Reyner Banham: Theory and Design in the First Machine Age, 2nd ed. (1960/1967)

First published in 1960, Theory and Design in the First Machine Age has become required reading in numerous courses on the history of modern architecture and is widely regarded as one of the definitive books on the modern movement. It has influenced a generation of students and critics interested in the formation of attitudes, themes, and forms which were characteristic of artists and architects working primarily in Europe between 1900 and 1930 under the compulsion of new technological developments in the first machine age.

Publisher Praeger, New York and Washington, 1960
Second edition, 1967; Second printing, 1970
338 pages

Review (Robert Gardner-Medwin, The Town Planning Review, 1961)
Review (Dennis Young)
Review (Caroline S. Lebar, 2012)
Review (of the 2009 French edition, Hugues Fontenas, Critique d’art, 2010, in French)
Commentary (Gillian Naylor, Journal of Design History, 1997)
Commentary (Nigel Whiteley, 2005)

PDF (50 MB, no OCR)

Peter Bürger: Theory of the Avant-Garde (1974–) [DE, EN, ES, PT, CZ]

“In this volume, Peter Bürger formulates a theory of the ‘institution of art’. He argues that the social status of literature and art cannot be explained by making simple, direct links between the contents of individual works and social history. Rather, he holds, it is the social status of art, its function and prestige in society, that provides the connection between the individual art work and history. Bürger’s concept of the institution of art establishes a framework within which a work of art is both produced and received.

The French and German literary and visual avant-garde of the 1920s provides the test of Bürger’s theory. Focusing on the role of the artistic manifesto and, particularly, on the collage as an art form, he shows how avant-garde movements questioned the autonomous, self-referential status of art in bourgeois society and thus represented a radical break with the aestheticism of high modernism. Bürger attacks metaphysical aesthetics and argues instead for a materialistic aesthetic theory for today, one that is rooted in the reality of the social sphere. His theory calls into question any conventional concept of art derived from Romantic notions of organic unity.

Theory of the Avant-Garde provoked such discussion in Germany that its publisher, Suhrkamp Verlag, issued a book of responses that was more than twice the size of Bürger’s own book.” (from the back cover)

German edition
Publisher Suhrkamp, Frankfurt am Main, 1974
Second edition, 1993
147 pages

English edition
Translated by Michael Shaw
Foreword by Jochen Schulte-Sasse
Publisher University of Minnesota Press, 1984
Theory of History and Literature series, 4
ISBN 0816610673
134 pages

Reviews: Benjamin Buchloh (Art in America, 1984), Leah Ulansey (MLN, 1984), Daglind Sonolet (Telos, 1984), Michael T. Jones (German Quarterly, 1986), Martin Vrba (A2, 2016, CZ).

Publisher (DE)
Publisher (EN)
Publisher (CZ)

Theorie der Avantgarde (German, 2nd ed., 1974/1993, updated on 2020-10-13)
Theory of the Avant-Garde (English, 1984, assembled from various sources, no OCR, updated to full version on 2014-5-12 via Charles, updated to OCR version on 2016-1-23 via a2, 12 MB)
Teoría de la vanguardia (Spanish, trans. Jorge García, 1987), 3rd edition (2000, 51 MB)
Teoria da vanguarda (Portuguese, trans. Ernesto Sampaio, 1993)
Teorie avantgardy (Czech, trans. Václav Magid, 2015, added on 2020-4-5)

See also Bürger’s essay Avant-Garde and Neo-Avant-Garde: An Attempt to Answer Certain Critics of Theory of the Avant-Garde, 2010.

K.E. Shtayn (ed.), Three Centuries of Russian Metapoetics, Vol. 3: Avant-Garde: Cubo-Futurism, Ego-Futurism, Centrifuge, Rayonism, Imaginism, Proletkult, LEF, VAPP, Constructivism, Oberiu (2006) [Russian]

An encyclopedic collection of Russian literary avant-garde writing of the first half of the 20th century.

Tri veka russkoy metapoetiki: Legitimatsiya diskursa, Tom 3: Pervaya polovina XX veka. Avangard: Kubofuturizm. Egofuturizm. Tsentrifuga. Luchizm. Imazhinizm. Proletkul’t. Lef. VAPP. Konstruktivizm. OBERIU
Publisher Izdatelstvo Stavropolskogo gosudarstvennogo universiteta, Stavropol, 2006
ISBN 5886485120
830 pages

Russian avant-garde bibliography at Monoskop wiki

PDF
See also Russkaya metapoetika. Uchebnyy slovar, 2006
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