Revolutionary Time and the Avant-Garde

by John Roberts

Since the decidedly bleak beginning of the twenty-first century, art practice has become increasingly politicized. Yet, few sustained defenses of the avant-garde have been put forward. Revolutionary Time and the Avant-Garde is the first book of its kind to look at the legacy of the avant-garde in relation to the deepening crisis of capitalist non-reproduction.

An invigorating revitalization of the Frankfurt School legacy, Roberts’s book is unique in its penetrating definition and defense of the avant-garde idea, providing a refined conceptual set of tools that critically engages with the most advanced art theorists of our day, such as Hal Foster, Andrew Benjamin, Alain Badiou, Jacques Rancière, Paolo Virno, Claire Bishop, Michael Hardt, and Toni Negri.


From the Trade Paperback edition.

Genres: Art, Politics, Theory, Academic

336 pages, Paperback

First published July 14, 2015

About the author

John Roberts is a former Senior Research Fellow in Fine Art and now Professor of Art & Aethetics at the University of Wolverhampton. He is the author of The Art of Interruption: Realism, Photography and the Everyday (Manchester University Press, 1997) and The Philistine Controversy (Verso, with Dave Beech, 2002), plus other books and numerous articles, in Radical Philosophy and elsewhere.

Reviews

[Drew · Rating 4 out of 5]

Really a 3.5. Some interesting ideas, but largely speaks to internal theoretical debates.

[Zoya · Rating 3 out of 5]

Good if you care about the politics of contemporary art/aesthetics, though a tad abstruse for me.

[Jonathan]

Refreshing and complicated like an ice cold table of cheeses left out by a stranger.