Theory of the Rearguard : How to Survive Contemporary Art (and Almost Everything Else) - Iván De La Nuez

Theory of the Rearguard

How to Survive Contemporary Art (and Almost Everything Else)

By: Iván De La Nuez

Paperback | 15 April 2025

At a Glance

Paperback


$36.89

or 4 interest-free payments of $9.22 with

 or 

Available: 15th April 2025

Preorder. Will ship when available.

Cuban art critic and curator Ivan de la Nuez returns with an ironic epitaph for contemporary art.

Art criticism that examines contemporary art in the 21st century in relationship to politics, iconography, and literature.

"Ivan de la Nuez transforms art criticism into an artform." -Letras Libres


Cuban art critic and curator Ivan de la Nuez returns with an ironic epitaph for contemporary art.

Art criticism that examines contemporary art in the 21st century in relationship to politics, iconography, and literature.

"Ivan de la Nuez transforms art criticism into an artform." -Letras Libres


Theory of the Rearguard examines how contemporary art is in tension with survival, rather than in relation to life. In the twentieth century, Peter B rger's Theory of the Avant-Garde was a cult book focused on the two main tasks that art demanded at the time- to break its representation and to destroy the barrier that separated it from life.

Forty years later, The Theory of the Rearguard is an ironic manifesto about contemporary art and its failures, even though Ivan de la Nuez does not waste his time mourning it or disguising it. He argues that our times are not characterized by the distance between art and life, but by a tension between art and survival, which is the continuation of life by any means necessary.

In the twenty-first century, Ivan de la Nuez examines art in relationship to politics, iconography, and literature. This austere and sharp book-in which Duchamp stumbles upon Lupe, the revolution upon the museum, Paul Virilio upon Joan Fontcuberta or Fukuyama upon Michael Jackson-wonders if contemporary art will ever end. Because if it were mortal-"just as mortal as everything it invokes or examines under its magnifying glass"-de la Nuez argues would be worth writing an epitaph for it as he has done in this sparkling book of art criticism.

More in Art from 1900 to 1960

Grazia Deledda's Painterly Aesthetic - Angela Guiso
Woven Histories : Textiles and Modern Abstraction - Lynne Cooke

RRP $107.95

$68.75

36%
OFF
Kandinsky : Basic Arts Series - Hajo Düchting

RRP $39.99

$33.95

15%
OFF
Bauhaus. Updated Edition : Bibliotheca Universalis - Magdalena Droste
Frida : The Biography of Frida Kahlo - Hayden Herrera

RRP $29.99

$27.90

Yves Klein : Basic Arts Series - Hannah Weitemeier

RRP $39.99

$39.25

Dali : Les Diners de Gala - Salvador Dali

RRP $120.00

$75.50

37%
OFF
1920s Paris : Basic Arts Series - Rainer Metzger
Bauhaus : Basic Arts Series - Magdalena Droste
Duchamp Accelerated : Contemporary Perspectives - Julian Jason Haladyn

RRP $59.99

$49.25

18%
OFF
Reclaiming Modernity : Essays on a Paradoxical Nostalgia - Larry Bennett
Reclaiming Modernity : Essays on a Paradoxical Nostalgia - Larry Bennett
American Letters : 1927-1947 - Jackson Pollock

RRP $30.95

$28.75

The Minimum Dwelling Revisited : CIAM's Practical Utopia (1928-31) - Aristotle Kallis