Art in Theory, 1900-2000: An Anthology of Changing Ideas » (2nd Edition)

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).

Since it was first published in 1992, this book has become one of the leading anthologies of art theoretical texts in the English-speaking world. This expanded edition includes the fruits of recent research, involving a considerable amount of newly-translated material from the entire period, together with additional texts from the last decades of the twentieth century.

The features that made the first edition so successful have been retained:

• The volume provides comprehensive representation of the theories which underpinned developments in the visual arts during the twentieth century.

• As well as writings by artists, the anthology includes texts by critics, philosophers, politicians, and literary figures.

• The content is clearly structured into eight broadly chronological sections, starting with the legacy of symbolism and concluding with contemporary debates about the postmodern.

• The editors provide individual introductions to each of the 371 anthologized texts.

Material new to this expanded edition includes texts on African art, on the Bauhaus and on the re-emergent avant-gardes of the period after the Second World War. Post-modernist debates are amplified by texts on gender, on installation and performance art, and on the increasing globalization of culture.