The Love of Zero, 35mm film Robert Florey1928

The avant-garde (; In 'advance guard' or ' vanguard', literally 'fore-guard') is a person or work that is experimental, radical, or unorthodox with respect to

art Art is a diverse range of human activity, and resulting product, that involves creative or imaginative talent expressive of technical proficiency, beauty, emotional power, or conceptual ideas. There is no generally agreed definition of wha ...

culture Culture () is an umbrella term which encompasses the social behavior, institutions, and norms found in human societies, as well as the knowledge, beliefs, arts, laws, customs, capabilities, and habits of the individuals in these groups ...

, or

society A society is a group of individuals involved in persistent social interaction, or a large social group sharing the same spatial or social territory, typically subject to the same political authority and dominant cultural expectations. Soci ...

.John Picchione,
The New Avant-garde in Italy: Theoretical Debate and Poetic Practices
' (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2004), p. 64 . It is frequently characterized by aesthetic innovation and initial unacceptability.Kostelanetz, Richard, ''A Dictionary of the Avant-Gardes'', Routledge, May 13, 2013
The avant-garde pushes the boundaries of what is accepted as the norm or the '' status quo'', primarily in the cultural realm. The avant-garde is considered by some to be a hallmark of

modernism Modernism is both a philosophy, philosophical and arts movement that arose from broad transformations in Western world, Western society during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The movement reflected a desire for the creation of new fo ...

. Many

artists An artist is a person engaged in an activity related to creating art, practicing the arts, or demonstrating an art. The common usage in both everyday speech and academic discourse refers to a practitioner in the visual arts only. However, the ...

have aligned themselves with the avant-garde movement, and still continue to do so, tracing their history from

Dada Dada () or Dadaism was an art movement of the European avant-garde in the early 20th century, with early centres in Zürich, Switzerland, at the Cabaret Voltaire (in 1916). New York Dada began c. 1915, and after 1920 Dada flourished in Pari ...

through the Situationists and to postmodern artists such as the

Language poets The Language poets (or ''L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E'' poets, after the magazine of that name) are an avant-garde group or tendency in United States poetry that emerged in the late 1960s and early 1970s. The poets included: Bernadette Mayer, Leslie Scal ...

around 1981. The avant-garde also promotes radical social reforms. This meaning was evoked by the Saint Simonian Olinde Rodrigues in his essay, "L'artiste, le savant et l'industriel" ("The artist, the scientist and the industrialist", 1825). This essay contains the first use of "avant-garde" in its now customary sense; there, Rodrigues called on artists to "serve as he people'savant-garde", insisting that "the power of the arts is indeed the most immediate and fastest way" to social, political and economic reform.

History

The term was originally used by the French military to refer to a small

reconnaissance In military operations, reconnaissance or scouting is the exploration of an area by military forces to obtain information about enemy forces, terrain, and other activities. Examples of reconnaissance include patrolling by troops (skirmisher ...

group that scouted ahead of the main force. It also became associated with left-wing French radicals in the 19th century who were agitating for

political reform Reform ( lat, reformo) means the improvement or amendment of what is wrong, corrupt, unsatisfactory, etc. The use of the word in this way emerges in the late 18th century and is believed to originate from Christopher Wyvill's Association movement ...

. At some point in the middle of that century, the term was linked to art through the idea that art is an instrument for

social change Social change is the alteration of the social order of a society which may include changes in social institutions, social behaviours or social relations. Definition Social change may not refer to the notion of social progress or socio ...

. Only toward the end of the century did ''l'art d'avant-garde'' begin to break away from its identification with left-wing social causes to become more aligned with cultural and artistic issues. This trend toward increased emphasis on aesthetic issues has continued to the present. Avant-garde today generally refers to groups of intellectuals, writers, and artists, including architects, who voice ideas and experiment with artistic approaches that challenge current cultural values. Avant-garde ideas, especially if they embrace social issues, often are gradually assimilated by the societies they confront. The radicals of yesterday become mainstream, creating the environment for a new generation of radicals to emerge. The challenging of social and cultural values was apparent in American culture as it expanded due to the idea of mass culture in the 1960s. The amount of avant-garde art that was developed in the time of this new American culture represented the opposition to the accepted mass culture and mass consumerism.

Theories

Several writers have attempted to map the parameters of avant-garde activity. Italian essayist Renato Poggioli provides one of the earliest analyses of vanguardism as a cultural phenomenon in his 1962 book, ''Teoria dell'arte d'avanguardia'' (''The Theory of the Avant-Garde''). Surveying the historical, social, psychological and philosophical aspects of vanguardism, Poggioli reaches beyond individual instances of art, poetry, and music to show that vanguardists may share certain ideals or values, which manifest themselves in the non-conformist lifestyles they adopt. He sees vanguard culture as a variety or subcategory of Bohemianism. Other authors have attempted both to clarify and to extend Poggioli's study. The German literary critic Peter Bürger's ''Theory of the Avant-Garde'' (1974) looks at

the Establishment ''The Establishment'' is a term used to describe a dominant group or elite that controls a polity or an organization. It may comprise a closed social group that selects its own members, or entrenched elite structures in specific institution ...

's embrace of socially critical works of art, and suggests that in complicity with capitalism, "art as an institution neutralizes the political content of the individual work." Raymond Williams devotes two chapters of his book, ''The Politics of Modernism''(1989), to a discussion of the politics and language of the avant-garde. Bürger's essay also greatly influenced the work of contemporary American art historians such as the German Benjamin H. D. Buchloh (born 1941). Buchloh, in the collection of essays ''Neo-avantgarde and Culture Industry'' (2000), critically argues for a dialectical approach to these positions. Subsequent criticism theorized the limitations of these approaches, noting their circumscribed areas of analysis, including Eurocentric, chauvinist, and genre-specific definitions.

Relation to mainstream society

The concept of avant-garde refers primarily to artists, writers, composers, and thinkers whose work is opposed to mainstream cultural values, and often has a trenchant social or political edge.Jim Samson, "Avant garde", ''The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians'', second edition, edited by Stanley Sadie and John Tyrrell (London: Macmillan Publishers, 2001). Many writers, critics, and theorists made assertions about vanguard culture during the formative years of modernism, although the initial definitive statement on the avant-garde was the essay " Avant-Garde and Kitsch", by New York art critic

Clement Greenberg Clement Greenberg () (January 16, 1909 – May 7, 1994), occasionally writing under the pseudonym K. Hardesh, was an American essayist known mainly as an art critic closely associated with American modern art of the mid-20th century and a formali ...

. It was published in ''

Partisan Review ''Partisan Review'' (''PR'') was a small-circulation quarterly "little magazine" dealing with literature, politics, and cultural commentary published in New York City. The magazine was launched in 1934 by the Communist Party USA–affiliated Joh ...

'' in 1939. Greenberg argued that vanguard culture has historically been opposed to "high" or "mainstream" culture, and that it has also rejected the artificially synthesized mass culture that has been produced by industrialization. Each of these media is a direct product of

capitalism Capitalism is an economic system based on the private ownership of the means of production and their operation for profit. Central characteristics of capitalism include capital accumulation, competitive markets, price system, priva ...

—they are all now substantial industries—and as such, they are driven by the same profit-fixated motives of other sectors of manufacturing, not the ideals of true art. For Greenberg, these forms were therefore ''

kitsch Kitsch ( ; loanword from German) is a term applied to art and design that is perceived as naïve imitation, overly-eccentric, gratuitous, or of banal taste. The avant-garde opposed kitsch as melodramatic and superficial affiliation wi ...

'' - phony, faked, or mechanical culture. Such things often pretended to be more than they were by using formal devices stolen from vanguard culture. For instance, during the 1930s, the advertising industry was quick to take visual mannerisms from surrealism, but this does not mean that 1930s advertising photographs are truly surreal. AdornoHorkheimerHabermasbyJeremyJShapiro2

AdornoHorkheimerHabermasbyJeremyJShapiro2

Similar views were argued by members of the Frankfurt School, the originators of Critical Theory, an approach to

social philosophy Social philosophy examines questions about the foundations of social institutions, social behavior, and interpretations of society in terms of ethical values rather than empirical relations. Social philosophers emphasize understanding the social ...

that focuses on reflective assessment and critique of society and culture in order to reveal and challenge power structures.

Theodor Adorno Theodor is a masculine given name. It is a German form of Theodore. It is also a variant of Teodor. List of people with the given name Theodor * Theodor Adorno, (1903–1969), German philosopher * Theodor Aman, Romanian painter * Theodor Blue ...

and

Max Horkheimer Max Horkheimer (; ; 14 February 1895 – 7 July 1973) was a German philosopher and sociologist who was famous for his work in critical theory as a member of the Frankfurt School of social research. Horkheimer addressed authoritarianism, militari ...

in their essay " The Culture Industry: Enlightenment as Mass-Deception" (1944), and also

Walter Benjamin Walter Bendix Schönflies Benjamin (; ; 15 July 1892 – 26 September 1940) was a German Jewish philosopher, cultural critic and essayist. An eclectic thinker, combining elements of German idealism, Romanticism, Western Marxism, and Jewish ...

in his highly influential "

The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction "The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction" (1935), by Walter Benjamin, is an essay of cultural criticism which proposes and explains that mechanical reproduction devalues the ''aura'' (uniqueness) of an ''objet d'art''. That in the age ...

" (1935, rev. 1939) spoke of " mass culture." They indicated that this bogus culture is constantly being manufactured by a newly emerged

culture industry The term culture industry (german: Kulturindustrie) was coined by the critical theorists Theodor Adorno (1903–1969) and Max Horkheimer (1895–1973), and was presented as critical vocabulary in the chapter "The Culture Industry: Enlightenment ...

(comprising commercial publishing houses, the

film industry The film industry or motion picture industry comprises the technological and commercial institutions of filmmaking, i.e., film production companies, film studios, cinematography, animation, film production, screenwriting, pre-production, p ...

, the record industry, and the electronic media).Theodor W. Adorno (1963)
, " Culture Industry Reconsidered: Selected Essays on Mass Culture", London: Routledge, 1991 They also pointed out that the rise of this industry meant that artistic excellence was displaced by sales figures as a measure of worth: a novel, for example, was judged meritorious solely on whether it became a best-seller; music succumbed to ratings charts, and to the blunt commercial logic of the Gold disc. In this way, the autonomous artistic merit, so dear to the vanguardist, was abandoned and sales increasingly became the measure, and justification, of everything. Consumer culture now ruled. The avant-garde's co-option by the global capitalist market, by neoliberal economies, and by what Guy Debord called '' The Society of the Spectacle'' (a seminal text for the Situationist movement describing the "autocratic reign of the market economy"), have made contemporary critics speculate on the possibility of a meaningful avant-garde today. Paul Mann's ''Theory-Death of the Avant-Garde'' demonstrates how completely the avant-garde is embedded within institutional structures today, a thought also pursued by

Richard Schechner Richard Schechner is University Professor Emeritus at the Tisch School of the Arts, New York University, and editor of ''TDR: The Drama Review''. Biography Richard Schechner received his Bachelor of Arts degree from Cornell University in 1956, a ...

in his analyses of avant-garde performance. Despite the central arguments of Greenberg, Adorno, and others, various sectors of the mainstream culture industry have co-opted and misapplied the term "avant-garde" since the 1960s, chiefly as a marketing tool to publicise popular music and commercial cinema. It has become common to describe successful rock musicians and celebrated film-makers as "avant-garde", the very word having been stripped of its proper meaning. Noting this important conceptual shift, major contemporary theorists such as Matei Calinescu in ''Five Faces of Modernity: Modernism, Avant-garde, Decadence, Kitsch, Postmodernism'' (1987), and Hans Bertens in ''The Idea of the Postmodern: A History'' (1995), have suggested that this is a sign our culture has entered a new

post-modern Postmodernism is an intellectual stance or mode of discourseNuyen, A.T., 1992. The Role of Rhetorical Devices in Postmodernist Discourse. Philosophy & Rhetoric, pp.183–194. characterized by skepticism toward the " grand narratives" of moderni ...

age, when the former

modernist Modernism is both a philosophy, philosophical and arts movement that arose from broad transformations in Western world, Western society during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The movement reflected a desire for the creation of new fo ...

ways of thinking and behaving have been rendered redundant. Nevertheless, an incisive critique of vanguardism as against the views of mainstream society was offered by the New York critic

Harold Rosenberg Harold Rosenberg (February 2, 1906 – July 11, 1978) was an American writer, educator, philosopher and art critic. He coined the term Action Painting in 1952 for what was later to be known as abstract expressionism. Rosenberg is best known for ...

in the late 1960s. Trying to strike a balance between the insights of Renato Poggioli and the claims of Clement Greenberg, Rosenberg suggested that, from the mid-1960s onward, progressive culture ceased to fulfill its former adversarial role. Since then it has been flanked by what he called "avant-garde ghosts to the one side, and a changing mass culture on the other", both of which it interacts with to varying degrees. This has seen culture become, in his words, "a profession one of whose aspects is the pretense of overthrowing it." Avant-garde is frequently defined in contrast to ''arrière-garde'', which in its original military sense refers to a

rearguard A rearguard is a part of a military force that protects it from attack from the rear, either during an advance or withdrawal. The term can also be used to describe forces protecting lines, such as communication lines, behind an army. Even more ...

force that protects the advance-guard. The term was less frequently used than "avant-garde" in 20th-century art criticism. The art historians Natalie Adamson and Toby Norris argue that ''arrière-garde'' is not reducible to a

style or reactionary orientation, but can instead be used to refer to artists who engage with the legacy of the avant-garde while maintaining an awareness that doing so is in some sense anachronistic. The critic Charles Altieri argues that avant-garde and arrière-garde are interdependent: "where there is an avant-garde, there must be an ''arrière-garde''."

Examples

Music

Avant-garde in music can refer to any form of music working within traditional structures while seeking to breach boundaries in some manner.David Nicholls (ed.), ''The Cambridge History of American Music'' (Cambridge and New York:

Cambridge University Press Cambridge University Press is the university press of the University of Cambridge. Granted letters patent by King Henry VIII in 1534, it is the oldest university press in the world. It is also the King's Printer. Cambridge University Pre ...

, 1998), 122–24. The term is used loosely to describe the work of any musicians who radically depart from tradition altogether. By this definition, some avant-garde composers of the 20th century include Arnold Schoenberg,Larry Sitsky, ''Music of the Twentieth-Century Avant-Garde: A Biocritical Sourcebook'' (Westport, Conn: Greenwood Press, 2002), xiv. . Richard Strauss (in his earliest work),Larry Sitsky, ''Music of the Twentieth-Century Avant-Garde: A Biocritical Sourcebook'' (Westport, Conn: Greenwood Press, 2002), xiii–xiv. . Charles Ives, Igor Stravinsky,

Anton Webern Anton Friedrich Wilhelm von Webern (3 December 188315 September 1945), better known as Anton Webern (), was an Austrian composer and conductor whose music was among the most radical of its milieu in its sheer concision, even aphorism, and stead ...

,Larry Sitsky, ''Music of the Twentieth-Century Avant-Garde: A Biocritical Sourcebook'' (Westport, Conn: Greenwood Press, 2002), 50. . Edgard Varèse, Alban Berg, George Antheil (in his earliest works only), Henry Cowell (in his earliest works),

Harry Partch Harry Partch (June 24, 1901 – September 3, 1974) was an American composer, music theorist, and creator of unique musical instruments. He composed using scales of unequal intervals in just intonation, and was one of the first 20th-century com ...

, John Cage,

Iannis Xenakis Giannis Klearchou Xenakis (also spelled for professional purposes as Yannis or Iannis Xenakis; el, Γιάννης "Ιωάννης" Κλέαρχου Ξενάκης, ; 29 May 1922 – 4 February 2001) was a Romanian-born Greek-French avant-garde c ...

, Morton Feldman, Karlheinz Stockhausen, Pauline Oliveros, Philip Glass, Meredith Monk,Larry Sitsky, ''Music of the Twentieth-Century Avant-Garde: A Biocritical Sourcebook'' (Westport, Conn: Greenwood Press, 2002), xvii. .

Laurie Anderson Laurel Philips Anderson (born June 5, 1947), known as Laurie Anderson, is an American avant-garde artist, composer, musician, and film director whose work spans performance art, pop music, and multimedia projects. Initially trained in violin and ...

, and

Diamanda Galás Diamanda Galás (born August 29, 1955) is an American musician, singer-songwriter, visual artist, and soprano. She has campaigned for AIDS education and the rights of the infected. Galás's commitment to addressing social issues and her involve ...

. There is another definition of "Avant-gardism" that distinguishes it from "modernism": Peter Bürger, for example, says avant-gardism rejects the "institution of art" and challenges social and artistic values, and so necessarily involves political, social, and cultural factors. According to the composer and musicologist

Larry Sitsky Lazar "Larry" Sitsky (born 10 September 1934) is an Australian composer, pianist, and music educator and scholar. His long term legacy is still to be assessed, but through his work to date he has made a significant contribution to the Austra ...

, modernist composers from the early 20th century who do not qualify as avant-gardists include Arnold Schoenberg, Anton Webern, and Igor Stravinsky; later modernist composers who do not fall into the category of avant-gardists include

Elliott Carter Elliott Cook Carter Jr. (December 11, 1908 – November 5, 2012) was an American modernist composer. One of the most respected composers of the second half of the 20th century, he combined elements of European modernism and American "ultra- ...

, Milton Babbitt, György Ligeti,

Witold Lutosławski Witold Roman Lutosławski (; 25 January 1913 – 7 February 1994) was a Polish composer and conductor. Among the major composers of 20th-century classical music, he is "generally regarded as the most significant Polish composer since Szyman ...

, and

Luciano Berio Luciano Berio (24 October 1925 – 27 May 2003) was an Italian composer noted for his experimental work (in particular his 1968 composition ''Sinfonia'' and his series of virtuosic solo pieces titled '' Sequenza''), and for his pioneering work ...

, since "their modernism was not conceived for the purpose of goading an audience."Larry Sitsky, ''Music of the Twentieth-Century Avant-Garde: A Biocritical Sourcebook'' (Westport, Conn: Greenwood Press, 2002), xv. . The 1960s saw a wave of free and avant-garde music in

jazz Jazz is a music genre that originated in the African-American communities of New Orleans, Louisiana in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, with its roots in blues and ragtime. Since the 1920s Jazz Age, it has been recognized as a major ...

genre, embodied by artists such as

Ornette Coleman Randolph Denard Ornette Coleman (March 9, 1930 – June 11, 2015) was an American jazz saxophonist, violinist, trumpeter, and composer known as a principal founder of the free jazz genre, a term derived from his 1960 album '' Free Jazz: A Colle ...

Sun Ra Le Sony'r Ra (born Herman Poole Blount, May 22, 1914 – May 30, 1993), better known as Sun Ra, was an American jazz composer, bandleader, piano and synthesizer player, and poet known for his experimental music, "cosmic" philosophy, prolific ou ...

Albert Ayler Albert Ayler (; July 13, 1936 – November 25, 1970) was an American avant-garde jazz saxophonist, singer and composer. After early experience playing R&B and bebop, Ayler began recording music during the free jazz era of the 1960s. Howev ...

Archie Shepp Archie Shepp (born May 24, 1937) is an American jazz saxophonist, educator and playwright who since the 1960s has played a central part in the development of avant-garde jazz. Biography Early life Shepp was born in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, but ...

John Coltrane John William Coltrane (September 23, 1926 – July 17, 1967) was an American jazz saxophonist The saxophone (often referred to colloquially as the sax) is a type of single-reed woodwind instrument with a conical body, usually made of br ...

and

Miles Davis Miles Dewey Davis III (May 26, 1926September 28, 1991) was an American trumpeter, bandleader, and composer. He is among the most influential and acclaimed figures in the history of jazz and 20th-century music. Davis adopted a variety of musi ...

. In the rock music of the 1970s, the "art" descriptor was generally understood to mean "aggressively avant-garde" or "pretentiously progressive".

Post-punk Post-punk (originally called new musick) is a broad genre of punk music that emerged in the late 1970s as musicians departed from punk's traditional elements and raw simplicity, instead adopting a variety of avant-garde sensibilities and non-roc ...

artists from the late 1970s rejected traditional rock sensibilities in favor of an avant-garde aesthetic.

Theatre

Whereas the avant-garde has a significant history in 20th-century music, it is more pronounced in theatre and performance art, and often in conjunction with music and sound design innovations, as well as developments in visual media design. There are movements in theatre history that are characterized by their contributions to the avant-garde traditions in both the United States and Europe. Among these are

Fluxus Fluxus was an international, interdisciplinary community of artists, composers, designers and poets during the 1960s and 1970s who engaged in experimental art performances which emphasized the artistic process over the finished product. Fluxus ...

Happenings A happening is a performance, event, or situation art, usually as performance art. The term was first used by Allan Kaprow during the 1950s to describe a range of art-related events. History Origins Allan Kaprow first coined the term "happen ...

, and

Neo-Dada Neo-Dada was a movement with audio, visual and literary manifestations that had similarities in method or intent with earlier Dada artwork. It sought to close the gap between art and daily life, and was a combination of playfulness, iconoclasm, a ...

Art movements

Abstract expressionism Abstract expressionism is a post–World War II art movement in American painting, developed in New York City in the 1940s. It was the first specifically American movement to achieve international influence and put New York at the center of the ...

Artivism Artivism is a portmanteau word combining ''art'' and ''activism'', and is sometimes also referred to as ''Social Artivism''. The term artivism in US English takes roots, or branches, off of a 1997 gathering between Chicano artists from East Los An ...

* COBRA *

Conceptual art Conceptual art, also referred to as conceptualism, is art in which the concept(s) or idea(s) involved in the work take precedence over traditional aesthetic, technical, and material concerns. Some works of conceptual art, sometimes called insta ...

Constructivism Constructivism may refer to: Art and architecture * Constructivism (art), an early 20th-century artistic movement that extols art as a practice for social purposes * Constructivist architecture, an architectural movement in Russia in the 1920s a ...

Cubism Cubism is an early-20th-century avant-garde art movement that revolutionized European painting and sculpture, and inspired related movements in music, literature and architecture. In Cubist artwork, objects are analyzed, broken up and reassemble ...

Dadaism Dada () or Dadaism was an art movement of the European avant-garde in the early 20th century, with early centres in Zürich, Switzerland, at the Cabaret Voltaire (Zurich), Cabaret Voltaire (in 1916). New York Dada began c. 1915, and after 192 ...

De Stijl ''De Stijl'' (; ), Dutch for "The Style", also known as Neoplasticism, was a Dutch art movement founded in 1917 in Leiden. De Stijl consisted of artists and architects. In a more narrow sense, the term ''De Stijl'' is used to refer to a body ...

Expressionism Expressionism is a modernist movement, initially in poetry and painting, originating in Northern Europe around the beginning of the 20th century. Its typical trait is to present the world solely from a subjective perspective, distorting it rad ...

* Fauvism *

* Futurism *

Happening A happening is a performance, event, or situation art, usually as performance art. The term was first used by Allan Kaprow during the 1950s to describe a range of art-related events. History Origins Allan Kaprow first coined the term "happen ...

Imaginism Imaginism was a Russian avant-garde poetic movement that began after the Revolution of 1917. History Imaginism was founded in 1918 in Moscow by a group of poets including Anatoly Marienhof, Vadim Shershenevich, and Sergei Yesenin, who wanted to ...

Imagism Imagism was a movement in early-20th-century Anglo-American poetry that favored precision of imagery and clear, sharp language. It is considered to be the first organized modernist literary movement in the English language. Imagism is someti ...

Impressionism Impressionism was a 19th-century art movement characterized by relatively small, thin, yet visible brush strokes, open Composition (visual arts), composition, emphasis on accurate depiction of light in its changing qualities (often accentuating ...

Incoherents The Incoherents (''Les Arts incohérents'') was a short-lived French art movement founded by Parisian writer and publisher Jules Lévy(French) (1857–1935) in 1882, which in its satirical irreverence, anticipated many of the art techniques and ...

* Land art * Les Nabis *

Lyrical Abstraction Lyrical abstraction is either of two related but distinct trends in Post-war Modernist painting: ''European Abstraction Lyrique'' born in Paris, the French art critic Jean José Marchand being credited with coining its name in 1947, considered ...

Minimal art Minimalism describes movements in various forms of art and design, especially visual art and music, where the work is set out to expose the essence, essentials or identity of a subject through eliminating all non-essential forms, features or co ...

* Orphism * Pop art *

Precisionism Precisionism was a modernist art movement that emerged in the United States after World War I. Influenced by Cubism, Purism, and Futurism, Precisionist artists reduced subjects to their essential geometric shapes, eliminated detail, and often us ...

Primitivism Primitivism is a mode of aesthetic idealization that either emulates or aspires to recreate a "primitive" experience. It is also defined as a philosophical doctrine that considers "primitive" peoples as nobler than civilized peoples and was an o ...

Rayonism Rayonism (or Rayism or Rayonnism) was a style of abstract art that developed in Russia in 1910–1914. Founded and named by Russian Cubo-Futurists Mikhail Larionov and Natalia Goncharova, it was one of Russia's first abstract art movements. B ...

Situationism The Situationist International (SI) was an international organization of social revolutionaries made up of avant-garde artists, intellectuals, and political theorists. It was prominent in Europe from its formation in 1957 to its dissolution ...

Suprematism Suprematism (russian: Супремати́зм) is an early twentieth-century art movement focused on the fundamentals of geometry (circles, squares, rectangles), painted in a limited range of colors. The term ''suprematism'' refers to an abstra ...

* Surrealism *

Symbolism Symbolism or symbolist may refer to: Arts * Symbolism (arts), a 19th-century movement rejecting Realism ** Symbolist movement in Romania, symbolist literature and visual arts in Romania during the late 19th and early 20th centuries ** Russian sym ...

Tachisme __NOTOC__ Tachisme (alternative spelling: Tachism, derived from the French word ''tache'', stain) is a French style of abstract painting popular in the 1940s and 1950s. The term is said to have been first used with regards to the movement in 19 ...

Universal Constructivism Universal Constructivism (sometimes called Constructive Universalism) was a style of art created and developed by Joaquín Torres-García. Through the study and incorporation of basic geometric structure (Constructive) in the ancient and modern w ...

Viennese Actionism Viennese Actionism was a short-lived art movement in the late 20th-century that spanned the 1960s into the 1970s. It is regarded as part of the independent efforts made during the 1960s to develop the issues of performance art, Fluxus, happening ...

Vorticism Vorticism was a London-based modernist art movement formed in 1914 by the writer and artist Wyndham Lewis. The movement was partially inspired by Cubism and was introduced to the public by means of the publication of the Vorticist manifesto in ...

* Creationism *

Nadaism Nadaism ( es, Nadaísmo, meaning "Nothing-ism" in English) was an artistic and philosophical counterculture movement in Colombia prevalent from 1958 to 1964. The movement was founded by writer Gonzalo Arango and was influenced by nihilism, existent ...

* Stridentism * Ultraist

References

External links

Historic Avant-Garde Periodicals for Digital Research, The Blue Mountain Project, Princeton University LibraryAvant-garde and Modernist Magazines (Monoskop)
* ttps://web.archive.org/web/20190804201914/http://digital.lib.uiowa.edu/cdm/search/collection/dada/searchterm/Periodicals/mode/exact Periodicals in Iowa Digital Library, University of Iowa Librariesbr>Digital Dada Library of International Dada Archive, University of Iowa LibrariesMagazines in Digital Collections of Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript LibraryAvant-Garde Periodicals Meet Digital Archives, New York Public Library
* ttp://sites.davidson.edu/littlemagazines/ Index of Modernist Magazines, Davidson College
Modernist Journal Project, Brown University and University of TulsaSpanish and Italian Modernist Studies Forum, Pennsylvania State University

Collection: "Spanish Avant-Garde" from the University of Michigan Museum of Art
{{DEFAULTSORT:Avant-Garde Contemporary art movements Concepts in aesthetics Modern art Modernism

History

Theories

Relation to mainstream society

Examples

Music

Theatre

Art movements

See also

References

Further reading

External links