The Cultural History of the Avant-Garde in the Nordic Countries Since 1975 is the final volume of the four-volume series of cultural histories of the avant-garde movements in the Nordic countries. This volume carries the avant-garde discussion forward to present-day avant-gardes, challenged by the globalisation of the entertainment industries and new interactive media such as the internet. The avant-garde can now be considered a tradition that has been made more widely available through the opening of archives, electronic documentation and new research, which has spurred both re-enactments, revisions and continuations of historical avant-garde practices, while new cultural contexts, political, technological and ecological conditions have called for new strategies.

While highlighting the prevailing role of television in Western societies, Art vs. TV maps and condenses a comprehensive history of the relationships of art and television. With a particular focus on the link between reality and representation, Francesco Spampinato analyzes video art works, installations, performances, interventions and television programs made by contemporary artists as forms of resistance to and appropriation and parody of mainstream television. The artists discussed belong to different generations: those that emerged in the 1960s in association with art movements such as Pop Art, Fluxus and Happening; and those appearing on the scene in the 1980s, whose work aimed at deconstructing media representation in line with postmodernist theories; to those arriving in the 2000s, an era in which, through reality shows and the Internet, anybody could potentially become a media personality; and finally those active in the 2010s, whose work reflects on how old media like television has definitively vaporized through the electronic highways of cyberspace. These works and phenomena elicit a tension between art and television, exposing an incongruence; an impossibility not only to converge but at the very least to open up a dialogical exchange.

Renowned artist Damien Hirst (b.1965) is reviewed in an exhibition of works spanning twenty years, held at Tate Modern from April to September 2012.The review explores the development of his art from the potent animal vitrines and butterfly composites to the series of extensive spot paintings, where the artist engaged in a complex invigilation of the coded systems that govern daily existence. The exhibition at Tate Modern features 'For The Love of God', the celebrated diamond studded skull, to be centred in the vast Turbine Hall of the converted power station at Bankside.

"The Landscape Series" of 2002 to 2006 was made in quantities of thirty to one hundred 1' square panels, each of the thirty sets generally taking three weeks to complete. The panels were worked on flat, painting eighteen at a time in fifteen minute bursts. They were laid out on an old framed 6' x 3' piece which also served as a container for the pools of colour washed over the textured surface. Two inch square wooden cubes were used to stack the paintings in small towers to dry out. Various factors steered the series development: there was reference to an initial colour plan, thoughts about the load-bearing pressures on a place, tracks and crossing points, airflow, water, spaces and intervals, the nature of settlement in the land. For a city: light and shadows on buildings, streets, side alleys and hidden courtyards, people, stores, traffic, noise, incidents and interruptions. Titles were assigned later to photographs of the line of production. The identity of a place was achieved not by literal description but as an equivalent found by coincidence in the passage of an abstract process.

A special harback editon limited to one hundred copies, Interviews-Artists brings together artists active in the fields of painting, drawing, photography, print and sculpture. Recorded conversations explore work in progress and the development of their practice. Patterns of personal experience link with a broader continuum of progressive ideas and show how their imaginative interventions bear on the world. The collection of interviews with artists developed in three phases; first researched from 1988-92 and published in the quarterly review, Cv Journal of Art & Crafts. Then gathered in an anthology, Interviews with the Artists: Elements of Discourse, (editions in 1993/1996/2001/2007). The second phase was researched from January to July 2010; the third from October 2010 to July 2011. Sixty eight interviews from the collection are published this volume.