In the present paper, the author looks at the political dimension of some trends in the visual arts within twentieth-century avant-garde groups (cubism, expressionism, fauvism, Dada, abstractionism, surrealism) through George Santayana’s idea of vital liberty. Santayana accused the avant-gardists of social and political escapism, and of becoming unintentionally involved in secondary issues. In his view, the emphasis they placed on the medium (or diverse media) and on treating it as an aim in itself, not, as it should (...) be, as a transmitter through which a stimulating relationship with the environment can be had, was accompanied by a focus on fragments of life and on parts of existence, and, on the other hand, by a de facto rejection of ontology and cosmology as being crucial to understanding life and the place of human beings in the universe. The avant-gardists became involved in political life by responding excessively to the events of the time, instead of to the everlasting problems that are the human lot. (shrink)

'ART' AND 'LIFE'... AND DEATH: MARCEL DUCHAMP, ROBERT MORRIS AND NEO-AVANT- GARDE IRONY DAVID HOPKINS Peter Bürger charges avant-garde art of the and 60s ...

This article presents how the act of falling has been used as a metaphor for invention within avant-garde art and aesthetics. It takes Lars von Trier’s documentary The Five Obstacles (2003) as its point of departure and seeks to historically contextualize the figure of falling by discussing Charles Baudelaire’s essay ‘De l’essence du rire et généralement du comique dans les arts plastiques’/‘On the Essence of Laughter’ (1955 [1855–1857]). The article also discusses the fascination with falling in early cinema, (...) stressing how cinematic representations of the fall highlight the new medias potential for grasping general modern conditions like motion, speed and contingency. To think of art in terms of falling makes it possible to see a link between cinematic popular culture and so called high modernism. The article concludes with a discussion of the relationship between control and contingency within film aesthetics in the digital age. I will also discuss the aesthetics of Oulipo writers like George Perec and Raymond Queneau, and artists like Jackson Pollock and John Cage as exponents of what can be called an aesthetics of contingency. (shrink)

The question that I propose to examine here is to what extent or in what sense there has been an avant-garde presence in Chinese art. And in what sense is the avant-garde present in contemporary Chinese art connected to avant-garde in the west. Before examining the relevance of the avant-garde to developments in Chinese art, it is necessary to provide a brief account of avant-garde in western art.

The Avant-Garde: Race Religion War tells an unprecedented story of radical cultural production in the modern era. Rejecting the idea that the avant-garde is only about art and insisting that it is much more than a European phenomenon, Mike Sell redefines the historical, geographical, ideological, disciplinary and theoretical boundaries of avant-garde studies.

Examines art and literature of the Americas through the lens of the questionnaire, a genre as central as the manifesto to the history of the avant-garde. Demonstrates how modernism and the avant-garde were debated at the very moment of their development and consolidation"--Provided by publisher.

Fascism, modernism and modernity -- The Jew as anti-artist : Georges Sorel and the aesthetics of the anti- Enlightenment -- La Cité française : Georges Valois, Le Corbusier and fascist theories of urbanism -- Machine primitives : Philippe Lamour and the fascist cult of youth -- Classical violence : Thierry Maulnier and the legacy of the Cercle Proudhon.

U clanku autori se bave militantnim potencijalom koncepta avangarde. Pojavljujuci se u politici i umetnosti u prvoj polovini 19. veka i nastojeci da unisti gotovo celokupnu tradiciju 'burzoaskog' prosvetiteljstva, politicka i umetnicka avangarda nikada nije bila sposobna da se oslobodi svojih korena u vojnickom nacinu razmisljanja. Njena prava sustina je lezala u stvaranju bojnih polja u svakoj oblasti javnog zivota gde je postojala sansa da se unisti gradjansko drustvo - njegova politika, njegova umetnost, njegov nacin razmisljanja, njegova civilizacija. U ime (...) jos necuvene slobode, ona je sirila nasilje i sejala totalitarino seme po sprzenoj zemlji. A na kraju je nisu pobedili njeni mnogobrojni neprijatelji zato jer je postala zrtva vlastite destruktivnosti. (shrink)

Modernism remains a complex and complicated term, contested not only with regard to its historical meaning or period boundaries but also with regard to its relevance for aesthetics and, more broadly, for the contemporary understanding of art. Is modernism the culmination of modernity, its crowning moment or perhaps its tipping point toward the purported postmodernity/postmodernism, or is the radical challenge instigated by modernism’s artistic inventiveness—what I call its avant-garde momentum—still extant and current beyond the apparent succession of modernism (...) by postmodernism? This essay approaches these questions through a discussion of various approaches to artworks in modernism and the avant-garde: Adorno, Rancierè, Heidegger, and Lyotard in order to explore the extent to which aesthetics remains both the precondition and the optics for modernism. At the same time, it assesses the implications of the avant-garde’s challenge to the very idea of art. The divergence in the discussions of the split between modernism and avant-garde, as well as the contention between proposals for a new aesthetic and the critique of the notion of art, pivot on the issue of freedom and the role of the human. In its challenge to art, the avant-garde calls into question the centrality of the human and the idea that freedom is a human possession. In doing so, it rethinks the notion of the artwork with regard to the non-human or inhuman. Against the backdrop of this rift between modernism and the avant-garde, the essay discusses the works of Wallace Stevens and Gertrude Stein. While Stein’s avant-garde writing is intensely engaged in its practice with drafting a new poetic rigor of writing and experience, the modernist Stevens uses aesthetic paradigms and reflection to trigger the liminal state at the end of the imagination or the mind. This brief study of Stevens and Stein illustrates the fact that modernism and the avant-garde inhabit the same historical moment yet part ways with regard to aesthetics. As the avant-garde elaborates its new rigor in order to work in tune with the non-human reach of the event, it moves beyond the metaphysical determination of art and aesthetics. In the avant-garde, what is ‘proper’ to humankind comes to be “inhabited by the inhuman,” to paraphrase Lyotard, and is “celebrated” as such. This fissure means also that the momentum of the avant-garde extends beyond the historical boundaries of, for many already closed, chapter of modernism. (shrink)

Here is a mystery: in 1939, when the Hollywood Studio System, at the peak of its power, produced such films as Gone with the Wind, Ninotchka, Stagecoach, The Wizard of Oz, Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, and Wuthering Heights, the movies' number-one box-office attraction was not Gable, Garbo, Wayne, Garland, Stewart, or Olivier. In 1939, 1940, and 1941, the most popular performer in the American cinema was Mickey Rooney, who owed his success primarily to a low-budget MGM series that concentrated (...) on his character, Andy Hardy. Here is another mystery: at some point in the past decade, film studies, once the most innovative of the humanities disciplines, began to harden into a catechism of predictable questions and answers. By committing itself exclusively to rational critique, film studies left itself overmatched by the enormously popular, seductive, and enigmatic representations that constitute the movies. And by eschewing experimentation with the forms of criticism, film studies ironically cut itself off from the new methods of research and writing prompted by the twentieth century's revolution in communications technologies. Robert Ray's book about Andy Hardy proposes that alternative ways of thinking and writing about the movies can be derived from the humanities' equivalent of science's pure research--the avant-garde arts. Drawing on the Surrealist tradition, with its use of games, chance, fragments, anecdotes, and collage, Ray invents for film studies new forms of research that imitate the cognitive habits encouraged by photography, computers, and the cinema itself. In doing so, he reveals that even the Andy Hardy movies, a routine product of the Hollywood Studio System, were, after all, rich and mysterious. (shrink)

"Offering a critical perspective-rather than a traditional survey, this provocative text explores the art of the last twenty years-the latter 1970s, the 1980s, and the first half of the 1990s-in both a thematic and chronological fashion. Using an engaging and approachable style-and an abundance of color illustrations, it takes a long look at dominant tendencies in contemporary art in the United States, Western and Eastern Europe, and Russia-and provides a series of challenging view points on the most advanced art forms, (...) themes, and issues."--Amazon. (shrink)

In 1922, three young men founded the avant-garde magazine 7 Arts to promote the arts and in particular the synthesis of all the arts as only architecture and cinema can achieve. Pierre Bourgeois, a poet, his brother Victor, an architect, and the painter Pierre-Louis Flouquet were soon joined by the composer Georges Monier and Karel Maes, painter, engraver and furniture designer. "The five" succeeded in harnessing the vital forces of the Belgian avant-garde and in placing their (...) magazine at the very heart of the European avant-garde. Throughout the six years of publication the pages of the magazine provided a platform for the principal protagonists of the Belgian and international artistic scene: De Stijl, the Bauhaus, the Purists, the Constructivists, the Futurists and many other champions of the geometric abstraction to which they gave the name Plastique pure or Pure Plastic. Their ambition was to have the arts penetrate every dimension of modern urban life and to transform it in the process. In 2020, CIVA is devoting a retrospective exhibition to 7 Arts, the impressive adventure that this work presents. (shrink)

Cet ouvrage étudie dans sa première partie des formes diverses d'écriture, de la critique d'art au récit en passant par la poésie et le manifeste. Leurs auteurs, de Beckett à Michaux et de Paz à Tzara, ont été liés aux avant-gardes de la première moitié du vingtième siècle (en particulier à dada et au surréalisme) tout en empruntant une voie originale. Il aborde ensuite dans sa seconde partie les rapports de peintres comme Magritte et Léger à l'architecture. En outre, (...) il analyse le problème culturel de la collection d'art et du musée posé par des figures historiques de l'avant-garde comme Duchamp et Broodthaers. (shrink)

First published in 1991. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

Les avant-gardes se sont affirmées par leur volonté de rupture avec les traditions esthétiques et idéologiques de leur époque. Les positions ambivalentes des acteurs de l'avant-garde sont pourtant nombreuses. Cet ouvrage analyse ce paradoxe à travers différents exemples.

Artists and critics regularly enlist theory in the creation and assessment of artworks, but few have scrutinized the art theories themselves. Here, Daniel examines and critiques the norms, assumptions, historical conditions, and institutions that have framed the development and uses of art theory. Spurred by the theoretical claims of Arthur Danto, a leader in the philosophy of the avant-garde, Herwitz reexamines the art and theory of major figures in the avant-garde movement including John Cage, Jean-François Lyotard, (...) Jean Baudrillard, and Andy Warhol. (shrink)

An illustrated study of the early twentieth-century transformation from Expressionism to Constructivism and beyond in the Central European arts. Central European Avant-Gardes presents the first interpretive overview of the complex webs of interaction among the artists and intellectuals of early twentieth-century Central Europe. The key stylistic transformation of the period was from Expressionism to Constructivism, as artists and writers, against a volatile background of war and revolution, saw the opportunity literally to construct a new world through their work. The (...) borders between the visual arts, photography, film, architecture, poetry, and typography were obliterated, as artists sought to transcend the forces of traditionalism to forge an elemental visual language that would overcome national and linguistic boundaries. Yet at the same time that these artists advocated pluralism and unity, their work engaged issues such as nationalism and tradition that still resonate in artistic circles today. The book, which accompanies a major exhibition organized by the Los Angeles County Museum of Art and curated by Timothy Benson, assisted by Monika Krol, is arranged around events and situations rather than by linear, art historical categories. It features hundreds of color plates and reproductions of documents; discussions of movements from Artificialism to Zenitism; essays on figures, publications, and exhibitions; and shorter "city views" of Belgrade, Berlin, Bucharest, Budapest, Cracow, Dessau, Ljubljana, £ódz, Poznañ, Prague, Vienna, Warsaw, Weimar, and Zagreb. (shrink)

This collection offers new perspectives on the interdisciplinary scope of the historic avant-garde and highlights the interconnectedness of its artists from a variety of national and disciplinary perspectives.

The concept of retro-avant-garde was first advanced by artists working in the late socialist and post-socialist contexts of Eastern Europe, Central Europe, and the territories of the ex-Yugoslavia. In general, its semantic field has been defined by a range of post-modern and mostly post-socialist art practices that draw formal, philosophical, and social inspiration from the politicized, powerfully utopian avant-gardes of the early decades of the twentieth-century, especially in the USSR and East-Central Europe. However, its paradoxical reference forward (...) and backward in time highlights the temporal dimensions of period concepts such as modernity, postmodernity, and avant-garde in ways that make retro-avant-garde worthy of theoretical reflection. I explore the nature of period concepts, which serve not only as historical metrics, but also as designations of basic characteristics of historicity, the configuration of the dimensions of past, present, and future in a given historical context and the limits and possibilities of historical experience and representation. I go on to explore the applicability to historiography of Gilles Deleuze's distinction, developed in his cinema theory, between "movement images" and "time images." In the case of historical thought, the distinction lies in whether the representation of time is thought to be a function of historical change or, on the contrary, whether the representation of historical change is qualified by the mode of time. I conclude by suggesting that if the avant-garde has primarily been conceptualized under the figure of "movement," retro-avant-garde reveals the degree to which classical avantgardism was dependent on an image of time: time itself as material to be artistically crafted and shaped into an historical experience appropriate to the modern age. (shrink)

The most important modes of film practice, in my view, are art-house cinema and the avant-garde, both of which contrast with the classical Hollywood mode of film practice. While the latter is characterized by its commercial imperative, corporate hierarchies, and a high degree of specialization as well as a division of labor, the avant-garde is an “artisanal” or “personal” mode. Avant-garde films tend to be made by individuals or very small groups of collaborators, financed (...) either by the filmmakers alone or in combination with private patronage and grants from arts institutions. Such films are usually distributed through film cooperatives and exhibited by film societies, museums, and universities. (Consequently .. (shrink)

The present article considers the avant-garde as experience, and primarily as the experience of perceiving avant-garde art in terms of interruption, estrangement, and arrest. The focus is on the “internal”—utopian—time of the avant-garde, or the dimension of the social imagination. This is directly related to Walter Benjamin’s concept of history, and his idea of the interruption of time. The article analyzes the connection between the continuing interest in the avant-garde and the problem (...) of representing utopia. Avant-garde art is considered as a “sign of history” according to Kant: it takes on the function of an index in that it delineates space for new social relations. Avant-garde art is a form of mapping out a new community, which precedes any institutionalization. Such an intrusion of the “invisible” into avant-garde imagery is explored with the example of Jean-Luc Marion’s reflections on Rothko and Marie-José Mondzain’s conception of the icon as the forerunner of modern abstract art. (shrink)

02 This gorgeous book presents and discusses the oils, works on paper, and other artistic creations of William Holman Hunt, one of the three major artistic talents of the Pre-Raphaelite brotherhood. This gorgeous book presents and discusses the oils, works on paper, and other artistic creations of William Holman Hunt, one of the three major artistic talents of the Pre-Raphaelite brotherhood.

Decentring the Avant-Garde presents a collection of articles dealing with the topography of the avant-garde. The focus is on different responses to avant-garde aesthetics in regions traditionally depicted as cultural, geographical and linguistic peripheries. Avant-garde activities in the periphery have to date mostly been described in terms of a passive reception of new artistic trends and currents originating in cultural centres such as Paris or Berlin. Contesting this traditional view, Decentring the (...) class='Hi'>Avant-Garde highlights the importance of analysing the avant-garde in the periphery in terms of an active appropriation of avant-garde aesthetics within different cultural, ideological and historical settings. A broad collection of case studies discusses the activities of movements and artists in various regions in Europe and beyond. The result is a new topographical model of the international avant-garde and its cultural practices. (shrink)

This book is premised on the view that the idea of the avant garde has an increased importance in these times of global political crisis. Much cultural production today is shaped by a biopolitics that construes all creative and knowledge production in terms of capital accumulation. A different kind of culture is possible. This collection of writings, essays, interviews and artworks by many of today's most radical cultural practitioners and astute commentators on matters avant garde mediates (...) the different strategies and temporalities of avant-garde art and politics. Tracing diverse genealogies and trajectories, the book offers an inter-generational forum of ideas that covers different arts fields, from visual art, art activism, photography, film and architecture, to literature, theatre, performance, intermedia and music. This is an extraordinarily rich collection and is sure to be a benchmark for many years. (shrink)

Since the decidedly bleak beginning of the twenty-first century, art practice has become increasingly politicized. Yet, few sustained defenses of the avant-garde have been put forward. Revolutionary Time and the Avant-Garde is the first book of its kind to look at the legacy of the avant-garde in relation to the deepening crisis of capitalist non-reproduction. An invigorating revitalization of the Frankfurt School legacy, Roberts's book is unique in its penetrating definition and defense of the (...) avant-garde idea, providing a refined conceptual set of tools that critically engages with the most advanced art theorists of our day, such as Hal Foster, Andrew Benjamin, Alain Badiou, Jacques Ranciere, Paolo Virno, Claire Bishop, Michael Hardt, and Toni Negri. (shrink)

The avant-garde has been popular for some time, but its popularity has tended to fly under the radar. This ¿popular avant-garde,¿ conceived as the meeting ground of the avant-garde and popular, avoids the divorce of art and praxis of which the avant-garde has been accused. The Popular Avant-Garde takes stock of the debates about both the ¿historical¿ (¿modernist¿) and posterior avant-gardes, and sets them in relation to popular culture and (...) art forms. With a critical introduction that examines the concepts of ¿the avant-garde,¿ ¿the popular,¿ and ¿the popular avant-garde,¿ the series of essays analyzes the way in which the avant-garde employs popular genres for political purposes, as well as how the popular acquires a critical function with respect to the avant-garde. Each of the volume¿s three sections considers a different aspect of the productive exchange between the avant-garde and popular: the popular avant-garde as a culturally hybrid and cross-border phenomenon; the play between the popular avant-garde and developments in media and technology; and the popular avant-garde¿s upending of conventional ideas about ¿the people¿ and ¿the popular.¿ The Popular Avant-Garde takes a fresh look at the now canonical Dadaist, Futurist, and Surrealist movements from the perspectives of gender and sexuality, and cultural and critical theory, while at the same time exploring less well-known avant-garde work in literature, film, television, music, photography, dance, sculpture, and the graphic arts. This volume¿s coverage of the American and Afro-American, Luso-Brazilian and Latin-American, East-European, and Scandinavian avant-gardes, in addition to the vanguards of Spain and other parts of Western Europe, will appeal to all those interested in avant-garde and popular art forms. (shrink)

Un essai sur l'avant-garde des années 1990 (un recueil des textes les plus significatifs d'Olivier Zahm – co-fondateur et directeur du magazine Purple, concepteur de plus d'une cinquantaine d'expositions dans le monde –, écrits sur les trente dernières années, qui offre une lecture radicale de l'art, des années 1990 à nos jours).

For about a century, the doctrine has prevailed that interesting new work in the arts must be revolutionary, upsetting, and best of all, unintelligible. At first it was assumed that what was pioneered by the advance guard of innovators today would become accessible to a much broader public tomorrow. But now we have drifted into a state of permanent alienation between true lovers of the arts and the baffling performances of so-called contemporary artists. In After the Avant-Gardes, ten passionately (...) involved observers, analysts, and critics of today's art world expound their thoughts on the current sorry predicament of the arts and the most promising avenues of future development. -- from back cover. (shrink)

The ArgumentThe avant-garde's fascination with technology around 1900 grew out of several motivations: to shock the antitechnological bourgeois public; to experience a sense of mastery toward the material world, especially with cars, airplanes, and other machines; and to overcome the nineteenth-century separation of art and technology. The article highlights the radical shifts in the perception of technology that correspond with the emerging hands-on encounter with technological objects in homes, cities and at the workplace at the turn of the (...) century. This technological fundamentalism differed sharply from the anxious and symbolically mediated approach to the “materialism” of the machine in the nineteenth century. It was accompanied by a concept of liberation through technological purity which is reflected by the fact that Gropius, Mies van der Rohe and Corbusier did not just design functional objects but also made special efforts to accentuate their functionalism as part of the aesthetic experience of modernity. As French and Italian artists, especially the Futurists, incorporated speed, virility, and the experience of the elementary in the metaphoric construction of technology, they even expressed a kinship with those painters and sculptors who shifted their focus to the rediscovery of the “primitive” magic in the art works from Africa and Polynesia. (shrink)

A remarkable volume, the Russian avant-garde and radical modernism brings together the most significant movements and figures in Russian experimental art, cinema and literature of the early twentieth century (both pre-Soviet and Soviet) and presents them in commentary by leading scholars in the field" -- p. [4] of cover.