Raiding the icebox

Raiding the Icebox isa kaleidoscopic review of the avant-garde and radical subcultures ofthe twentieth century, and explains how the most powerful artisticstatements of the era redrew the line between high and low art.Beginning with an analysis of the role of Diaghilev and the RussianBallet, Wollen argues that modernism has always had a hidden,suppressed side which cannot easily be absorbed into themaster-narrative of modernity.Wollen reviews the hopes, fears andexpectations of artists and critics such as the Bauhaus movement, asfascinated by Henry Ford's assembly line as they were by the Hollywooddream factory, concluding with Guy Debord's caustic dystopian vision ofan all-consuming 'Society of the Spectacle.'Finally, Wollen chroniclesthe emergence of a subversive sensibility as he explores some of theunexpected new cultural forms which non-Western artists are taking asmodernism enters into crisis at the beginning of a new century:reversing the rules of the game and raiding the icebox of the West.