The arresting cover design for this volume of twenty-five essays on art and visual culture features a work not actually discussed in the book itself: Media Burn (1975), the satirical performance by the San Francisco collective Ant Farm. The jacket photograph shows the climactic moment when the “Phantom Dream Car,” a 1959 Cadillac retrofitted to resemble a jet plane, crashes through a pyramidal wall of burning television sets. The image appears within the book as well, midway through the seminal 1984 essay “Eclipse of the Spectacle.” Though not commented upon in the text, Media Burn is emblematic of many of the themes running through this rich collection of spectacle, mass media, and modern technology. Specifically, television and the automobile (and their intersection) feature frequently in these pages. Highlighting the motion blur of the speeding car, the photograph illustrates velocity even as the stack of televisions conveys a sense of technological...

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