A01=Morgan Falconer
andre breton
Author_Morgan Falconer
bauhaus
Category=AGA
Category=AGB
Category=AJCD
Category=AMB
Category=DNB
constructivism
cubism
dada
de stijl
debord
diego rivera
emmy hemmings
eq_art-fashion-photography
eq_bestseller
eq_biography-true-stories
eq_isMigrated=1
eq_isMigrated=2
eq_nobargain
eq_non-fiction
filippo marinetti
futurism
marcel duchamp
piet mondrian
situationists
surrealism
tzara
vladimir mayakovsky
Product details
- ISBN 9781324051428
- Weight: 495g
- Dimensions: 163 x 239mm
- Publication Date: 18 Feb 2025
- Publisher: WW Norton & Co
- Publication City/Country: US
- Product Form: Hardback
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“Art has poisoned our life”, proclaimed Dutch artist and De Stijl co-founder Theo van Doesburg. Reacting to the tumultuous crises of the twentieth century, especially the horrors of the First World War, avant-garde artists and writers sought to destroy art by transforming it into the substance of everyday life. Following the evolution of these revolutionary groups, How to Be Avant-Garde charts its pioneers and radical ideas.
From Paris to New York, from Zurich to Moscow and Berlin, avant-gardists challenged the confines of the definition of art along with the confines of the canvas itself. Art historian Morgan Falconer starts with the dynamic Futurist founder Filippo Tommaso Marinetti, whose manifesto extolling speed, destruction and modernity seeded avant-gardes across Europe. In turn, Dadaists Hugo Ball and Emmy Hennings sought to replace art with political cabaret and the Surrealists tried to exchange it for tools to plumb the unconscious.
He guides us through the Russian Constructivists with their adventures in advertising and utopianism and then De Stijl with the geometric abstractions of Piet Mondrian. The Bauhaus broke more boundaries, transmuting art into architecture and design. Finally, the Situationists swapped art for politics, with many of their ideas inspiring the 1968 Paris student protests.
How to Be Avant-Garde is a journey through the interlocking networks of these richly creative lives with their visions of a better world, their sometimes sympathetic but often strange and turbulent conversations and their objects and writings that defied categorisation.
Morgan Falconer, a critic and art historian, teaches at Sotheby’s Institute of Art. He is the author of Painting Beyond Pollock and has written for publications including the Economist, the Times (UK), Art in America, and Frieze. He lives in Queens, New York.
