The Decline and Fall of the Avant-Garde : Essays on Contemporary Art

On the occasion of the author's 80th birthdat Cv publishes a collection of essays and reviews by the eminent art historian and writer, Edward Lucie-Smith.

The articles cover the broad span, of 20th/21st century art and its progression by pathways of postmodernism to contemporary art.

With the experience of his landmark publications on modern art, several of which remain in print; the author introduces the reader to aspects of cultural mechanics, from the outset of creative experiment and intervention,absorbed by an intricate arena of curatorship and collection, with luminous insights to flaws in its hierarchy and prospects for the future. -This selection of recent essays turns, often it seems obsessively, on quite a small number of topics.

One is the idea of an avant-garde - or, should one say, of 'avant-gardism' - now so central to any discussion of the contemporary visual arts. Another, linked to this, is the way in which avant-garde art, always instinctively perceived as something innovative and rebellious, has in fact become the official art of our time, supported by state subsidies, by quasi-official bodies of all kinds, and (particularly in the USA, where direct state support is less easily available) by a variety of prestigious cultural foundations That is, something that is seen as existing in opposition to the status quo, is in fact at the very core of the status quo.

ELS o1/2013