This collection examines key aesthetic avant-garde art movements of the twentieth century and their relationships with revolutionary politics. The contributors distinguish aesthetic avant-gardes -whose artists aim to transform society and the ways of sensing the world through political means-from the artistic avant-gardes, which focus on transforming representation. Following the work of philosophers such as Friedrich Schiller and Jacques Ranciere, the contributors argue that the aesthetic is inherently political and that aesthetic avant-garde art is essential for political revolution. In addition to analyzing Russian constructivsm, surrealism, and Situationist International, the contributors examine Italian futurism's model of integrating art with politics and life, the murals of revolutionary Mexico and Nicaragua, 1960s American art, and the Slovenian art collective NSK's construction of a fictional political state in the 1990s. Aesthetic Revolutions and Twentieth-Century Avant-Garde Movements traces the common foundations and goals shared by these disparate arts communities and shows how their art worked towards effecting political and social change. Contributors. John E. Bowlt, Sascha Bru, David Craven, Ales Erjavec, Tyrus Miller, Raymond Spiteri, Misko Suvakovic

Theodor Adorno's Aesthetic Theory (1970) offers one of the most powerful and comprehensive critiques of art and of the discipline of aesthetics ever written. The work offers a deeply critical engagement with the history and philosophy of aesthetics and with the traditions of European art through the middle of the 20th century. It is coupled with ambitious claims about what aesthetic theory ought to be. But the cultural horizon of Adorno's Aesthetic Theory was the world of high modernism, and much has happened since then both in theory and in practice. Adorno's powerful vision of aesthetics calls for reconsideration in this light. Must his work be defended, updated, resisted, or simply left behind? This volume gathers new essays by leading philosophers, critics, and theorists writing in the wake of Adorno in order to address these questions. They hold in common a deep respect for the power of Adorno's aesthetic critique and a concern for the future of aesthetic theory in response to recent developments in aesthetics and its contexts.

"This crucial study presents an epic narrative of how postmodernism gave the artists of Eastern and Central Europe the expressive means to work their way out from the ruins of state socialism into the global art world in which their compatriots in the West are themselves struggling to find their identity. The authors bring to consciousness the art history of the present from important and unsuspected perspectives. This is not just a book for specialists-it is for everyone who lives the life of art in unprecedented times."--Arthur C. Danto, author of "After the End of Art: Contemporary Art and the Pale of History

"A fascinating document in the understanding of one of the decisive cultural moments in the postmodern world. The book's diversity of approaches illuminates both postmodern art and politics from a distinctive angle. Postmodernism and the Postsocialist Condition is likely to become a significant primary source for future cultural historians."--Paul Crowther, author of "The Transhistorical Image: Philosophizing Art and Its History

"This fine volume deals with the postmodernist approaches that helped artists and intellectuals cope with political reality after socialism and provided the means to face the cultural vacuum without regressing to premodern attitudes. The book suggests that dissenting voices have a better chance to be heard in smaller countries like Hungary, Cuba, Slovenia, and other republics of the former Yugoslavia. It should indeed make us pay more attention to what has happened and is happening in these countries as well as in larger countries like Russia and China."--Wolfgang Welsch, author of "Undoing Aesthetics

"This collection genuinely crackles withvitality. Tracking postmodernism far away from the canonical centers of the modern, it presents an exhilarating patchwork of mythic repetitions, sociopolitical reflections, and sheer creative exuberance."--Stephen Bann, University of Bristol