Art in Theory 1900 - 2000

Charles Harrison is Professor of History and Theory of Art and Staff Tutor in Arts at the Open University. He is the author of numerous books on modern art criticism and art theory. Paul Wood is Senior Lecturer in Art History at the Open University. He is co-editor, with Charles Harrison and Jason Gaiger, of Art in Theory 1648–1815 (2001) and Art in Theory 1815–1900 (1998).

• Preface and Acknowledgements. A Note on the Presentation and Editing of Texts.General Introduction.Part I: The Legacy of Symbolism.Introduction.1. Classicism and Originality.Paul Signac: from Eugène Delacroix to Neo-Impressionism 1899.Paul Gauguin: letter to Fontainas 1899.Sigmund Freud: from 'On Dreams' 1901.Otto Weininger: from Sex and Character 1903.Max Liebermann: 'Imagination in Painting' 1904.Paul Cézanne: letters to Emile Bernard 1904-06.Rainer Maria Rilke: from Letters on Cézanne 1907.Maurice Denis (intro. Roger Fry): 'Cézanne' 1907.Maurice Denis: 'From Gauguin and Van Gogh to Neo-Classicism' 1909.Julius Meier-Graefe: 'The Mediums of Art, Past and Present' 1904.Giorgio de Chirico: 'Mystery and Creation' 1913.2. Expression and the Primitive.August Endell: 'The Beauty of Form and Decorative Art' 1897-98.Albert Pinkham Ryder: 'Paragraphs from the Studio of a Recluse' 1905.André Derain: letters to Vlaminck c.1905-1909.Ernst Ludwig Kirchner: programme of Die Brücke 1906.Wilhelm Worringer: from Abstraction and Empathy 1908.Henri Matisse: 'Notes of a Painter' 1908.Roger Fry: 'An Essay in Aesthetics' 1909.Wassily Kandinsky: from Concerning the Spiritual in Art 1911.Wassily Kandinsky: The Cologne Lecture 1914.Franz Marc: 'The "Savages" of Germany' and 'Two Pictures' 1912.August Macke: 'Masks' 1912.Emil Nolde: 'On Primitive Art' 1912.Oscar Kokoschka: 'On the Nature of Visions' 1912.Alexander Shevchenko: 'Neo-Primitivism' 1913.Benedetto Croce: 'What is Art?' 1913.Clive Bell: 'The Aesthetic Hypothesis' 1914.Carl Einstein: 'Negro Sculpture' 1915.Hermann Bahr: from Expressionism 1916.Hans Prinzhorn: from Artistry of the Mentally Ill 1922.Part II: The Idea of the Modern World.Introduction.3. Modernity.Georg Simmel: 'Metropolis and Mental Life' 1902-3.Max Weber: 'Asceticism and the Spirit of Capitalism' 1904-05.Vladimir Ilyich Lenin: 'Party Organization and Party Literature' 1905.Henri Bergson: from Creative Evolution 1907.Alexander Blok: 'Nature and Culture' 1908.Filippo Tommaso Marinetti: 'The Foundation and Manifesto of Futurism' 1909.Umberto Boccioni et al: 'Futurist Painting: Technical Manifesto' 1910.Robert Delaunay: 'On the Construction of Reality in Pure Painting' 1912.Georgy Valentinovich Plekhanov: from Art and Social Life 1912.Franz Marc: 'Foreword' 1914.Fernand Léger: 'Contemporary Achievements in Painting' 1914.Percy Wyndham Lewis: 'Our Vortex' 1914.Henri Gaudier-Brzeska: 'Gaudier-Brzeska Vortex' 1914, and 'Vortex Gaudier-Brzeska' 1915.Ludwig Meidner: 'Instructions for Painting Pictures of the Metropolis' 1914.Karl Kraus: from 'In These Great Times' 1914.Kasimir Malevich: From Cubism and Futurism to Suprematism: The New Realism in Painting 1915-16.4. Cubism.Jean Metzinger: 'Note on Painting' 1910.Guillaume Apollinaire: 'The Cubists' 1911.Guillaume Apollinaire: 'On the Subject in Modern Painting' 1912.Guillaume Apollinaire: 'The New Painting: Art Notes' 1912.Guillaume Apollinaire: from The Cubist Painters 1912.Jacques Rivière: 'Present Tendencies in Painting' 1912.Albert Gleizes and Jean Metzinger: from Cubism 1912.Fernand Léger: 'The Origins of Painting and its Representational Value' 1913.Olga Rozanova: 'The Bases of the New Creation' 1913.Daniel-Henry Kahnweiler: from The Rise of Cubism 1916-20.Georges Braque: 'Thoughts on Painting' 1917.Pablo Picasso: 'Picasso Speaks' 1923.Part III: Rationalization and Transformation.Introduction.5. Neo-Classicism and the Call to Order.Amédée Ozenfant: 'Notes on Cubism' 1916.Guillaume Apollinaire: 'The New Spirit and the Poets' 1918.Oswald Spengler: from The Decline of the West 1918.Carlo Carrà: 'Our Antiquity' 1916-18.Léonce Rosenberg: 'Tradition and Cubism' 1919.Giorgio de Chirico: 'The Return to Craft' 1919.Charles Edouard Jeanneret (Le Corbusier) and Amédée Ozenfant: 'Purism' 1920.Albert Gleizes: 'The Dada Case' 1920.André Derain: 'On Raphael' 1920.Percy Wyndham Lewis: 'The Children of the New Epoch' 1921.Juan Gris: Reply to a Questionnaire 1921.Gustav Friedrich Hartlaub: 'Reply to a Questionnaire' 1922.6. Dissent and Disorder.Hugo Ball: 'Dada Fragments' 1916-17.Marcel Duchamp: 'The Richard Mutt Case' 1917.Tristan Tzara: 'Dada Manifesto 1918' 1918.Richard Huelsenbeck: 'First German Dada Manifesto' 1918.Richard Huelsenbeck and Raoul Hausmann: 'What is Dadaism and what does it want in Germany?' 1919.Richard Huelsenbeck: from En Avant Dada 1920.Alexander Blok: 'The Decline of Humanism' 1918.Novembergruppe: Draft Manifesto 1918 and 'Guidelines' 1919.Novembergruppe Opposition: 'Open Letter to the Novembergruppe' 1921.Walter Gropius: Reply to Arbeitsrat für Kunst Questionnaire 1919.Max Beckmann: 'Creative Credo' 1918-20.Max Pechstein: 'Creative Credo' 1920.George Grosz: 'My New Pictures' 1921.Francis Picabia: 'Thank you, Francis!' 1923.7. Abstraction and Form.Hans Arp: Introduction to a catalogue 1915.Man Ray: Statement 1916.Viktor Shklovsky: from 'Art as Technique' 1917.De Stijl: 'Manifesto 1' 1918.Theo van Doesburg: from Principles of Neo-Plastic Art 1915-25.Piet Mondrian: 'Dialogue on the New Plastic' 1919.Piet Mondrian: Neo-Plasticism: the General Principle of Plastic Equivalence 1920-21.Kasimir Malevich: 'Non-Objective Art and Suprematism' 1919.Kasimir Malevich: The Question of Imitative Art 1920.Naum Gabo and Anton Pevsner: 'The Realistic Manifesto' 1920.UNOVIS: 'Programme of a United Audience in Painting of the Vitebsk State Free Workshops' 1920.Wassily Kandinsky: 'Plan for the Physico-psychological Department of the Russian Academy of Artistic Sciences' 1921.Johannes Itten: 'Analyses of Old Master Art' 1921.Oskar Schlemmer: Notes 1922-23.Walter Gropius: 'The Theory and Organization of the Bauhaus' 1923.Theo van Doesburg, El Lissitsky, Hans Richter: 'Declaration of the International Fraction of Constructivists of the First International Congress of Progressive Artists' 1922-23.17 Wladyslaw Strzeminski: 'What is legitimately called the New Art...' 1924.El Lissitsky: 'A and Pangeometry' 1925.Hannah Höch: 'The painter' c. 1920.José Ortega y Gasset: from The Dehumanisation of Art 1925.8. Utility and Construction.KOMFUT: 'Programme Declaration' 1919.Vladimir Tatlin: 'The Initiative Individual in the Collective' 1919.Lyubov Popova: Catalogue statement 1919.Nikolai Punin: 'The Monument to the Third International' 1920.Alexander Rodchenko: 'Slogans' and 'Organizational Programme' 1920-21.Alexander Rodchenko and Varvara Stepanova: 'Programme of the First Working Group of Constructivists' 1922.Alexei Gan: from Constructivism 1922.El Lissitsky and Ilya Ehrenburg: Statement by the editors of Veshch 1922.LEF editorial: 'Whom is LEF alerting?' 1923.Osip Brik: 'The So-Called "Formal Method" 1923.Osip Brik: 'From Picture to Calico-Print' 1924.Vladimir Tatlin: 'Report of the Section for Material Culture's Research Work' 1924.Part IV: Freedom, Responsibility and Power.Introduction.9. The Modern as Ideal.Paul Klee: from On Modern Art 1924.Amédée Ozenfant: from Foundations of Modern Art 1928.Hans Hofmann: 'On the Aims of Art' 1931.Abstraction-Création: Editorial Statements 1932 and 1933.Wladyslaw Strzeminski: Statements 1932 and 1933.Carl Gustav Jung: On the concept of the 'archetype' 1934 and 1938.Alfred H. Barr Jr: from Cubism and Abstract Art 1936.Henri Matisse: Statements to Tériade 1936.Naum Gabo: 'The Constructive Idea in Art' 1937.Piet Mondrian: 'Plastic Art and Pure Plastic Art' 1937.Barbara Hepworth: 'Sculpture' 1937.American Abstract Artists: Editorial Statement 1938.Ibram Lassaw: 'On Inventing Our Own Art' 1938.Ben Nicholson: 'Notes on Abstract Art' 1941.10. Realism as Figuration.Vladimir Ilyich Lenin: 'On Proletarian Culture' 1920.AKhRR: 'Declaration' 1922.AKhRR: 'The Immediate Tasks of AKhRR' 1924.David A. Siqueiros et al: 'A Declaration of Social, Political and Aesthetic Principles' 1922.Red Group: 'Manifesto' 1924.Otto Dix: 'The Object is Primary' 1927.ARBKD (Asso): 'Manifesto' and 'Statutes' 1928.George Grosz: from 'My Life' 1928.Alfred Rosenberg: from The Myth of the Twentieth Century 1930.Georg Lukács: '"Tendency" or Partisanship?' 1932.Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party: 'Decree on the Reconstruction of Literary and Artistic Organizations' 1932.John Reed Club of New York: 'Draft Manifesto' 1932.Diego Rivera: The Revolutionary Spirit in Modern Art' 1932.Mario Sironi: 'Manifesto of Mural Painting' 1933.Andrei Zhdanov: 'Speech to the Congress of Soviet Writers' 1934.David A. Siqueiros: 'Towards a Transformation of the Plastic Arts' 1934.Stuart Davis and Clarence Weinstock: 'Abstract Painting in America', 'Contradictions in Abstractions' and 'A Medium of 2 Dimensions' 1935.Grant Wood: from Revolt Against the City 1935.Francis Klingender: 'Content and Form in Art' 1935.Adolf Hitler: Speech Inaugurating the 'Great Exhibition of German Art' 1937.11. Realism as Critique.Leon Trotsky: from Literature and Revolution 1922-23.André Breton: from the First Manifesto of Surrealism 1924.Louis Aragon: from Paris Peasant 1924.Louis Aragon et al.'Declaration of the Bureau de Recherches Surréalistes' 1925.André Breton: Surrealism and Painting 1928.André Breton: from the 'Second Manifesto of Surrealism' 1929.George Grosz and Wieland Herzfelde: 'Art is in Danger' 1925.Osip Brik: 'Photography versus Painting' 1926.Sergei Tretyakov: 'We are searching' and 'We Raise the Alarm' 1927.Siegfried Kracauer: from 'The Mass Ornament' 1927.October (Association of Artistic Labour):'Declaration' 1928.Georges Bataille: from 'Critical Dictionary' 1929-30.Georges Bataille: 'The Lugubrious Game' 1929.Salvador Dali: 'The Stinking Ass' 1930.Gustav Klucis: 'Photomontage as a new problem in Agit Art' 1931.Max Ernst: 'What is Surrealism?' 1934.Walter Benjamin: 'The Author as Producer' 1934.Bertolt Brecht: 'Popularity and Realism' 1938.Fernand Léger: 'The New Realism Goes On' 1937.12. Modernism as Critique.Kasimir Malevich: Letter to Meyerhold 1932.Pablo Picasso: 'Conversation with Picasso' 1935.Herbert Read: 'What is Revolutionary Art?' 1935.Meyer Schapiro: 'The Social Bases of Art' 1936.Jan Mukařvoský: from Aesthetic Function 1934/36.Walter Benjamin: 'The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction' 1936.Theodor Adorno: Letter to Benjamin 1936.Ernst Bloch: 'Discussing Expressionism' 1938.André Breton, Diego Rivera and Leon Trotsky: 'Towards a Free Revolutionary Art' 1938.R. G. Collingwood: Good Art and Bad Art' 1938.Clement Greenberg: 'Avant-Garde and Kitsch' 1939.Harold Rosenberg: 'The Fall of Paris' 1940.Part V: The Individual and the Social.Introduction.13. The American Avant-Garde.Clement Greenberg: 'Towards a Newer Laocoon' 1940.Adolph Gottlieb and Mark Rothko with Barnett Newman: Statement 1943.Jackson Pollock: Answers to a Questionnaire 1944.Jackson Pollock: Two Statements 1947 and 1947/8.Mark Rothko: 'The Romantics were Prompted...' 1947.Mark Rothko: Statement 1947.Adolph Gottlieb: Statement 1947.Barnett Newman: 'The Ideographic Picture' 1947.Barnett Newman: 'The First Man was an Artist' 1947.Clement Greenberg: 'The Decline of Cubism' 1948.Barnett Newman: 'The Sublime is Now' 1948.Willem de Kooning: 'A Desperate View' 1949.Jackson Pollock: Interview with William Wright 1950.David Smith: 'Aesthetics, the Artist and the Audience' 1952.Clyfford Still: Statement 1952.Harold Rosenberg: from 'The American Action Painters' 1952.Clyfford Still: letter to Gordon Smith 1959.14. Individualism in Europe.Wols: Aphorisms c. 1945-51.Jean-Paul Sartre: from Existentialism and Humanism 1946.Jean Dubuffet: 'Notes for the Well-Lettered' 1946.Jean Dubuffet: 'Crude Art Preferred to Cultural Art' 1948.Antonin Artaud: from Van Gogh: the Man Suicided by Society 1947.Jean-Paul Sartre: 'The Search for the Absolute' 1948.Samuel Beckett and Georges Duthuit: from Three Dialogues 1949.Jacques Lacan: 'The Mirror-Phase as Formative of the Function of the I' 1949.Jean-Michel Atlan: 'Abstraction and Adventure in Contemporary Art' 1950.Francis Ponge: 'Reflections on the Statuettes, Figures and Paintings of Alberto Giacometti' 1951.Albert Camus: 'Creation and Revolution' 1951.Michel Tapié: from An Other Art 1952.Georg Baselitz: 'Pandemonium Manifestos' 1961-2.Francis Bacon: Interview with David Sylvester 1962-3.15. Art and Society.Maurice de Vlaminck: 'Open Opinions on Painting' 1942.Francis Klingender: from Marxism and Modern Art 1943.Robert Motherwell: 'The Modern Painter's World' 1944.Renato Guttuso: 'Crisis of Renewal' 1944.Pablo Picasso: 'Why I Joined the Communist Party' 1944.Pablo Picasso: Statement to Simone Téry 1945.Frida Kahlo: On Moses 1945.Lucio Fontana: 'The White Manifesto' 1946.Vladimir Kemenov: from 'Aspects of Two Cultures' 1947.Robert Motherwell and Harold Rosenberg: 'The Question of What Will Emerge Is Left Open' 1947/8.Constant: 'Our Own Desires Build the Revolution' 1949.Asger Jorn: 'Forms Conceived as Language' 1949.André Fougeron: 'The Painter on his Battlement' 1948.Hans Sedlmayr and Theodor Adorno: from the 'Darmstadt Colloquy' 1950.George Dondero: from The Congressional Record 1949.Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr. from The Politics of Freedom 1950.Alfred H. Barr Jr. 'Is Modern Art Communistic?' 1952.Ben Shahn: 'The Artist and the Politician' 1953.Henry Moore: 'The Sculptor in Modern Society' 1952.David A. Siqueiros: 'Open Letter to the Painters, Sculptors and Engravers of the Soviet Union' 1955.Georg Lukács: 'The Ideology of Modernism' 1956.Part VI: The Moment of Modernism.16. Art and Modern Life.Roland Barthes: from 'Myth Today' 1956.Jirô Yoshihara: Gutai Manifesto 1956.Guy Debord: Writings from the Situationist International 1957-61.Asger Jorn: 'Detourned Painting' 1959.Frantz Fanon: 'On National Culture' 1959.Lawrence Alloway: 'The Arts and the Mass Media' 1958.Allan Kaprow: from Assemblages, Environments and Happenings 1959-65.Piero Manzoni: 'Free Dimension' 1960.Pierre Restany: 'The New Realists' 1960.Groupe de Recherche d'Art Visuel: 'Transforming the Current Situation of Plastic Art' 1961/2.George Maciunas: 'Neo-Dada in Music, Theater, Poetry, Art' 1962.Raymond William: 'The Analysis of Culture' 1961.John Cage: 'On Robert Rauschenberg, Artist, and his Work' 1961.Jasper Johns: Interview with David Sylvester 1965.Richard Hamilton: 'For the Finest Art, Try Pop' 1961.Claes Oldenburg: from Documents from The Store 1961.Andy Warhol: Interview with Gene Swenson 1963.Roy Lichtenstein: Lecture to College Art Association 1964.George Kubler: from The Shape of Time 1962.Marshall McLuhan: from Understanding Media 1964.Gerhard Richter: 'Notes 1964-5'.Tony Smith: from an interview with Samuel Wagstaff Jr 1966.Jasper Johns: Obituary of Marcel Duchamp 1968.17. Modernist Art.Alain Robbe-Grillet: 'Commitment' 1957.David Smith: 'Tradition and Identity' 1959.Maurice Merleau-Ponty: from 'Eye and Mind' 1961.Roger Hilton: 'Remarks about Painting' 1961.Clement Greenberg: 'Modernist Painting' 1960-65.Theodor Adorno: from 'Commitment' 1962.Barnett Newman: Interview with Dorothy Gees Seckler 1962.Clement Greenberg: from 'After Abstract Expressionism' 1962.Michael Fried: from Three American Painters 1965.Michael Fried: from 'Shape as Form: Frank Stella's New Paintings' 1966.Jules Olitski: `Painting in Color' 1967.Stanley Cavell: 'A Matter of Meaning It' 1967.William Tucker and Tim Scott: 'Reflections on Sculpture' 1967.Richard Wollheim: 'The Work of Art as Object' 1970.Part VII: Institutions and Objections.Introduction.18. Objecthood and Reductivism.Yves Klein: from 'The Evolution of Art towards the Immaterial' 1959.Carl Andre: 'Preface to Stripe Painting' 1959.Frank Stella: Pratt Institute Lecture 1959-60.Ad Reinhardt: 'Art as Art' 1962.Donald Judd: 'Specific Objects' 1965.Robert Morris: 'Notes on Sculpture 1-3' 1966-67.Michael Fried: 'Art and Objecthood' 1967.Sol LeWitt: 'Paragraphs on Conceptual Art' 1967.Sol LeWitt: 'Sentences on Conceptual Art' 1969.Robert Barry: Interview with Arthur R. Rose 1969.Joseph Kosuth: 'Art after Philosophy' 1969.Daniel Buren, Olivier Mosset, Michel Parmentier and Niele Toroni: Statement 1967.Daniel Buren: 'Beware' 1969-70.19. Attitudes to Form.Terry Atkinson and Michael Baldwin: 'Air Show' 1967.Michelangelo Pistoletto: 'Famous Last Words' 1967.Robert Smithson: 'A Sedimentation of the Mind: Earth Projects' 1968.Robert Morris: 'Notes on Sculpture 4: Beyond Objects' 1969.Art & Language: Editorial introduction to Art-Language 1969.Ian Burn and Mel Ramsden: 'The Role of Language' 1969.Lawrence Weiner: Statements 1969-72.Victor Burgin: 'Situational Aesthetics' 1969.John A. Murphy: Sponsor's statement for 'When Attitudes become Form' 1969.Germano Celant: from Art Povera 1969.Eva Hesse: Interview with Cindy Nemser.Joseph Beuys: 'Not just a few are called, but everyone' 1972.Lea Vergine: from 'The Body as Language' 1974.Bruce Nauman: Interview with Michele De Angelus 1980.20. Political Aspects.Hélio Oiticica: 'Appearance of the Supra-Sensorial' 1967/8.Dan Graham: Presentation to an Open Hearing of the Artworkers Coalition 1969.Mierle Laderman Ukeles: 'Maintenance Art Manifesto' c. 1969.Lucy Lippard: 'Interview with Ursula Meyer' 1969 and 'Postface' 1973.Artforum: 'The Artist and Politics: a Symposium' 1970.Art Workers Coalition: Statement of Demands 1970.Valie Export: 'Woman's Art' 1972.Joseph Beuys: 'I Am Searching for Field Character' 1974.Hans Haacke: Statement 1974.Marcel Broodthaers: 'To be bien pensant... or not to be. To be blind' 1975.Mel Ramsden: from 'On Practice' 1975.Ian Burn: 'The Art Market: Affluence and Degradation' 1975.Victor Burgin: from 'Socialist Formalism' 1976.Art & Language: Editorial to Art-Language 1976.21. Critical Revisions.Jacques Derrida: from Of Grammatology 1967.Michel Foucault: 'What is an Author?' 1969.Louis Althusser: from 'Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses' 1970.Thomas Kuhn: from 'Postscript – 1969' 1970.Roland Barthes: 'From Work to Text' 1971.Robert Smithson: 'Cultural Confinement' 1972.Leo Steinberg: from Other Criteria 1968-72.Rosalind Krauss: 'A View of Modernism' 1972.Jean Baudrillard: 'Ethic of Labour, Aesthetic of Play' 1973.Laura Mulvey: 'Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema' 1973/75.Michel Foucault: A Lecture 1976.Rosalind Krauss: 'Notes on the Index, Part I' 1976/77.Fredric Jameson: from 'Reflections on the Brecht-Lukács Debate' 1977.Raymond Williams: 'Dominant, Residual and Emergent' 1977.Edward Said: From Orientalism 1978.Part VIII: Ideas of the Postmodern.Introduction.22. The Critique of Originality.Jean Baudrillard: 'The Hyper-realism of Simulation'1976.Pierre Bourdieu: 'Being Different' 1977.Craig Owens: 'The Allegorical Impulse' 1980.Rosalind Krauss: from 'The Originality of the Avant-Garde' 1981.Hal Foster: 'Subversive Signs' 1982.Sherrie Levine: Statement 1982.Art & Language: 'Letter to a Canadian Curator' 1982.Barbara Kruger: '"Taking" Pictures' 1982.Peter Halley: 'Nature and Culture' 1983.Fredric Jameson: 'The Deconstruction of Expression' 1984.Haim Steinbach, Jeff Koons, Sherrie Levine, Philip Taaffe, Peter Halley, Ashley Bickerton: 'From Criticism to Complicity' 1986.Julia Kristeva: Interview with Catherine Francblin 1986.23. Figures of Difference.Edward Said: from 'Opponents, Audiences, Constituencies, and Community' 1981.Mary Kelly: 'Re-Viewing Modernist Criticism' 1981.Ana Mendieta: 'Art and Politics' 1982.Krzysztof Wodiczko: 'Public Projection' 1983.Victor Burgin: from 'The Absence of Presence' 1984.Jacqueline Rose: 'Sexuality in the Field of Vision' 1984/85.Niklas Luhmann: 'The Work of Art and the Self-Reproduction of Art' 1984-86.W. J. T. Mitchell: 'Image and Word' and 'Mute Poesy and Blind Painting' 1986.Raymond Williams: 'When was Modernism?' 1987/89.Louise Bourgeois: Statements from an Interview with Donald Kuspit 1988.Richard Rorty: 'Private Irony and Liberal Hope' 1989.Gayatri Chakravorti Spivak: 'Who Claims Alterity?' 1989.Richard Serra: The Yale Lecture 1990.Mike Kelley: 'Dirty Toys: Mike Kelley Interviewed' 1991/2.Martin Kippenberger: Interview with Jutta Koether 1991/94.Peter Wollen: 'Into the Future: Tourism, Language and Art' 1990/93.Homi K. Bhabha: On 'hybridity' and moving 'beyond' 1994.24. The Condition of History.Daniel Bell: from 'Modernism and Capitalism' 1978.Jean-Francois Lyotard: 'Introduction' to The Postmodern Condition 1979.Jürgen Habermas: 'Modernity - An Incomplete Project' 1980.Jean-Francois Lyotard: 'What is Postmodernism?' 1982.Julia Kristeva: 'Powers of Horror' 1980.Donald Judd: from '... not about master-pieces but why there are so few of them' 1984.Joseph Beuys, Jannis Kounellis, Anselm Kiefer, Enzo Cucchi: from 'The Cultural-Historical Tragedy of the European Continent' 1986.Gerhard Richter: from 'Interview with Benjamin Buchloh' 1988.Gerhard Richter: Notes 1990.Jeff Wall: from a discussion 1990.Diederich Diederichsen: 'Which Side are You on, Cultural Worker?' 1990.Albert Oehlen: in conversation with Wilfred Dickhoff and Martin Prinzhorn 1991.Olu Oguibe: 'In the Heart of Darkness' 1993.IIlya Kabakov: On installations 1994 and 2000.Doris Salcedo: Interview with Charles Merewether 1999.Franco Moretti: 'MoMA2000: The Capitulation' 2000.Bibliography.Copyright Acknowledgements.Index.

"Occasionally one comes across a book that is at once compelling and frightening, a book that excites and disorientates, a book with intimations of the sublime. Art in Theory is such a book. An indispensable source book." (Arlis News-Sheet)