Beginning with the writings of Nietzsche and Baudelaire, Compagnon considers Manet's Dejeuner sur l'herbe and Olympia, Apollinaire's calligrams, Duchamp's readymades, Proust's Remembrance of Things Past, and Warhol's silkscreens, in addition to the writings of Kandinsky, Mondrian, Venturi, and Calinescu, The analysis and clarification continues with discussions of conformism and nonconformism, modernity versus the avant-garde, the distinction between the aesthetic and political avant-garde, theoretical terrorism, the movement of the center of art from Paris to New York after 1945, and the modern's incorporation of popular culture to "purify [art] of its conventions." These insightful discussions illuminate the works of major American and European architects, critics, novelists, painters, and poets who emblematize each of the five paradoxes of modernity.