What makes avant-garde avant-garde?

[jbor]

on 28/5/03 5:52 AM, David Morris wrote:

> 
> I think the problem is that innovation/invention do not necessarily denote a
> "movement" or "revolution" which was a very conscious aspect of the French and
> Russian Avant Gardes.  It has something to do with the defiance of an accepted
> mode, and as such takes on the camaraderie of an army with its own acceptable
> non-conformity (which really is funny because it creates its own new
> conformity).  This is very different than a "zeitgeist" which is usually only
> recognizable after it has become a common mode, but begins with a "new"
> aesthetic.  Some would argue that the present zeitgeist is "Postmodernism"
> which is by no means a "movement."

Yes, I agree that once rebellion becomes respectable, in art as in politics,
then words like "avant-garde" and "dissident" lose their meaning. It's often
a generational thing, an aspect of "youth movements".

I think that some artists, particularly in the visual arts, would still
consider themselves as "avant-garde", and that some critics probably fuel
that self-definition. I agree that "postmodernism", both in criticism and in
art, has challenged the pretension of "avant-gardism" and "innovation" as
but another of the grand metanarratives, by demonstrating how influence and
precedence are always already inherent in any act of social or cultural
expression. To "make it new" an artist has to have a notion (necessarily
subjective, a function of interpretation) of what was "old" to begin with
even if, supposedly, in order to avoid or negate that.

best