The End of the American Avant Garde: American Social Experience SeriesHardcover, 1 February 1997

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.