It’s an engrossing survey, full of colorful characters and winning personal touches. Like all good art, it ultimately raises more questions than it answers ... Compelling capsule biographies of important figures.
Illuminating ... Because How to Be Avant-Garde has no clear conceptual through line, however, context and detail are often missing. World War I haunts the book, as do the politics of communism and fascism, but their effects on the art are never sufficiently analyzed ... It’s a shame that he did not write a book about this: how the fairs, with their one-stop-shopping homogeneity and brazen commodifying, are slowly rotting away the spirit of contemporary art. That would have been truly avant-garde.
