This collection tracks the astonishing impact of a single vernacular aesthetic category on post-war and contemporary art, and on the vast range of cultural practices and discourses on which contemporary artists draw. As opposed to a material, a mood, a structure, an institution, a motif, or a technique, Cute is concerned with the artistic ramifications of an aesthetic category 'of' or 'about' minorness - or what is generally perceived to be diminutive, subordinate, trivial, and above all, unthreatening. But is the cute itself truly minor, given its widespread influence across radically diverse realms of social practice around the globe, from the automotive industry to poetry, packaged food to social media platforms, electoral politics to our constantly expanding system of fine arts? How have artists taken on the risk of using cuteness, as opposed to simply reflecting or commentating on it? This anthology is the first of its kind to show how contemporary artists have worked on and transformed the cute, and in ways that not only complexify its meaning, but reshape their own artistic practices. Artists surveyed include: Peggy Ahwesh, Cosima Von Bonin, Nayland Blake, Adrian Howells, Juliana Huxtable, Ray Johnson, Mike Kelley, Dean Kenning, Wyndham Lewis, Jeff Koons, Sean-Kierre Lyons, Mammalian Diving Reflex, Alake Shilling, Annette Messager, Mariko Mori, Takashi Murakami, David Robbins, Mika Rottenberg, Allen Ruppersberg, Jack Smith, Kara Walker, Andy Warhol, Yoshitomo Nara. Writers include: Edmund Burke, Roland Barthes, Leigh Claire La Berge, Lauren Berlant, Joshua Dale, Jennifer Doyle, Lee Edelman, Rosalind Galt, E.H. Gombrich, Lewis Gordon, Rosmarie Garland Thompson, Stephen Jay Gould, Wayne Koestenbaum, Angelik Vizcarrondo-Laboy, Lori Merish, John Morreall, Juliane Rebentisch, Frances Richard, Carrie Rickey, Friedrich Schiller, Peter Schjeldahl, Kanako Shiokawa, Susan Stewart, Daniel Tiffany, D.W. Winnicott.