The most recommended avant garde books

Who picked these books? Meet our 24 experts.

24 authors created a book list connected to avant garde, and here are their favorite avant garde books.
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Book cover of Distant Early Warning: Marshall McLuhan and the Transformation of the Avant-Garde

William J. Buxton Author Of Harold Innis on Peter Pond: Biography, Cultural Memory, and the Continental Fur Trade

From my list on By or about the Canadian philosopher Marshall McLuhan (.

Why am I passionate about this?

William J. Buxton is Distinguished Professor Emeritus of Communication Studies and Senior Fellow, Centre for Sensory Studies, at Concordia University Montreal, Qc, Canada. He is also professeur associé au Département d’information et de communication de l’Université Laval, Québec City, Québec, Canada. He has edited and co-edited five books related to the life and works of the Canadian political economist and media theorist, Harold Adams Innis.

William's book list on By or about the Canadian philosopher Marshall McLuhan (

William J. Buxton Why did William love this book?

This book explores McLuhan’s relationship with avant-garde art. While McLuhan’s engagement with artistic endeavours, has received some attention, Kitnick examines in detail not only how McLuhan’s work on art developed over an extended period, but how his views on artistic practice came to inform the work of others. He builds on McLuhan’s contention that art was not primarily a means of self-expression, but rather the basis for cultural exploration and environmental change. Drawing inspiration from figures such as James Joyce, T.S. Eliot, and Wyndham Lewis. McLuhan, according to Kitnick, saw members of the avant-garde as artists who work within conventional structures in order to disrupt them, thereby throwing them into relief. 

By Alex Kitnick,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Distant Early Warning as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Marshall McLuhan (1911-1980) is best known as a media theorist-many consider him the founder of media studies-but he was also an important theorist of art. Though a near-household name for decades due to magazine interviews and TV specials, McLuhan remains an underappreciated yet fascinating figure in art history. His connections with the art of his own time were largely unexplored, until now. In Distant Early Warning, art historian Alex Kitnick delves into these rich connections and argues both that McLuhan was influenced by art and artists and, more surprisingly, that McLuhan's work directly influenced the art and artists of his…


Book cover of Video Revolutions: On the History of a Medium

Mareike Jenner Author Of Netflix and the Re-invention of Television

From my list on contemporary television.

Why am I passionate about this?

I like understanding television as culturally situated. Television is constructed along a number of sites: cultural, institutional, ideological, historical, or via the different ways audiences understand it. Interrogating television and what it does as a medium was historically relevant because it was a mass medium. But how can we evaluate the medium in times of highly fragmented audiences? Because of this, exploring Netflix as a new form of ‘television’ has become so important to me. The authors all try to get to terms with how television has changed over its short existence. This helps us understand the medium better, as well as our current moment.

Mareike's book list on contemporary television

Mareike Jenner Why did Mareike love this book?

This is a short book in which Newman explores the changes in what the term ‘video’ means.

The term is closely intertwined with the history of television, describing first television broadcasts and then how taping was used to bridge the time differences between the American east and west coasts. The term then described the ways home video revolutionized how video was used in the private sphere. Today, we receive videos as the digital snippets we see on YouTube or the short clips we post on social media. 

I like Newman’s work in general. But this book tells us so much about TV history in the US; I find it an incredibly fascinating work.

By Michael Z. Newman,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Video Revolutions as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Since the days of early television, video has been an indispensable part of culture, society, and moving-image media industries. Over the decades, it has been an avant-garde artistic medium, a high-tech consumer gadget, a format for watching movies at home, a force for democracy, and the ultimate, ubiquitous means of documenting reality. In the twenty-first century, video is the name we give all kinds of moving images. We know it as an adaptable medium that bridges analog and digital, amateur and professional, broadcasting and recording, television and cinema, art and commercial culture, and old media and new digital networks. In…


Book cover of Fashion Criticism: An Anthology

Laura T. Di Summa Author Of A Philosophy of Fashion Through Film: On the Body, Style, and Identity

From my list on people who overthink their look.

Why am I passionate about this?

As a child, I spent hours marveling at my father’s collection of ties. In love with tailoring, he taught me the meaning of “sprezzatura” and the joys that come from thinking of clothes as a part of yourself. Fashion returned to me as I studied philosophy, art history, and film. It took a few years, but then it just became clear to me that I had to talk about it. So I started writing, curating, and experimenting a bit more. I always say that fashion is a verb: my work is to explore what It can do, whether by curating a show, writing articles, or perusing local boutiques in my travels.

Laura's book list on people who overthink their look

Laura T. Di Summa Why did Laura love this book?

Before Instagram, we read about fashion. Well, we still do. At least, I do.

Francesca Granata has selected a series of fashion articles that are not only fun to read but are lynchpins to an understanding of the history of fashion, its quirks, and why we care so much about it.

You’ll find articles on military fashions, minis for men, and all the designers you should be curious about. 

By Francesca Granata (editor),

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Fashion Criticism as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

This is the first anthology of fashion criticism, a growing field that has been too long overlooked. Fashion Criticism aims to redress the balance, claiming a place for writing on fashion alongside other more well-established areas of criticism. Exploring the history of fashion criticism in the English language, this essential work takes readers from the writing published in avant-garde modernist magazines at the beginning of the twentieth century to the fashion criticism of Robin Givhan-the first fashion critic to win a Pulitzer Prize-and of Judith Thurman, a National Book Award winner. It covers the shift in newspapers from the so-called…


Book cover of The Marquis de Sade and the Avant-Garde

Nadia Choucha Author Of Surrealism and the Occult: Shamanism, Magic, Alchemy, and the Birth of an Artistic Movement

From Nadia's 3 favorite reads in 2023.

Why am I passionate about this?

Author Art historian Occult enthusiast Bibliophile Traveller

Nadia's 3 favorite reads in 2023

Nadia Choucha Why did Nadia love this book?

I was engrossed while reading this meticulously researched book which explores the impact of the Marquis de Sade upon European art and culture.

In each chapter, the author examines a different aspect of the ‘Sadean imagination’ – a dark, cruel, and sexually explicit fantasy world – and analyses how Sade exerted such a powerful impact upon art, poetry, philosophy, politics, cinema, and theatre. The book explains why Sade functioned as a symbol of subversive inspiration to so many revolutionary thinkers and artists, with numerous examples of Sadean imagery.

The book is extensively illustrated with prints, drawings, paintings, and photographs and comes with a full scholarly apparatus of reference notes, bibliography, and index. This is an indispensable guide to anyone wishing to understand the nature of Sade’s cultural significance and influence.

By Alyce Mahon,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked The Marquis de Sade and the Avant-Garde as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

How the notorious author of The 120 Days of Sodom inspired the surrealists and other avant-garde artists, writers, and filmmakers

The writings of the Marquis de Sade (1740-1814) present a libertine philosophy of sexual excess and human suffering that refuses to make any concession to law, religion, or public decency. In this groundbreaking cultural history, Alyce Mahon traces how artists of the twentieth century turned to Sade to explore political, sexual, and psychological terror, adapting his imagery of the excessively sexual and terrorized body as a means of liberation from systems of power.

Mahon shows how avant-garde artists, writers, dramatists,…


Book cover of Distant Early Warning: Marshall McLuhan and the Transformation of the Avant-Garde
Book cover of Video Revolutions: On the History of a Medium
Book cover of Fashion Criticism: An Anthology

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