Contributions mostly based on papers previously presented at a conference held in Edinburgh in Sept. 2002.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Preliminary Material / Dietrich Scheunemann -- Preface / Dietrich Scheunemann -- From Collage to the Multiple. On the Genealogy of Avant-Garde and Neo-Avant-Garde / DIETRICH SCHEUNEMANN -- Wilhelm Worringer and the Historical Avant-Garde / RHYS W. WILLIAMS -- On the Historiographic Distinction between Historical and Neo-Avant-Garde / HUBERT VAN DEN BERG -- Abstraction, Sublation and the Avant-Garde: The Case of De Stijl / MICHAEL WHITE -- Sameness and Difference: Duchamp’s Editioned Readymades and the Neo-Avant-Garde / DAVID HOPKINS -- Paint it Black: Ad Reinhardt’s Paradoxical Avant-Gardism / BEN HIGHMORE -- Verbal Chemistry and Concrete Poetry / KEITH ASPLEY -- How the Letters Learnt to Dance: On Language Dissection in Dadaist, Concrete and Digital Poetry / ANNA KATHARINA SCHAFFNER -- American Language Poetry and the Definition of the Avant-Garde / JACOB EDMOND -- From Futurism to Neo-Futurism: Continuities and New Departures in Twentieth-Century Avant-Garde Performance / GÜNTER BERGHAUS -- Actor or Puppet: The Body in the Theatres of the Avant-Garde / OLGA TAXIDOU -- Fragmentation of the Body in Spanish Surrealism / UTA FELTEN -- The Surface of Illusion: Avant-Garde Apperception and Antecedence in Structural/Materialist Film / DAVID MACRAE -- What Avant-Garde? / GÉRARD LEBLANC -- The Limits of “Non-Plan”: Architecture and the Avant-Garde / RICHARD WILLIAMS -- Montage in the Arts: A Reassessment / JENNIFER VALCKE -- Means and Metaphors of Change: Technology and the Danish Avant-Garde of the 1960s / TANIA ØRUM -- Literature under the Impact of Film: On Dutch Author-Critics of the Avant-Garde and Neo-Avant-Garde / KLAUS BEEKMAN -- List of Illustrations / Dietrich Scheunemann -- Index / Dietrich Scheunemann.

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This collection of critical essays explores new approaches to the study of avant-garde literature and art, film and architecture. It offers a theoretical framework that avoids narrowly defined notions of the avant-garde. It takes into account the diversity of artistic aims and directions of the various avant-garde movements and encourages a wide and open exploration of the multifaceted and often contradictory nature of the great variety of avant-gardist innovations. Individual essays concentrate on cubist collage and dadaist photomontage, on abstract painting by members of the Dutch group De Stijl , on verbal chemistry and dadaist poetry and on body art from futurism to surrealism. In addition, the collection wishes to open up the discussion of the avant-garde to a thorough investigation of neo-avant-garde activities in the 1950s and 1960s. For decades the appreciation of neo-avant-garde art and literature, film and architecture suffered from a general and all-inclusive rebuke. This volume is designed to contribute to a breakthrough towards a more competent and more precise investigation of this research field. Contributions include a discussion of Warhol’s multiples as well as Duchamp’s editioned readymades, forms of concrete and digital poetry as well as the architectural “Non-Plan”. The main body of the volume is based on presentations and discussions of a three-day research seminar held at the University of Edinburgh in September 2002. The research group formed around the Avant-Garde Project at Edinburgh will continue with its efforts to elaborate a new theory of the avant-garde in the coming years.