Last winter, a man tried to break Marcel Duchamp’s Fountain sculpture. The sculpted foot of Michelangelo’s David was damaged in 1991 by a purportedly mentally ill artist. With each incident, intellectuals must confront the unsettling dynamic between destruction and art.  Renowned art historian Dario Gamboni is the first to tackle this weighty issue in depth, exploring specters of censorship, iconoclasm, and vandalism that surround such acts.

Gamboni uncovers here a disquieting phenomenon that still thrives today worldwide. As he demonstrates through analyses of incidents occurring in nineteenth- and twentieth-century America and Europe, a complex relationship exists among the evolution of modern art, destruction of artworks, and the long history of iconoclasm. From the controversial removal of Richard Serra’s Tilted Arc from New York City’s Federal Plaza to suffragette protests at London’s National Gallery, Gamboni probes the concept of artist’s rights, the power of political protest and how iconoclasm sheds light on society’s relationship to art and material culture.

Compelling and thought-provoking, The Destruction of Art forces us to rethink the ways that we interact with art and react to its power to shock or subdue.

A composer who dabbled in the Dada movement, a Bohemian “gymnopédiste” of fin-de-siècle Montmartre, and a legendary dresser known as “The Velvet Gentleman,” Erik Satie cut a unique figure among early twentieth-century European composers. Yet his legacy has largely languished in the shadows of Stravinsky, Debussy, and Ravel. Mary E. Davis now brings Satie to life in this fascinating new biography.

Satie redefined the composer’s art, devising new methods of artistic expression that melded ordinary and rarified elements of words, visual art, and music. Davis argues that Satie’s modernist aesthetic was grounded in the contradictions of his life—such as enrolling in the conservative Schola Cantorum after working as a cabaret performer—and is reflected in his irreverent essays, drawn art, and music.  Erik Satie explores how the composer was embraced by avant-garde artists and fashionable Parisian elite, and how his experiences inspired him to create the musical style of Neoclassicism. Satie also employed the power of the image through his infamous fashion statements, Davis contends, and became part of a nascent celebrity culture.

A cogent and informative portrait, Erik Satie upends the accepted history of modernist music and restores the composer to his rightful pioneering status.

Ludwig Wittgenstein is generally considered as the greatest philosopher since Immanuel Kant, and his personal life, work, and his historical moment intertwined in a fascinating, complex web. Noted scholar Edward Kanterian explores these intersections in Ludwig Wittgenstein, the newest title in the acclaimed Critical Lives series.

Wittgenstein’s works—from Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus to the posthumously published Philosophical Investigations­—are notoriously dense, and Kanterian carefully distills them here, proposing thought-provoking new interpretations. Yet the philosopher’s passions were not solely confined to theoretical musings, and the book explores Wittgenstein’s immersion in art and music and his social position as a member of the sophisticated Viennese upper class at the turn of the century. His personal and professional relationships also offer insights into his thoughts, as he was friends with the greatest thinkers of the twentieth century, including John Maynard Keynes, George Edward Moore, Bertrand Russell, and Gilbert Royle. The philosopher was also deeply tormented by ethical and religious questions, and his internal turmoil, Kanterian argues, gives us a deeper understanding of the important conflicts and tensions of his age. Ultimately, the author contends, Wittgenstein’s life reveals insights into the ethical quandaries of our own time.

A readable and concise account, Ludwig Wittgenstein is an informative, accessible introduction to the one of the greatest thinkers of our age.