Avant-garde cinema,The Love of Zero (1928), a short film directed by the artistRobert Florey[1]
In thearts andliterature, the termavant-garde (from French meaning'advance guard' or'vanguard') identifies an experimentalgenre orwork of art, and theartist who created it, which usually is aesthetically innovative, whilst initially being ideologically unacceptable to the artisticestablishment of the time.[2] The military metaphor of anadvance guard identifies the artists and writers whose innovations in style, form, and subject-matter challenge the artistic andaesthetic validity of the established forms of art and the literary traditions of their time; thus, the artists who created theanti-novel andSurrealism were ahead of their times.[3]
As a stratum of theintelligentsia of a society, avant-garde artists promote progressive and radical politics and advocate for societal reform with and through works of art. In the essay "The Artist, the Scientist, and the Industrialist" (1825),Benjamin Olinde Rodrigues's political usage ofvanguard identified themoral obligation of artists to "serve as [the] avant-garde" of the people, because "the power ofthe arts is, indeed, the most immediate and fastest way" to realise social, political, and economic reforms.[4]
In the realm of culture, the artistic experiments of the avant-garde push the aesthetic boundaries ofsocietal norms, such as the disruptions ofmodernism in poetry, fiction, and drama, painting, music, and architecture, that occurred in the late 19th and in the early 20th centuries.[5] Inart history the socio-cultural functions of avant-garde art trace fromDada (1915–1920s) through theSituationist International (1957–1972) to thepostmodernism of the AmericanLanguage poets (1960s–1970s).[6]
Political revolution has influenced both the topic and form inThe Overthrow of theAutocracy, a Soviet avant-garde painting circa theRussian Revolution
The French military termavant-garde (advanced guard) identified areconnaissance unit who scouted the terrain ahead of the main force of the army. In 19th-century French politics, the termavant-garde (vanguard) identified Left-wingpolitical reformists who agitated forradical political change in French society. In the mid-19th century, as a cultural term,avant-garde identified a genre of art that advocated art-as-politics, art as anaesthetic and political means for realisingsocial change in a society. Since the 20th century, the art termavant-garde identifies a stratum of theIntelligentsia that comprises novelists and writers, artists and architectset al. whose creative perspectives, ideas, and experimental artworks challenge the cultural values of contemporarybourgeois society.[7]
In the U.S. of the 1960s, the post–WWII changes to American culture and society allowed avant-garde artists to produce works of art that addressed the matters of the day, usually in political and sociologic opposition to the cultural conformity inherent topopular culture and toconsumerism as a way of life and as aworldview.[8]
InThe Theory of the Avant-Garde (Teoria dell'arte d'avanguardia, 1962), the academicRenato Poggioli provides an early analysis of theavant-garde as art and as artistic movement.[9] Surveying the historical and social, psychological and philosophical aspects of artistic vanguardism, Poggioli's examples of avant-garde art, poetry, and music, show that avant-garde artists share some values and ideals as contemporarybohemians.[10]
InTheory of the Avant-Garde (Theorie der Avantgarde, 1974), the literary critic Peter Bürger looks atThe Establishment's embrace of socially critical works of art as capitalist co-optation of the artists and the genre of avant-garde art, because "art as an institution neutralizes the political content of the individual work [of art]".[11]
InNeo-avantgarde and Culture Industry: Essays on European and American Art from 1955 to 1975 (2000),Benjamin H. D. Buchloh argues for adialectical approach to such political stances by avant-garde artists and the avant-garde genre of art.[12]
The cultural provocation of avant-garde art:Fountain (1917) byMarcel Duchamp. (Alfred Stieglitz)In "The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction" (1935), Walter Benjamin addresses the artistic and cultural, social, economic, and political functions of art in a capitalist society.Intellectuals of the avant-garde: Max Horkheimer (left) and Theodor Adorno (right) at Heidelberg in 1965.
Sociologically, as a stratum of theintelligentsia of a society,avant-garde artists, writers, architects,et al. produce artefacts — works of art, books, buildings — thatintellectually and ideologically oppose the conformist value system of mainstream society.[13] In the essay "Avant-Garde and Kitsch" (1939),Clement Greenberg said that the artistic vanguard oppose high culture and reject the artifice ofmass culture, because the avant-garde functionally oppose thedumbing down of society — be it withlow culture or withhigh culture. That in a capitalist society each medium of mass communication is a factory producing artworks, and is not a legitimate artistic medium; therefore, the products of mass culture arekitsch, simulations and simulacra of Art.[14]
Walter Benjamin in the essay "The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction" (1939) and Theodor Adorno and Max Horkheimer in theDialectic of Enlightenment (1947) said that the artifice ofmass culture voids the artistic value (theaura) of a work of art.[15] That the capitalistculture industry (publishing and music, radio and cinema, etc.) continually produces artificial culture for mass consumption,[16] which is facilitated by mechanically produced art-products of mediocre quality displacing art of quality workmanship; thus, the profitability ofart-as-commodity determines its artistic value.[16]
InThe Society of the Spectacle (1967),Guy Debord said that the financial, commercial, and economic co-optation of the avant-garde into a commodity produced byneoliberal capitalism makes doubtful that avant-garde artists will remain culturally and intellectually relevant to their societies for preferring profit to cultural change and political progress. InThe Theory-Death of the Avant-Garde (1991),Paul Mann said that the avant-garde are economically integral to the contemporary institutions of the Establishment, specifically as part of theculture industry.[17] Noting the conceptual shift, theoreticians, such asMatei Calinescu, inFive Faces of Modernity: Modernism, Avant-garde, Decadence, Kitsch, Postmodernism (1987),[18] and Hans Bertens inThe Idea of the Postmodern: A History (1995),[19] said that Western culture entered a post-modern time when themodernist ways of thought and action and the production of art have become redundant in a capitalist economy.[20]
Parting from the claims of Greenberg in the late 1930s and the insights of Poggioli in the early 1960s, inThe De-Definition of Art: Action Art to Pop to Earthworks (1983), the criticHarold Rosenberg said that since the middle of the 1960s the politically progressive avant-garde ceased being adversaries to artistic commercialism and the mediocrity ofmass culture, which political disconnection transformed being an artist into "a profession, one of whose aspects is the pretense of overthrowing [the profession of being an artist]."[21][22]
Avant-garde is frequently defined in contrast toarrière-garde, which in its original military sense refers to arearguard force that protects the advance-guard.[23] The term was less frequently used than "avant-garde" in 20th-century art criticism.[24] The art historians Natalie Adamson and Toby Norris argue thatarrière-garde is not reducible to akitsch style orreactionary orientation, but can instead be used to refer to artists who engage with the legacy of the avant-garde while maintaining an awareness that doing so is in some sense anachronistic.[25] The criticCharles Altieri argues that avant-garde and arrière-garde are interdependent: "where there is an avant-garde, there must be anarrière-garde."[26]
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.[28] According to the composer and musicologistLarry 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 includeElliott Carter,Milton Babbitt,György Ligeti,Witold Lutosławski, andLuciano Berio, since "their modernism was not conceived for the purpose of goading an audience."[35]
The 1960s saw a wave of free and avant-garde music injazz genre, embodied by artists such asOrnette Coleman,Sun Ra,Albert Ayler,Archie Shepp,John Coltrane andMiles Davis.[36][37] In the rock music of the 1970s, the"art" descriptor was generally understood to mean "aggressively avant-garde" or "pretentiously progressive".[38]Post-punk artists from the late 1970s rejected traditional rock sensibilities in favor of an avant-garde aesthetic.
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 areFluxus,Happenings, andNeo-Dada.
^Peter Bürger (1974).Theorie der Avantgarde. Suhrkamp Verlag. English translation (University of Minnesota Press) 1984: 90.
^Benjamin Buchloh,Neo-avantgarde and Culture Industry: Essays on European and American Art from 1955 to 1975 (Cambridge: MIT Press, 2001)ISBN0-262-02454-3.
^"avant-garde",Penguin Dictionary of Literary Terms and Literary Theory Third Edition (1991) J.A. Cuddon, Ed. p.74.
^Greenberg, Clement (Fall 1939)."Avant-Garde and Kitsch".The Partisan Review. Vol. 6, no. 5. pp. 34–49. Archived fromthe original on 4 July 2018. Retrieved24 January 2018.
^abAdorno, Theodor (1991) [1975]."Culture industry reconsidered"(PDF).The Culture Industry: Selected Essays on Mass Culture. London: Routledge. Archived fromthe original on 29 September 2018. Retrieved16 March 2023.
^Richard Schechner, "The Conservative Avant-Garde."New Literary History 41.4 (Autumn 2010): 895–913.
^Adamson, Natalie; Norris, Toby (2009). "Introduction". In Adamson, Natalie; Norris, Toby (eds.).Academics, Pompiers, Official Artists and the Arrière-Garde: Defining Modern and Transitional in France. Cambridge Scholars Publishing. p. 18.
^abJim Samson, "Avant garde",The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, second edition, edited byStanley Sadie andJohn Tyrrell (London: Macmillan Publishers, 2001).
^abcLarry Sitsky,Music of the Twentieth-Century Avant-Garde: A Biocritical Sourcebook (Westport, Conn: Greenwood Press, 2002), xiv.ISBN0-313-29689-8.
^Larry Sitsky,Music of the Twentieth-Century Avant-Garde: A Biocritical Sourcebook (Westport, Conn: Greenwood Press, 2002), xiii–xiv.ISBN0-313-29689-8.
^Larry Sitsky,Music of the Twentieth-Century Avant-Garde: A Biocritical Sourcebook (Westport, Conn: Greenwood Press, 2002), 222.ISBN0-313-29689-8.
^abLarry Sitsky,Music of the Twentieth-Century Avant-Garde: A Biocritical Sourcebook (Westport, Conn: Greenwood Press, 2002), 50.ISBN0-313-29689-8.
^Elliot Schwartz, Barney Childs, and James Fox (eds.),Contemporary Composers on Contemporary Music (New York: Da Capo Press, 1998), 379.ISBN0-306-80819-6
^abcdLarry Sitsky,Music of the Twentieth-Century Avant-Garde: A Biocritical Sourcebook (Westport, Conn: Greenwood Press, 2002), xvii.ISBN0-313-29689-8.
^Larry Sitsky,Music of the Twentieth-Century Avant-Garde: A Biocritical Sourcebook (Westport, Conn: Greenwood Press, 2002), xv.ISBN0-313-29689-8.
Bäckström, Per and Benedikt Hjartarson. "Rethinking the Topography of the International Avant-Garde", inDecentring the Avant-Garde, Per Bäckström & Benedikt Hjartarson (eds.), Amsterdam & New York: Rodopi, Avantgarde Critical Studies, 2014.
Fiell, Charlotte; Fiell, Peter (2005).Design of the 20th Century (25th anniversary ed.). Köln: Taschen. pp. 76–77.ISBN9783822840788.OCLC809539744.
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.ISBN0-02-865379-3. Paperback edition 2001, New York: Routledge.ISBN0-415-93764-7 (pbk.)
Kramer, Hilton. 1973.The Age of the Avant-garde; An Art Chronicle of 1956−1972. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux.ISBN0-374-10238-4
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.ISBN978-0-7190-9691-4.
Maerhofer, John W. 2009.Rethinking the Vanguard: Aesthetic and Political Positions in the Modernist Debate, 1917–1962. Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Press.ISBN1-4438-1135-1
Mann, Paul.The Theory-Death of the Avant-Garde. Indiana University Press, 1991.ISBN978-0-253-33672-9
Novero, Cecilia. 2010.Antidiets of the Avant-Garde: From Futurist Cooking to Eat Art. (University of Minnesota Press)ISBN978-0-8166-4601-2
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. BerlinAkademie Verlag.ISBN3-05-004066-1 [online version is available]
Sell, Mike.The Avant-Garde: Race, Religion, War. Seagull Books, 2011.
