Since it was first published in 1992, this book has become one of the leading anthologies of art theoretical texts in the English-speaking world. This expanded edition includes the fruits of recent research, involving a considerable amount of newly-translated material from the entire period, together with additional texts from the last decades of the twentieth century.
The features that made the first edition so successful have been retained:
- The volume provides comprehensive representation of the theories which underpinned developments in the visual arts during the twentieth century.
- As well as writings by artists, the anthology includes texts by critics, philosophers, politicians, and literary figures.
- The content is clearly structured into eight broadly chronological sections, starting with the legacy of symbolism and concluding with contemporary debates about the postmodern.
- The editors provide individual introductions to each of the 371 anthologized texts.
Material new to this expanded edition includes texts on African art, on the Bauhaus and on the re-emergent avant-gardes of the period after the Second World War. Post-modernist debates are amplified by texts on gender, on installation and performance art, and on the increasing globalization of culture.
