Retroactivating the Idea of the Avant Garde

This document critically reviews the theories of the avant-garde of both the Left and the Right put forward between the 1920s – the time of the vigorous assertion of the avant-garde – and the late 1970s – the beginning of the conservative turn led by Regan and Thatcher and reflected in cultural, change. The focus is on modern autonomous art and the historical avant-garde art movements. Art is first of all put in its place by locating it in the context of the institutional framework of modern society. This includes historical references to the emergence of the modern concept of art and of the philosophical discipline of aesthetics. The review of the theories opens with analyses of Ortega y Gassett and Poggioli’s proposals dating from 1925 and 1968 respectively. Important among the theories of the Left are those of the representatives of Critical Theory such as Lukács, Adorno, Benjamin, Marcuse and Bürger. Among the Right, both the German and American Neo-conservatives are considered, Gehlen, Ritter and Marquard representing the former and Bell that latter. The analysis closes with final reflections on the concepts of the autonomy of art and of the avant-garde which become comprehensible only within the context of rationalised and disenchanted (i.e. disillusioned and enlightened) modern society.

Canadian Review Of Sociology/revue Canadienne De Sociologie, 1992

L'auteur critique l'incapacite de penser le processus de reconnaissance sociale de l'art dans les thbories de l'avant-garde proposees par Burger et Poggioli. Sans cette dimension, leurs theories reposent sur une tautologie. Tout en reconnaissant l'apport que constitue la sociologie du goOt daboree par Bourdieu, l'auteur signale la prkoccupation preponderante qu'accorde cette analyse a la stabilitb des structures du champ artistique, preoccupation qui la conduit a renoncer aux pretentions de comprendre les conditions historiques de la naissance et de l'bvolution des avant-gardes au sein dcs socibtes occidentales. The author criticizes the theories of the avant-garde advanced by Burger and Poggioli for their incapacity to theorize the process of social recognition of art. Without this dimension, their theories are based on a tautology. While recognising the positive contribution of Bourdieu's sociology of taste, the author notes that this approach has emphasized the stability of the structural determinations of the art world and seems to have sacrificed the ambition of previous theories of the avant-garde to understand the historical conditions of its appearance and evolution in Western societies. * Questions discussed here are part of a larger research project on a social history of the Academy of Fine A r t s in France during the 19th Century which has received support from the SSHRC (Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council) and the DGEC (Direction Generale des ktudes Collhgialee) of the Quebec Department of Higher Education. This manuscript was

Cultural Sociology, v. 4, n. 2, 2010, pp. 1-38

This article sets out new methodological principles for the sociology of art, a sub-discipline that it seeks to broaden conceptually by shifting the ground from art to cultural production. This shift suggests the utility of overcoming the boundaries that demarcate the sociology of art from adjacent fields, augmenting the sociological repertoire with reference to anthropology, cultural and media studies, art and cultural history, and the music disciplines. At the same time the article proposes that an explanatory theory of cultural production requires reinvention in relation to five key themes: aesthetics and the cultural object; agency and subjectivity; the place of institutions; history, temporality and change; and problems of value and judgement. The first half of the article approaches these issues through a sustained critique of Bourdieu. It proceeds through an exposition of generative research from contemporary anthropology, including the work of Alfred Gell, Christopher Pinney, Fred Myers and others, which highlights the analysis of mediation, ontology, materiality and genre. The second half develops further an analytics of mediation and of temporalities, exemplifying this and expanding on the five themes through a discussion of two institutional ethnographies of cultural production (of the computer music institute IRCAM in Paris, and of the BBC). In pursuing this programme the paper advocates a novel conception of the relation between theoretical model and empirical research, one that might be termed post-positivist empiricism, while also suggesting that the framework outlined offers the basis for an enriched cultural criticism.

This book is dedicated to Amiri Baraka, Chris Marker and Lebbeus Woods iv • "Innovation enters art by revolution. Reality reveals itself in art in much the same way as gravity reveals itself when a ceiling collapses on its owner's head. New art searches for the new word, the new expression. The poet suffers in attempts to break down the barrier between the word and reality. We can already feel the new word on his lips, but tradition puts forward the old concept." -Viktor Shklovsky • "This means that in the psychology and ideology of avant-garde art, historically considered (from the viewpoint of what Hegelians and Marxists would call the historic dialectic), the futurist manifestation represents, so to speak, a prophetic and utopian phase, the arena of agitation and preparation for the announced revolution, if not the revolution itself." -Renato Poggioli • "Through the commercial mechanisms that control cultural activity, avant-garde tendencies are cut off from the constituencies that might support them, constituencies that are always limited by the entirety of social conditions. People from these tendencies who have been noticed are generally admitted on an individual basis, at the price of a vital repudiation; the fundamental point of debate is always the renunciation of comprehensive demands and the acceptance of a fragmented work, open to multiple readings. This is what makes the very term avant-garde, which when all is said and done is wielded by the bourgeoisie, somewhat suspicious and ridiculous." -Guy Debord • "In so far as the historical avant-garde movements respond to the developmental stage of autonomous art epitomized by aestheticism, they are part of modernism; in so far as they call the institution of art into question, they constitute a break with modernism.

New Literary History, 2011

2014

This book is dedicated to Amiri Baraka, Chris Marker and Lebbeus Woods iv • "Innovation enters art by revolution. Reality reveals itself in art in much the same way as gravity reveals itself when a ceiling collapses on its owner's head. New art searches for the new word, the new expression. The poet suffers in attempts to break down the barrier between the word and reality. We can already feel the new word on his lips, but tradition puts forward the old concept." -Viktor Shklovsky • "This means that in the psychology and ideology of avant-garde art, historically considered (from the viewpoint of what Hegelians and Marxists would call the historic dialectic), the futurist manifestation represents, so to speak, a prophetic and utopian phase, the arena of agitation and preparation for the announced revolution, if not the revolution itself." -Renato Poggioli • "Through the commercial mechanisms that control cultural activity, avant-garde tendencies are cut off from the constituencies that might support them, constituencies that are always limited by the entirety of social conditions. People from these tendencies who have been noticed are generally admitted on an individual basis, at the price of a vital repudiation; the fundamental point of debate is always the renunciation of comprehensive demands and the acceptance of a fragmented work, open to multiple readings. This is what makes the very term avant-garde, which when all is said and done is wielded by the bourgeoisie, somewhat suspicious and ridiculous." -Guy Debord • "In so far as the historical avant-garde movements respond to the developmental stage of autonomous art epitomized by aestheticism, they are part of modernism; in so far as they call the institution of art into question, they constitute a break with modernism.

Criticism, 2009

Social Forces, 1999