“Art has poisoned our life”, proclaimed De Stijl co-founder Theo van Doesburg. Reacting to the tumultuous crises of the twentieth century, especially the horrors of the First World War, from Paris to New York, from Zurich to Moscow and Berlin, avant-gardists challenged the confines of the definition of art along with the confines of the canvas itself. Morgan Falconer starts with the dynamic Futurist founder Filippo Tommaso Marinetti, whose manifesto extolling speed, destruction and modernity seeded avant-gardes across Europe. In turn, Dadaists Hugo Ball and Emmy Hennings sought to replace art with political cabaret and the Surrealists tried to exchange it for tools to plumb the unconscious. Falconer goes on to guide us through the Russian Constructivists and then De Stijl, the Bauhaus and finally, the Situationists. How to Be Avant-Garde is a journey through the interlocking networks of richly creative lives, their sometimes sympathetic but often strange and turbulent conversations, and their objects and writings that defied categorisation.

"From André Breton to Robert Smithson, the book nimbly threads the stories of many figures into a coherent and pleasurable read… With a talent for setting the scene and rendering vivid portraits, Falconer brings the stories of these artists, each with conflicting agendas, into one comprehensible argument." -- Aaron Peck - The Times Literary Supplement
"The book rushes readers at a velocity Marinetti would have enjoyed.… [F]ascinating." -- Orlando Whitfield - The New York Times
"A group biography of the modern artists who at one point or another had enough of the artistic status quo.… [B]eing avant-garde, Mr. Falconer reminds us, meant going yet further and abandoning art as traditionally conceived." -- Max Norman - The Wall Street Journal

Morgan Falconer, a critic and art historian, teaches at Sotheby’s Institute of Art. He is the author of Painting Beyond Pollock and has written for publications including the Economist, the Times (UK), Art in America, and Frieze. He lives in Queens, New York.