What makes avant-garde avant-garde?

[jbor]

on 28/5/03 9:51 AM, MalignD at aol.com wrote:
 
> 
> And I think that your hope for art as a society-changing vanguard movement is
> touching, but hopelessly naive.  Those days are over, except, perhaps, via
> some unforeseeon commercial, eye-opening blockbuster, some artist co-opting
> commerce.  Possible, but not likely.
> 

Reminds me a bit of Warhol. Or all that brand name-dropping in novels, which
comes across now as a bit banal (eg. Easton Ellis).

Mallarmé and Verlaine called their own work "avant-garde", which, I guess,
is essentially what made it "avant-garde", and that's pretty much the way
the label has worked whenever it has been applied since then. The "art for
art's sake" aspect of it, which was such a strong influence on Modernism
also, left a rather unhappy political legacy (i.e. Pound).

best