After the paradigms of art-as-text of the seventies and the art-as-simulacrum of the eighties, Hal Foster argues that we are witnessing a "return of the real", a return of art and theory that seek to settle in real bodies and social places.

Throughout its pages, an original reading of the art and theory of recent decades is presented, with special attention to the controversial connections between the two, while reflecting on the relationship between the historical avant-garde and the neo-avant-garde. The result is an authoritative genealogy of art and theory from minimalism and pop to the present.

As Miguel Ángel Cajigal points out in the prologue he has prepared for this commemorative edition, this key book of contemporary artistic historiography "is affirmed as a committed reading of art, its tensions and conflicts, which is consolidated as a fundamental testimony in the history of art of that time in which we wanted to be modern".