Behind the paradigms of art-as-text from the seventies and art-as-simulacrum from the eighties, Hal Foster argues that we are witnessing a “return of the real,” a return of art and theory seeking to ground themselves in real bodies and social sites. 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-gardes and the neo-avant-gardes. As Miguel Ángel Cajigal notes in the prologue prepared for this commemorative edition, this key book in contemporary art historiography “stands as a committed reading of art, its tensions and conflicts, consolidating itself as a fundamental testimony in the history of art of that time when we wanted to be modern.”