Avant-Garde Theory

The aim of the avant-garde is to bring art and life together. It hopes to transform society through art. It represents the most unconventional experience in the establishment of a critical culture in the 20th century.
Bürger, in light of avant-garde movements such as Dada and Surrealism that escalated between the two world wars, and the theoretical polemics they provoked, draws a social and historical portrait of the avant-garde. He analyzes the ongoing ambiguity in the avant-garde's relationship with modernism. Theory of the Avant-Garde is considered a threshold in studies on 20th-century culture, art, and literature. The debates it aroused still continue and enrich the record of the avant-garde.
The events of 1968 are perhaps the end, or perhaps the rebirth, of the avant-garde. Either way, the avant-garde is in the life of art. The hope and threat it evokes continue to have an impact.

In this new edition of Theory of the Avant-Garde, Peter Bürger has added texts titled "The Contradictory Legacy of the Avant-Garde" (2014), in which he reinterprets the theses in his book, and "The Road to Theory of the Avant-Garde" (2015), in which he describes the process of writing the book.