Hans Hess: Selected Writings Volume 2 – Art in the 20th Century

Narrated and produced by Rochelle Anne Swanson.

With additional image descriptions read by Natasha Raskin Sharp, highly-prized presenter of Bargain Hunt, Antiques Road Trip and Flog It!, and a much-loved and respected presenter of late-night music shows for BBC Radio Scotland.

Editorial notes read by Adele Allen.

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Following our publication of Volume One – Art in the Nineteenth Century, the journey through art’s ideological battlefield is brought into the modern era. Hans Hess Selected Writings Volume Two – Art in the Twentieth Century is not a list of masterpieces or individual geniuses, but a methodical dissection of art’s struggle in the age of revolution, war, technology and mass media.

Volume Two begins with a reflection on the Hess family history written by Hess's daughter, Anita Halpin, followed by

the complete series of Hess’s renowned 1971 lectures. They offer a razor-sharp Marxist analysis of the very nature of reality in art where Hess pulls apart the myths of genius to expose the actual social forces shaping the avant-garde.

Central to this volume is Hess’s groundbreaking work on the Bauhaus. Through focused studies on revolutionary figures like Klee, Kandinsky, and John Heartfield, Hess argues for an art of radical engagement, where the artist is not a solitary magician but a participant in the collective fight for a new society.

This is the essential guide to understanding the twentieth-century canvas as a site of crisis and resistance. Prepare to have the stories of modern art rewritten, and to see the century’s turmoil etched in every bold block of paint and shattered form.

Hans Hess Selected Writings Volume 2 - Art in the 20th Century

First published in print by Manifesto Press in 2024.

© 2025 Manifesto Press Cooperative (Lydbog): 9781907464881

Udgivelsesdato

Lydbog: 23. december 2025