To reflect the latest developments, in this fifth edition nearly half the book has been rewritten including a wide-ranging introductory chapter and seven new chapters that deal with the latest radical transformations in contemporary art, among them the increasing dominance of the photographic media, film and video, and the emergence of a new post-Post-Expressionist group of 'Abject' artists whose work stresses feelings of alienation in developed Western industrial societies dominated by the collapse of traditional values, often through the reintroduction of narrative. It also discusses the emergence of an opposing trend of idealizing classicism, particularly in Italy and Russia. The treatment of the burgeoning practice of different forms of contemporary art 'on the periphery' in Third World countries, where artists have absorbed Western modernism but have then created new terms of reference for artistic expression adapted to their own cultures, has also been further elaborated, with examples from new regions.
