Matei Calinescu, Five Faces of Modernity: Modernism,
Avant-Garde, Decadence, Kitsch,
Postmodernism. Durham: Duke University Press, 1987. 395p.
THE IDEA OF THE AVANT-GARDE
AVANT-GARDE AND AESTHETIC EXTREMISM
Apollinaire, spring of 1913 Les Peintres cubistesH
June 1913, Manifeste synthèse. L'Anti-tradition
futuriste, used avant-garde as synonym for esprit
nouveau
By second decade of century, avant-garde, comprehensive
enough to include all the new schools rejecting the past and
following cult of the new.
Bakunin: "To destroy is to create."
Avant-garde thus is terminological instrument, which becomes
historicized, but has almost uncontrollable diversity.
In English speaking countries became a historical category
grouping the most extreme movements in first half of century
[118]
American criticsm uses avant-garde as synonum for modernism,
as opposed to previous movements of romanticism and naturalism.
In Italy, historicization seen in contrast between old
avanguardia and neo-avanguardia or sperimentalismo.
1925International character of avant-gardism H
Logically every style should have its avant-garde, but
actually not used that way: avant-garde is a tyle, or better an
antistyle
Ionesco: I prefer to define the avant-garde in terms of
opposition and rupture... The revolutionary playwright feels he
is running counter to his time... The avant-garde man is the
opponent of an existing system. [119]
Appearance of avant-guard historically connected with moment
when socially alienated artists felt the need to disrupt and
completely overthrow the whole bourgeois system of values.
Therefore, it is the spearhead of aesthetic modernity at
large.
Avant-gardeis means for artist to resolve specific historical
contradiction with a violent protest turned against itself.
Death of the avant-garde (1964 article), because it was
recognized as artistically significant by the same class whose
values it so drastically rejected. - becomes theme of sixties H R
THE CRISIS OF AVANT-GARDE'S CONCEPT IN THE 1960s H R
Post-World War II period: inner contradictions became focal
point of broader intellectual debate
Unexpectedly large public success of avant-garde art
term became advertising catchword - became one of major
cultural myths of fifties and sixties H R H R
Term no longer offensive or insulting, now merely amusing
Apocalytic outcires became comfortable and innocuous
clichés
Leslie Fiedler, "Death of Avant-Garde Literature"
(1964) - avant-garde became a widespread fashion
1960s: avant-garde absorbed into the surrounding culture P
But avant-garde needed to conceive of self as in advance or
time and that a bitter struggle needed to be fought.
Leonard Meyer, Music, the Arts, and Ideas (1967)
Contemporary art is fundamentally "anti-
teleological" S
characterized by stasis, a "fluctuating steady-
state"
"The concept of an avant-garde implies goal-directed
motion... If the Renaissance is over, the avant-garde is
ended."
Nevertheless he uses the term to distinguish between extreme
antitradtional contemporary and more traditional
Loss of a contemporary cultural enemy
Official culture has simply vanished, being replaced by the
intellectual relativism of modernity.
With almost boundless permissiveness, there is no enemy to
fight.
Comparison between historical avant-garde and experimentalism
Experimentalism is a highly specialized rearguard.
Soldier is replaced by the specialist.
General tolerance = objective lack of criteria
Avant-garde did not collapse because of inner contradiction
and its identity as a culture of crisis [124]
Avant-garde tires to discover or invent new forms, aspects,
or possibilities of crisis
Art is supposed to become an experience of failure and
crisis.
Dada's nihilism is archetypal trait of the avant-garde
THE IDEA OF THE AVANT-GARDE
From Modernity to the Avant-Garde
The "Avant-Garde" Metaphor in the Renaissance: A Rhetorical Figure
The Romantic "Avante-Garde": From Politics to the Politics of Culture
Some Mid-Ninettenth-Century Writers and the Avant-Garde
Two Avant-Gardes: Attractions and Repulsions
Avant Garde and Aesthetic Extremism
The Crisis of Avant-Garde's Concept in the 1960s
Avant-Garde, Dehumanization and the End of Ideology
Avant-Garde and Postmodernism
Intellectualism, Anarchism, and Stasis

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