Death of the avant-garde
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
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| Many critics have declared the [[avant-garde]] dead. [[Hans Magnus Enzensberger]], [[Eric Hobsbawn]], [[Roland Barthes]], [[Andreas Huyssen]], [[Frank Kermode]] and [[Robert Hughes]] are some of the scholars and critics who have relegated the avant-garde to the past. | Many critics have declared the [[avant-garde]] dead. [[Hans Magnus Enzensberger]], [[Eric Hobsbawn]], [[Roland Barthes]], [[Andreas Huyssen]], [[Frank Kermode]] and [[Robert Hughes]] are some of the scholars and critics who have relegated the avant-garde to the past. | ||
| - | Most frequently cited perhaps is ''[[The Aporias of the Avant-Garde]]'' (1962), an extended essay by Hans Magnus Enzensberger, in which he said that | + | Most frequently cited perhaps is ''[[The Aporias of the Avant-Garde]]'' (1962), an extended essay by Hans Magnus Enzensberger, in which he said that "the ''avant'' of the avant-garde contains its own contradiction: it can be marked out only a posteriori." |
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| Conservative American art critic [[Hilton Kramer]] wrote about the '''death of the avant-gardes''' in his ''[[The Age of the Avant-Garde]]'' (1973). He situates the [[avant-garde]] from the [[1850s]] (Courbet) until the [[1950s]] ([[abstract expressionism]]) and defines it as art that meets with resistance from society at large. | Conservative American art critic [[Hilton Kramer]] wrote about the '''death of the avant-gardes''' in his ''[[The Age of the Avant-Garde]]'' (1973). He situates the [[avant-garde]] from the [[1850s]] (Courbet) until the [[1950s]] ([[abstract expressionism]]) and defines it as art that meets with resistance from society at large. | ||
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Illustration: Mona Lisa Smoking a Pipe (1883) by Eugène Bataille
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Many critics have declared the avant-garde dead. Hans Magnus Enzensberger, Eric Hobsbawn, Roland Barthes, Andreas Huyssen, Frank Kermode and Robert Hughes are some of the scholars and critics who have relegated the avant-garde to the past.
Most frequently cited perhaps is The Aporias of the Avant-Garde (1962), an extended essay by Hans Magnus Enzensberger, in which he said that "the avant of the avant-garde contains its own contradiction: it can be marked out only a posteriori."
Conservative American art critic Hilton Kramer wrote about the death of the avant-gardes in his The Age of the Avant-Garde (1973). He situates the avant-garde from the 1850s (Courbet) until the 1950s (abstract expressionism) and defines it as art that meets with resistance from society at large.
Camille Paglia proclaimed the avant-garde dead in the 1990s. Her argument is stated in a 1999 salon.com response to a reader's question:
- "It's a central thesis of my work that in the 20th century (which I call the Age of Hollywood) pagan popular culture overtook and vanquished the high arts. Thanks to advances in technology, pop became a universal language, as catholic in its reach as the medieval church. Once pop art embraced commercial iconography, the avant-garde was dead."
Several contemporary critics have argued that the avant-garde is not dead. They cite punk rock as a new resurgence of avant-garde sensibilities and offer that there will always be transgressive artists ahead of their time, destined to be discovered and re-evaluated after their death.
Robert Hughes
- "Where did this new academy begin? At its origins the avant-garde myth had held the artist to be a precursor; the significant work is the one that prepares the future. The cult of the precursor ended by cluttering the landscape with absurd prophetic claims. The idea of a cultural avant-garde was unimaginable before 1800. It was fostered by the rise of liberalism. Where the taste of religious or secular courts determined patronage, "subversive" innovation was not esteemed as a sign of artistic quality. Nor was the artist's autonomy, that would come with the Romantics." --Robert Hughes in The Shock of the New
See also
- The Aporias of the Avant-Garde, 1962, an extended essay by Hans Magnus Enzensberger
- Death of the Author, 1967, an extended essay by Roland Barthes
- "The Death of Avant-Garde Literature", 1964, an essay by Leslie Fiedler.
- Death of the underground
- Death of Modernism
- Nobrow
