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        1. Research Library

        The Return of the Real: Avant-Garde at the End of the Century

        Hal Foster

        Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press 2001

        ISBN 9780262561075

      2. Extremely influential analysis of contemporary art practices and their link to theory and engagement with identity and community (the ‘return of the real’ in Foster’s title). Drawing on Foster’s previous work on the classical avant-gardes, he presents a theory for understanding contemporary art practices as embedded, critical, and of the present. One of the books that defined the teaching of contemporary art in the English-speaking context. See in particular The Crux of Minimalism and The Return of the Real.

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