"Art of the Avant-Gardes" is the second of four volumes that make up the Open University's "Art of the Twentieth Century" series. It discusses the development of modern art in the first third of the century. The book opens with an essay that introduces the main themes of art in the period and summarizes the political context in which it developed: World War I, the Russian Revolution and the subsequent consolidation of the European dictatorships.
The book consists of four parts. The first looks at the centrally important idea of "expression" in art, and related questions of orientalism and the "primitive". The second part concentrates on cubism, and the third goes on to investigate the development of abstract art. The final part discusses the radical avant-garde movements committed to overcoming the barrier between "art" and "life": Dada, Soviet constructivism and surrealism. The book is illustrated throughout, and more specific case studies range from Picasso's "Demoiselles d'Avignon" to the transition from sculpture to object in English abstraction.
The complete series is: "Frameworks for Modern Art", "Art of the Avant-Gardes", "Varieties of Modernism" and "Themes in Contemporary Art", and there is also the companion reader, "Art of the Twentieth Century: A Reader".
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