The book is a representative work of Thomas Crow. It puts the modern art in the setting of mass culture. Crow holds the view that there is a strong and indispensable link between avant-garde art and mass culture. In this book, Crow pays constant attention to the interdependence between avant-garde art and mass culture, and lists realities, from the Renaissance of Paris art to the Renaissance of conceptual art in the 1990s, to illustrate this issue. For examples, Jackson Pollock was pulled into the fashion circle by his agent; Andy Warhol’s works featuring a strong sense of consumption culture in the1960s; and Sturtevant, who was dismissed when responding to Pop artists with the strategy of copying their works (Pop artists were proved to be a completely new generation of artists after 20 years). This book features creative ideas on the relationship between avant-garde art and mass culture. It provides us with a theoretical perspective, which is different from that of Clement and Greenberg who set a strict distinction (elegance and vulgarity) between avant-garde and common culture, greatly enriching our understanding of modern art. This book is widely accepted as a model of the Marxist art history. It contributes greatly to the institutional criticism of contemporary art criticism, as well as the theoretical development in the social history of art.
