Avant Garde
Avant Garde
Contents
History
Theories
Relation to mainstream society
Examples
Music
Theatre
Art movements
See also
References
Further reading
External links
History
The term was originally used by the French military to refer to a small reconnoitre group that scouted ahead
of the main force. It also became associated with left-wing French radicals in the nineteenth century who
were agitating for political reform. At some point in the middle of that century the term was linked to art
through the idea that art is an instrument for social change. Only toward the end of the nineteenth did l'art
d'avant-garde begin to break away from its identification with left-wing social causes to become more
aligned with cultural and artistic issues. This trend toward increased emphasis on aesthetic issues has
continued to the present. Avant-garde today generally refers to groups of intellectuals, writers, and artists,
including architects, who voice ideas and experiment with artistic approaches that challenge current cultural
values. Avant-garde ideas, especially if they embrace social issues, often are gradually assimilated by the
societies they confront. The radicals of yesterday become mainstream, creating the environment for a new
generation of radicals to emerge.[10]
Theories
Several writers have attempted to map the parameters of avant-garde
activity. The Italian essayist Renato Poggioli provides one of the
earliest analyses of vanguardism as a cultural phenomenon in his 1962
book Teoria dell'arte d'avanguardia (The Theory of the Avant-
Garde).[11] Surveying the historical, social, psychological and
philosophical aspects of vanguardism, Poggioli reaches beyond
individual instances of art, poetry, and music to show that vanguardists
may share certain ideals or values which manifest themselves in the
non-conformist lifestyles they adopt: He sees vanguard culture as a
variety or subcategory of Bohemianism.[12] Other authors have
attempted both to clarify and to extend Poggioli's study. The German
literary critic Peter Bürger's Theory of the Avant-Garde (1974) looks at
the Establishment's embrace of socially critical works of art and
suggests that in complicity with capitalism, "art as an institution
neutralizes the political content of the individual work".[13] Marcel Duchamp, Fountain, 1917,
photograph by Alfred Stieglitz
Bürger's essay also greatly influenced the work of contemporary
American art-historians such as the German Benjamin H. D. Buchloh
(born 1941). Buchloh, in the collection of essays Neo-avantgarde and Culture Industry (2000) critically
argues for a dialectical approach to these positions.[14] Subsequent criticism theorized the limitations of
these approaches, noting their circumscribed areas of analysis, including Eurocentric, chauvinist, and genre-
specific definitions.[15]
The avant-garde's co-option by the global capitalist market, by neoliberal economies, and by what Guy
Debord called The Society of the Spectacle, have made contemporary critics speculate on the possibility of a
meaningful avant-garde today. Paul Mann's Theory-Death of the Avant-Garde demonstrates how completely
the avant-garde is embedded within institutional structures today, a thought also pursued by Richard
Schechner in his analyses of avant-garde performance.[19]
Despite the central arguments of Greenberg, Adorno, and others, various sectors of the mainstream culture
industry have co-opted and misapplied the term "avant-garde" since the 1960s, chiefly as a marketing tool to
publicise popular music and commercial cinema. It has become common to describe successful rock
musicians and celebrated film-makers as "avant-garde", the very word having been stripped of its proper
meaning. Noting this important conceptual shift, major contemporary theorists such as Matei Calinescu in
Five Faces of Modernity: Modernism, Avant-garde, Decadence, Kitsch, Postmodernism (1987), and Hans
Bertens in The Idea of the Postmodern: A History (1995), have suggested that this is a sign our culture has
entered a new post-modern age, when the former modernist ways of thinking and behaving have been
rendered redundant.[20]
Nevertheless, an incisive critique of vanguardism as against the views of mainstream society was offered by
the New York critic Harold Rosenberg in the late 1960s.[21] Trying to strike a balance between the insights
of Renato Poggioli and the claims of Clement Greenberg, Rosenberg suggested that from the mid-1960s
onward progressive culture ceased to fulfill its former adversarial role. Since then it has been flanked by
what he called "avant-garde ghosts to the one side, and a changing mass culture on the other", both of which
it interacts with to varying degrees. This has seen culture become, in his words, "a profession one of whose
aspects is the pretense of overthrowing it."[22]
Examples
Music
Avant-garde in music can refer to any form of music working within traditional structures while seeking to
breach boundaries in some manner.[23] The term is used loosely to describe the work of any musicians who
radically depart from tradition altogether.[24] By this definition, some avant-garde composers of the 20th
century include Arnold Schoenberg,[25] Richard Strauss (in his earliest work),[26] Charles Ives,[27] Igor
Stravinsky,[25] Anton Webern,[28] Edgard Varèse, Alban Berg,[28] George Antheil (in his earliest works
only), Henry Cowell (in his earliest works), Harry Partch, John Cage, Iannis Xenakis,[25] Morton Feldman,
Karlheinz Stockhausen,[29] Pauline Oliveros,[30] Philip Glass, Meredith Monk,[30] Laurie Anderson,[30] and
Diamanda Galás.[30]
There is another definition of "Avant-gardism" that distinguishes it from "modernism": Peter Bürger, for
example, says avant-gardism rejects the "institution of art" and challenges social and artistic values, and so
necessarily involves political, social, and cultural factors.[24] According to the composer and musicologist
Larry Sitsky, modernist composers from the early 20th century who do not qualify as avant-gardists include
Arnold Schoenberg, Anton Webern, and Igor Stravinsky; later modernist composers who do not fall into the
category of avant-gardists include Elliott Carter, Milton Babbitt, György Ligeti, Witold Lutosławski, and
Luciano Berio, since "their modernism was not conceived for the purpose of goading an audience."[31]
Theatre
Whereas the avant-garde has a significant history in 20th-century music, it is more pronounced in theatre
and performance art, and often in conjunction with music and sound design innovations, as well as
developments in visual media design. There are movements in theatre history that are characterized by their
contributions to the avant-garde traditions in both the United States and Europe. Among these are Fluxus,
Happenings, and Neo-Dada.
Art movements
Abstract expressionism Minimal art
COBRA Orphism
Conceptual art Pop art
Constructivism Precisionism
Cubism Primitivism
Dadaism Rayonism
De Stijl Situationism
Expressionism Suprematism
Fauvism Surrealism
Fluxus Symbolism
Futurism Tachisme
Happening Universal Constructivism
Imaginism Viennese Actionism
Imagism Vorticism
Impressionism Creationism
Incoherents Nadaism
Land art Stridentism
Les Nabis Ultraist
Lyrical Abstraction
See also
Anti-art
Bauhaus
Experimental film
Experimental literature
Experimental music
Experimental theatre
L'enfant terrible
List of avant-garde artists
Outsider art
Russian avant-garde
References
1. The Love of Zero (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aPEBUJJUICc) on YouTube
2. "avant-garde adjective - Definition, pictures, pronunciation and usage notes - Oxford Advanced
Learner's Dictionary at OxfordLearnersDictionaries.com" (https://www.oxfordlearnersdictionarie
s.com/definition/english/avant-garde). www.oxfordlearnersdictionaries.com.
3. John C. Wells, Longman Pronunciation Dictionary, third edition (Harlow: Longman, 2008)
ISBN 9781405881180.
4. "Avant-garde" (http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=avant-garde). Dictionary.com. Lexico
Publishing Group, LLC. Retrieved 14 March 2007.
5. John Picchione, The New Avant-garde in Italy: Theoretical Debate and Poetic Practices (http
s://archive.org/details/newavantgardeini0000picc/page/64) (Toronto: University of Toronto
Press, 2004), p. 64 ISBN 978-0-8020-8994-6.
6. Peter Bürger, Theory of the Avant-Garde (https://monoskop.org/images/d/d0/Buerger_Peter_T
he_Theory_of_the_Avant-Garde.pdf), English translation by Michael Shaw, Foreword by
Jochen Schulte-Sasse, Theory and History of Literature, Volume 4 (Manchester University
Press, University of Minnesota Press, 1984),
7. Kostelanetz, Richard, A Dictionary of the Avant-Gardes, Routledge, May 13, 2013 (https://book
s.google.com/books?id=Tsq6NDST_b0C&pg=PA1997&lpg=PA1997), ISBN 1136806202
8. UBU Web (http://www.ubu.com/) List of artists from Dada to the present day aligning
themselves with the avant-garde
9. Matei Calinescu, The Five Faces of Modernity: Modernism, Avant-Garde, Decadence, Kitsch,
Postmodernism (https://www.dukeupress.edu/five-faces-of-modernity/) (Durham: Duke
University Press, 1987).
10. Porter, Tom (2004). Archispeak : an illustrated guide to architectural terms. London: Taylor &
Francis. ISBN 0415300118. OCLC 53144738 (https://www.worldcat.org/oclc/53144738).
11. Sascha Bru and Gunther Martens, The Invention of Politics in the European Avant-Garde
(1906–1940) (https://books.google.com/books?id=suPzDQAAQBAJ&pg=PA21) (Amsterdam:
Rodopi, 2006), p. 21. ISBN 9042019093.
12. Renato Poggioli (1968). The Theory of the Avant-Garde (https://archive.org/details/theoryofava
ntgar00pogg_0/page/11). Belknap Press of Harvard University Press. p. 11 (https://archive.or
g/details/theoryofavantgar00pogg_0/page/11). ISBN 0-674-88216-4., translated from the
Italian by Gerald Fitzgerald
13. Peter Bürger (1974). Theorie der Avantgarde. Suhrkamp Verlag. English translation (University
of Minnesota Press) 1984: 90.
14. Benjamin Buchloh, Neo-avantgarde and Culture Industry: Essays on European and American
Art from 1955 to 1975 (Cambridge: MIT Press, 2001) ISBN 0-262-02454-3.
15. James M. Harding: Cutting Performances: Collage Events, Feminist Artists, and the American
Avant-Garde (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2010).
16. Greenberg, Clement (Fall 1939). "Avant-Garde and Kitsch" (http://hgar-srv3.bu.edu/collections/
partisan-review/search/detail?id=283920). The Partisan Review. Vol. 6 no. 5. pp. 34–49.
Retrieved 24 January 2018.
17. Walter Benjamin, "The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction (http://bid.berkeley.e
du/bidclass/readings/benjamin.html)" Archived (https://web.archive.org/web/20061205013822/
http://bid.berkeley.edu/bidclass/readings/benjamin.html) 5 December 2006 at the Wayback
Machine
18. Theodor W. Adorno (1963) (http://www.sociosite.net/topics/texts/adorno_culture_reconsidered.
pdf), "Culture Industry Reconsidered: Selected Essays on Mass Culture", London: Routledge,
1991
19. Richard Schechner, "The Conservative Avant-Garde." New Literary History 41.4 (Autumn
2010): 895–913.
20. Calinescu 1987,; Bertens 1995.
21. Harold Rosenberg, The De-Definition of Art: Action Art to Pop to Earthworks (Chicago:
University of Chicago Press, 1983), p. 219 ISBN 0-226-72673-8. Originally published: New
York: Horizon Press, 1972; reprinted New York: Collier Books, 1973.
22. George Dickie, ""Symposium on Marxist Aesthetic Thought: Commentary on the Papers by
Rudich, San Juan, and Morawski (http://digicoll.library.wisc.edu/cgi-bin/Arts/Arts-idx?type=turn
&id=Arts.ArtsSocv12i2&entity=Arts.ArtsSocv12i2.p0074&isize=text)", Arts in Society: Art and
Social Experience: Our Changing Outlook on Culture 12, no. 2 (Summer–Fall 1975): p. 232.
23. David Nicholls (ed.), The Cambridge History of American Music (Cambridge and New York:
Cambridge University Press, 1998), 122–24. ISBN 0-521-45429-8 ISBN 978-0-521-54554-9
24. Jim Samson, "Avant garde", The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, second
edition, edited by Stanley Sadie and John Tyrrell (London: Macmillan Publishers, 2001).
25. Larry Sitsky, Music of the Twentieth-Century Avant-Garde: A Biocritical Sourcebook (Westport,
Conn: Greenwood Press, 2002), xiv. ISBN 0-313-29689-8.
26. Larry Sitsky, Music of the Twentieth-Century Avant-Garde: A Biocritical Sourcebook (Westport,
Conn: Greenwood Press, 2002), xiii–xiv. ISBN 0-313-29689-8.
27. Larry Sitsky, Music of the Twentieth-Century Avant-Garde: A Biocritical Sourcebook (Westport,
Conn: Greenwood Press, 2002), 222. ISBN 0-313-29689-8.
28. Larry Sitsky, Music of the Twentieth-Century Avant-Garde: A Biocritical Sourcebook (Westport,
Conn: Greenwood Press, 2002), 50. ISBN 0-313-29689-8.
29. Elliot Schwartz, Barney Childs, and James Fox (eds.), Contemporary Composers on
Contemporary Music (New York: Da Capo Press, 1998), 379. ISBN 0-306-80819-6
30. Larry Sitsky, Music of the Twentieth-Century Avant-Garde: A Biocritical Sourcebook (Westport,
Conn: Greenwood Press, 2002), xvii. ISBN 0-313-29689-8.
31. Larry Sitsky, Music of the Twentieth-Century Avant-Garde: A Biocritical Sourcebook (Westport,
Conn: Greenwood Press, 2002), xv. ISBN 0-313-29689-8.
Further reading
Robert Archambeau. "The Avant-Garde in Babel. Two or Three Notes on Four or Five Words"
(http://actionyes.org/issue8/archambeau/archambeau1.html), Action-Yes vol. 1, issue 8,
Autumn 2008.
Bäckström, Per (ed.), Centre-Periphery. The Avant-Garde and the Other (https://septentrio.uit.
no/index.php/nordlit/issue/view/168), Nordlit. University of Tromsø, no. 21, 2007.
Bäckström, Per. [http://actionyes.org/issue7/backstrom/backstrom1.html "One Earth, Four or
Five Words. The Peripheral Concept of 'Avant-Garde' ", Action-Yes vol. 1, issue 12, Winter
2010.
Bäckström, Per & Bodil Børset (eds.), Norsk avantgarde (Norwegian Avant-Garde), Oslo:
Novus, 2011.
Bäckström, Per & Benedikt Hjartarson (eds.), Decentring the Avant-Garde (https://brill.com/vie
w/title/27431?lang=en), Amsterdam & New York: Rodopi, Avantgarde Critical Studies, 2014.
Bäckström, Per and Benedikt Hjartarson. “Rethinking the Topography of the International
Avant-Garde”, in Decentring the Avant-Garde (https://brill.com/view/title/27431?lang=en), Per
Bäckström & Benedikt Hjartarson (eds.), Amsterdam & New York: Rodopi, Avantgarde Critical
Studies, 2014.
Barron, Stephanie, and Maurice Tuchman. 1980. The Avant-garde in Russia, 1910–1930: New
Perspectives: Los Angeles County Museum of Art [and] Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture
Garden, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D. C. Los Angeles: Los Angeles County
Museum of Art ISBN 0-87587-095-3 (pbk.); Cambridge, MA: Distributed by the MIT Press
ISBN 0-262-20040-6 (pbk.)
Bazin, Germain. 1969. The Avant-garde in Painting. New York: Simon and Schuster. ISBN 0-
671-20422-X
Berg, Hubert van den, and Walter Fähnders (eds.). 2009. Metzler Lexikon Avantgarde.
Stuttgart: Metzler. ISBN 3-476-01866-0 (in German)
Crane, Diana. 1987. The Transformation of the Avant-garde: The New York Art World, 1940–
1985. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. ISBN 0-226-11789-8
Daly, Selina, and Monica Insinga (eds.). 2013. The European Avant-garde: Text and Image (htt
ps://books.google.com/books?id=FMYwBwAAQBAJ). Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge
Scholars. ISBN 978-1443840545.
Fernández-Medina, Nicolás, and Maria Truglio (eds.). Modernism and the Avant-garde Body in
Spain and Italy (http://www.tandf.net/books/details/9781138911437/). Routledge, 2016.
Harding, James M., and John Rouse, eds. Not the Other Avant-Garde: The Transnational
Foundations of Avant-Garde Performance. University of Michigan, 2006.
Hjartarson, Benedikt. 2013. Visionen des Neuen. Eine diskurshistorische Analyse des frühen
avantgardistischen Manifests. Heidelberg: Winter.
Kostelanetz, Richard, and H. R. Brittain. 2000. A Dictionary of the Avant-Gardes, second
edition. New York: Schirmer Books. ISBN 0-02-865379-3. Paperback edition 2001, New York:
Routledge. ISBN 0-415-93764-7 (pbk.)
Kramer, Hilton. 1973. The Age of the Avant-garde; An Art Chronicle of 1956−1972. New York:
Farrar, Straus and Giroux. ISBN 0-374-10238-4
Léger, Marc James (ed.). 2014. The Idea of the Avant Garde—And What It Means Today.
Manchester and New York: Manchester University Press; Oakland: Left Curve.
ISBN 9780719096914.
Maerhofer, John W. 2009. Rethinking the Vanguard: Aesthetic and Political Positions in the
Modernist Debate, 1917–1962. Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Press. ISBN 1-
4438-1135-1
Mann, Paul. The Theory-Death of the Avant-Garde. Indiana University Press, 1991. ISBN 978-
0253336729
Novero, Cecilia. 2010. Antidiets of the Avant-Garde: From Futurist Cooking to Eat Art.
(University of Minnesota Press) ISBN 978-0816646012
Pronko, Leonard Cabell. 1962. Avant-garde: The Experimental Theater in France. Berkeley:
University of California Press.
Roberts, John. 2015. Revolutionary Time and the Avant-Garde. London and New York: Verso.
ISBN 9781781689127 (cloth); ISBN 9781781689134 (pbk).
Schechner, Richard. "The Five Avant-Gardes or ... [and] ... or None?" The Twentieth-Century
Performance Reader, 2nd ed., ed. Michael Huxley and Noel Witts (New York and London:
Routledge, 2002).
Schmidt-Burkhardt, Astrit. 2005. Stammbäume der Kunst: Zur Genealogie der Avantgarde.
Berlin Akademie Verlag. ISBN 3-05-004066-1 [online version is available]
Sell, Mike. The Avant-Garde: Race, Religion, War. Seagull Books, 2011.
Shishanov, V. A. 2007. Vitebskii muzei sovremennogo iskusstva: istoriia sozdaniia i kollektsii
(1918–1941). Minsk: Medisont. ISBN 978-985-6530-68-8 Online edition (http://issuu.com/linke
din63/docs/shishanov_vitebsk_museum_modern_art/1) (in Russian)
External links
Historic Avant-Garde Periodicals for Digital Research, The Blue Mountain Project, Princeton
University Library (http://library.princeton.edu/projects/bluemountain//)
Avant-garde and Modernist Magazines (Monoskop) (https://monoskop.org/Avant-garde_and_
modernist_magazines)
Magazines in Bibliothèque Kandinsky, Centre Pompidou, Paris (http://bibliothequekandinsky.ce
ntrepompidou.fr/CDA/portal.aspx?SYNCMENU=LIVRESETREVUES&INSTANCE=incipio&PO
RTAL_ID=portal_model_instance__bibnumprint.xml&PAGE=%2fstatique%2fPAGES%2facces.
html&SETSKIN=INCIPIO)
Periodicals in Iowa Digital Library, University of Iowa Libraries (http://digital.lib.uiowa.edu/cdm/
search/collection/dada/searchterm/Periodicals/mode/exact)
Digital Dada Library of International Dada Archive, University of Iowa Libraries (http://sdrc.lib.ui
owa.edu/dada/collection.html)
Magazines in Digital Collections of Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library (http://beinecke.li
brary.yale.edu/tags/magazine)
Avant-Garde Periodicals Meet Digital Archives, New York Public Library (https://www.nypl.org/
blog/2014/04/17/magazines-digital-archives)
Dada, Surrealism, and De Stijl Magazines on UbuWeb Historical (http://www.ubu.com/historica
l/dada/index.html)
Index of Modernist Magazines, Davidson College (http://sites.davidson.edu/littlemagazines/)
Modernist Journal Project, Brown University and University of Tulsa (http://modjourn.org/)
Spanish and Italian Modernist Studies Forum, Pennsylvania State University (http://sites.psu.e
du/simsf/)
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