Branden Joseph's strikingly original study of Robert Rauschenberg will also be influential as a remarkable cultural history of the intersection of art, media, and technology in the 1960s. Among the book's great merits are its stunning de-familiarization of a well known artist's work and its impressive reconsideration of the political stakes in the aesthetic practices of the period.

Set against today's fast-paced, cut-and-paste art spectacles, Rauschenberg's collages, combines, art and technology experiments, and multimedia performances may seem old hat, a bunch of outmoded forms and tamed ideas. But through impeccable archival research and a detailed rereading of Rauschenberg's early works and the context of their emergence and immediate reception, Branden Joseph revivifies the radical spirit of the old. Random Order's recasting of the not yet canonical artist as a Deleuzian deconstructionist and an inheritor of Artaud's theater of cruelty is bound to be controversial among not only Rauschenberg scholars but also historians of the postwar neo-avant-garde. All the better to encourage a reimagining of the present.

Scrupulously documented and brilliantly argued, Random Order is the most extensive and probing understanding we have of the aesthetic, historical, and political stakes of Rauschenberg's neo-avant-garde artistic project. Like Rauschenberg's 'mole archaeologist,' Joseph unearths the network of artists and theorists that countersigned the artist's desire to enact, in each of his works, not only what it means to encounter a work of art but also how to use it as a weapon to transform our conception of art and the relations in which we live. In the process, he gives us a stunning analysis of the artistic process itself—a process that, as he so beautifully demonstrates, always carries us—with random but unrelenting force—beyond ourselves.

Reynolds has revitalized not only an important and little-researched moment in Smithson's career, but also—and perhaps more significantly—a crucial event in the history of art practice in the U.S. and beyond.

Scrupulously documented and brilliantly argued, Random Order is the most extensive and probing understanding we have of the aesthetic, historical, and political stakes of Rauschenberg's neo-avant-garde artistic project. Like Rauschenberg's 'mole archaeologist,' Joseph unearths the network of artists and theorists that countersigned the artist's desire to enact, in each of his works, not only what it means to encounter a work of art but also how to use it as a weapon to transform our conception of art and the relations in which we live. In the process, he gives us a stunning analysis of the artistic process itself—a process that, as he so beautifully demonstrates, always carries us—with random but unrelenting force—beyond ourselves.

Branden Joseph's strikingly original study of Robert Rauschenberg will also be influential as a remarkable cultural history of the intersection of art, media, and technology in the 1960s. Among the book's great merits are its stunning de-familiarization of a well known artist's work and its impressive reconsideration of the political stakes in the aesthetic practices of the period.

Set against today's fast-paced, cut-and-paste art spectacles, Rauschenberg's collages, combines, art and technology experiments, and multimedia performances may seem old hat, a bunch of outmoded forms and tamed ideas. But through impeccable archival research and a detailed rereading of Rauschenberg's early works and the context of their emergence and immediate reception, Branden Joseph revivifies the radical spirit of the old. Random Order's recasting of the not yet canonical artist as a Deleuzian deconstructionist and an inheritor of Artaud's theater of cruelty is bound to be controversial among not only Rauschenberg scholars but also historians of the postwar neo-avant-garde. All the better to encourage a reimagining of the present.