.
Michel Tapié: from An Other Art 1952.
Georg Baselitz: 'Pandemonium Manifestos' 1961-2.
Francis Bacon: Interview with David Sylvester 1962-3.
15. Art and Society.
Maurice de Vlaminck: 'Open Opinions on Painting' 1942.
Francis Klingender: from Marxism and Modern Art 1943.
Robert Motherwell: 'The Modern Painter's World' 1944.
Renato Guttuso: 'Crisis of Renewal' 1944.
Pablo Picasso: 'Why I Joined the Communist Party' 1944.
Pablo Picasso: Statement to Simone Téry 1945.
Frida Kahlo: On Moses 1945.
Lucio Fontana: 'The White Manifesto' 1946.
Vladimir Kemenov: from 'Aspects of Two Cultures' 1947.
Robert Motherwell and Harold Rosenberg: 'The Question of What Will Emerge Is Left Open' 1947/8.
Constant: 'Our Own Desires Build the Revolution' 1949.
Asger Jorn: 'Forms Conceived as Language' 1949.
André Fougeron: 'The Painter on his Battlement' 1948.
Hans Sedlmayr and Theodor Adorno: from the 'Darmstadt Colloquy' 1950.
George Dondero: from The Congressional Record 1949.
Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr. from The Politics of Freedom 1950.
Alfred H. Barr Jr. 'Is Modern Art Communistic?' 1952.
Ben Shahn: 'The Artist and the Politician' 1953.
Henry Moore: 'The Sculptor in Modern Society' 1952.
David A. Siqueiros: 'Open Letter to the Painters, Sculptors and Engravers of the Soviet Union' 1955.
Georg Lukács: 'The Ideology of Modernism' 1956.
Part VI: The Moment of Modernism.
16. Art and Modern Life.
Roland Barthes: from 'Myth Today' 1956.
Jirô Yoshihara: Gutai Manifesto 1956.
Guy Debord: Writings from the Situationist International 1957-61.
Asger Jorn: 'Detourned Painting' 1959.
Frantz Fanon: 'On National Culture' 1959.
Lawrence Alloway: 'The Arts and the Mass Media' 1958.
Allan Kaprow: from Assemblages, Environments and Happenings 1959-65.
Piero Manzoni: 'Free Dimension' 1960.
Pierre Restany: 'The New Realists' 1960.
Groupe de Recherche d'Art Visuel: 'Transforming the Current Situation of Plastic Art' 1961/2.
George Maciunas: 'Neo-Dada in Music, Theater, Poetry, Art' 1962.
Raymond William: 'The Analysis of Culture' 1961.
John Cage: 'On Robert Rauschenberg, Artist, and his Work' 1961.
Jasper Johns: Interview with David Sylvester 1965.
Richard Hamilton: 'For the Finest Art, Try Pop' 1961.
Claes Oldenburg: from Documents from The Store 1961.
Andy Warhol: Interview with Gene Swenson 1963.
Roy Lichtenstein: Lecture to College Art Association 1964.
George Kubler: from The Shape of Time 1962.
Marshall McLuhan: from Understanding Media 1964.
Gerhard Richter: 'Notes 1964-5'.
Tony Smith: from an interview with Samuel Wagstaff Jr 1966.
Jasper Johns: Obituary of Marcel Duchamp 1968.
17. Modernist Art.
Alain Robbe-Grillet: 'Commitment' 1957.
David Smith: 'Tradition and Identity' 1959.
Maurice Merleau-Ponty: from 'Eye and Mind' 1961.
Roger Hilton: 'Remarks about Painting' 1961.
Clement Greenberg: 'Modernist Painting' 1960-65.
Theodor Adorno: from 'Commitment' 1962.
Barnett Newman: Interview with Dorothy Gees Seckler 1962.
Clement Greenberg: from 'After Abstract Expressionism' 1962.
Michael Fried: from Three American Painters 1965.
Michael Fried: from 'Shape as Form: Frank Stella's New Paintings' 1966.
Jules Olitski: `Painting in Color' 1967.
Stanley Cavell: 'A Matter of Meaning It' 1967.
William Tucker and Tim Scott: 'Reflections on Sculpture' 1967.
Richard Wollheim: 'The Work of Art as Object' 1970.
Part VII: Institutions and Objections.
Introduction.
18. Objecthood and Reductivism.
Yves Klein: from 'The Evolution of Art towards the Immaterial' 1959.
Carl Andre: 'Preface to Stripe Painting' 1959.
Frank Stella: Pratt Institute Lecture 1959-60.
Ad Reinhardt: 'Art as Art' 1962.
Donald Judd: 'Specific Objects' 1965.
Robert Morris: 'Notes on Sculpture 1-3' 1966-67.
Michael Fried: 'Art and Objecthood' 1967.
Sol LeWitt: 'Paragraphs on Conceptual Art' 1967.
Sol LeWitt: 'Sentences on Conceptual Art' 1969.
Robert Barry: Interview with Arthur R. Rose 1969.
Joseph Kosuth: 'Art after Philosophy' 1969.
Daniel Buren, Olivier Mosset, Michel Parmentier and Niele Toroni: Statement 1967.
Daniel Buren: 'Beware' 1969-70.
19. Attitudes to Form.
Terry Atkinson and Michael Baldwin: 'Air Show' 1967.
Michelangelo Pistoletto: 'Famous Last Words' 1967.
Robert Smithson: 'A Sedimentation of the Mind: Earth Projects' 1968.
Robert Morris: 'Notes on Sculpture 4: Beyond Objects' 1969.
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