<p>In this intellectually wide-ranging book John Roberts develops a labortheory of culture as a model for explaining the dynamics of avant-garde art andthe expansion of artistic authority in the twentieth and twenty-firstcenturies. </p><p>From Duchamp to Warhol, conceptual art, and the "post-visual" practices ofthe moment, Roberts explores the relationship between artistic labor andproductive labor, and the limits and possibilities of authorship. In doing so,he confronts a recurring theme of both conservative and radical detractors ofmodern art in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries: how is skill, and theseeming absence of skill in modern art, to be theorized and evaluated? Drawingon cognitive psychology, labor process theory, social anthropology, and debatesin contemporary political philosophy, Roberts' book establishes a new criticaltopography for examining the cultural form of art today.</p>