The End of the American Avant Garde
American Social Experience Series

Stuart D. Hobbs (Author)

9780814735398

Paperback / softback, published 1 January 2000

242 pages
22.9 x 15.2 x 2.4 cm, 0.286 kg

"A significant work for intellectual and cultural historians, this is a tight, . . . focused examination of an important aspect of recent American culture." (Choice) "Hobbs provides ample grounds for readers to ponder the interplay between particular movements in the arts and a larger American culture in the late 1950s and early 1960s." (American Historical Review)

"By 1966, the composer Virgil Thomson would write, "Truth is, there is no avant-garde today." How did the avant garde dissolve, and why? In this thought-provoking work, Stuart D. Hobbs traces the avant garde from its origins to its eventual appropriation by a conservative political agenda, consumer culture, and the institutional world of art.