Avant-garde
- For the Spanish indie rock band, see Avantgarde (band).
- For the 80s progressive metal band, see Avant Garde (band).
Avant-garde /ɑvɑ̃gɑrd/ in French means front guard, advance guard, or vanguard. People often use the term in French and English to refer to people or works that are experimental or novel, particularly with respect to art, culture, and politics.
Avant-garde pushes the boundaries of what is accepted as the norm within definitions of art/culture/reality. An avant-garde mentality believes things arise only from the leading edge of reality.
The vanguard, a small troop of highly skilled soldiers, explores the terrain ahead of a large advancing army and plots a course for the army to follow. This concept is applied to the work done by small bands of intellectuals and artists as they open pathways through new cultural or political terrain for society to follow. Due to implied meanings stemming from the military terminology, some people feel the avant-garde implies elitism, especially when used to describe cultural movements.
Thus avant-garde in music refers to an extreme form of musical improvisation in which little or no regard is given by soloists to any underlying chord structure or rhythm.
The term also refers to the promotion of social progress and reform, the aims of its various movements presented in public declarations called manifestos. Over time, avant-garde became associated with movements concerned with art for art's sake, focusing primarily on expanding the frontiers of aesthetic experience, rather than with wider social reform.
The origin of the application of this French term to art can be fixed at May 17, 1863, the opening of the Salon des Refusés in Paris, organised by painters whose work was rejected for the annual Paris Salon of officially sanctioned academic art. Salons des Refusés were held in 1874, 1875, and 1886.
By some assessments, avant-garde art includes street art, for example graffiti and any other movement which pushes forward the accepted boundaries; defining art in the future. It should be noted that avant-garde is not only a style of art, such as surrealism or cubism, rather this term is generally applied toward the present moment.
For instance: Where Marcel Duchamp's urinal may have been avant-garde at the time, today if someone created it again it would not be avant-garde because it has already been done. Avant-garde is therefore temporal and relates to the process of art's unfolding in time. It can be applied to the forerunners of any new movements. However, Duchamp and his work, remain avant-garde because he pushed art forward, creating a new dialogue and definition with itself.
Relevance
Avant-garde is relevant to art because without these movements art itself would stagnate and become dormant and merely craft, repeating the same style over and over. The term is most commonly applied to the visual arts, fashion, film, and literature, but also to intellectual and new approaches to music, cuisine, politics or culture.
Avant-garde art movements
- Abstract expressionism
- Bauhaus
- COBRA
- Constructivism
- Cubism
- Dada
- Dogme 95
- Expressionism
- Futurism
- Fluxus
- Impressionism
- Incoherents
- Lettrisme
- Mail art
- Modernism
- Neoism
- No Wave
- Primitivism
- Free Jazz
- Pop art
- Situationist
- Social realism
- Spart
- Surrealism
Other examples of avant-garde
- Experimental film
- Experimental literature
- Experimental music
- Experimental theatre
- Zeitgeist
- Molecular gastronomy
- Demoscene
Avant-garde artists
- Donatello (Renaissance sculptor; his later works can be considered avant-garde)
- The Residents (American Musicians and Filmmakers)
- Björk (Icelandic artist)
- Graham Bowers (British artist and composer)
- Stan Brakhage (American filmmaker)
- Arksun (British composer and electronic music producer)
- John Coltrane (American Musician)
- Pavel Filonov (Russian artist)
- Wassily Kandinsky (Russian artist)
- Felix Kubin (German electronic musician, sound artist)
- Arcturus (band) (Norwegian metal band)
- Ved Buens Ende (Norwegian metal band)
- Buckethead (American musician)
- John Cage (American composer)
- William Carlos Williams (American poet)
- They Might Be Giants (American SUPER band)
- El Lissitzky (Russian artist)
- Kazimir Malevich (Russian artist)
- Marcel Duchamp (French artist)
- Edgard Varèse (French composer, later naturalized American citizen)
- Iannis Xenakis (Greek composer and architect)
- Charles Ives (American composer)
- Henry Cow (British band)
- Andy Warhol (American artist)
- Del the Funkee Homosapien (American lyricist)
- Srečko Kosovel (Slovene poet)
- Marc Chagall (Russian artist)
- Alexander Rodchenko (Russian artist)
- Olga Rozanova (Russian artist)
- David Lynch (American director)
- Jean-Luc Godard (French director)
- Roger Avary (American director)
- Kayo Dot (American avant-rock band)
- maudlin of the Well (American avant-metal band)
- Mike Patton (American musician)
- Vladimir Tatlin (Russian artist)
- Sergei Tretyakov (Russian artist)
- Frank Zappa (American composer), and his close friend, Captain Beefheart
- Nicolás Rosselló (Chilean artist)
- John Zorn (American musician and composer)
- Daniel Libeskind (American architect)
- Frank Gehry (Canadian architect)
- Plural Dolt (American band)
- Xihilisk (English artist)
- International Society for Creative Guitar and String Music (Avant arts and music collective)
- Man Ray (US/France photographer and filmmaker)
- Yoko Ono (Japanese artist)
- Karlheinz Stockhausen (German Electronic Musician)
- Terry Riley (American Minimalist Musician)
- Autechre (English IDM Music producers)
- Mouse on Mars (German IDM Music Producers)
- Mille Plateaux (German Avante-Garde music label)
- Pink Floyd (English band; Ummagumma, Atom Heart Mother)
- The Beatles (English band; Revolution 9)
- Mamoru Oshii (Japanise filmmaker)
- The Velvet Underground (American band)
- Patti Smith (American Artist)
- The Pea Tear Briggs Experience (American band)
- Einstürzende Neubauten (German industrial band)
- Architecture in Helsinki (Australian band)
- Laurie Anderson (American composer)
- Antonin Artaud (French playwright)
- Les Claypool (Founding member of rock band Primus)
- Pier Paolo Pasolini (Italian Director)
- Sonic Youth (American Rock Band)
- Anthony William Herndon (American artist)
- Melt-Banana (Japanese band)
- Yes (British Band)
- Mark E Smith
- John Lydon (in particular his work with PiL)
See also
External links
- cinema avant garde (en, fr, es, de)
- Iranian Avant Garde Media Iranian Underground Art Community