This ground-breaking new history of modern art explores the relationship between art and knowledge from the beginning of the twentieth century to the present day. Each chapter examines artistic responses to a particular discipline of knowledge, from quantum theory and theosophy to cybernetics and ethnic futurisms. The authors argue that art's incursion into other intellectual disciplines is a defining characteristic of both modernism and postmodernism. Throughout, the volume poses a series of larger questions: is art a source of knowledge? If so, what kind of knowledge? And, ultimately, can it contribute to our understanding of the world in ways that thinkers from other fields should take seriously?

Introduction - James Fox and Vid Simoniti
1 Modern art and spiritual knowledge - Lucy Kent
2 Twentieth-century revolutions in art and science - Gavin Parkinson
3 Psychoanalysis and art: a new theory of objects - Margaret Iversen
4 Before the visual turn: twentieth-century historians and the uses of art - Tom Stammers
5 Knowledge, truth, history: contemporary art and the problem of art-historical periodisation - Peter Osborne
6 Art / Economics - Allan Antliff
7 Art and cybernetics: a new ontology for art - Mara Polgovsky Ezcurra
8 Art into society: organised labour, workplace sociology, and artmaking in 1970s Britain - Catherine Spencer
9 Knowledge, nation, and colour in documentary photography - Julian Stallabrass
10 Art and biotechnology: on the limits and potential of interdisciplinary arts - Vid Simoniti
11 Ethnic futurisms and contemporary art - Alice Ming Wai Jim
12 The politics and aesthetics of climate emergency - T. J. Demos
13 Art and witnessing: the poetics and politics of testifying to environmental violence - Shela Sheikh
Index

Editors

James Fox is Director of Studies in History of Art at Emmanuel College, University of Cambridge

Vid Simoniti is a Lecturer in Philosophy at the University of Liverpool