avant-garde

avant-garde. A term originally used to describe the foremost part of an army advancing into battle (also called the vanguard) and now applied to any group, particularly of artists, that considers itself innovative and ahead of the majority; as an adjective, the word is applied to work characteristic of such groups. In its original sense the term is first recorded in English in the late 15th century (in Malory's Morte d'Arthur). It was probably first applied to art by the French political theorist Henri de Saint-Simon. Regarded as the founder of French socialism, he thought that science and technology could solve most problems and that artists could help lead the way to a more just and humane society. In his Opinions littéraires, philosophiques et industrielles (1825), he has the artist say to the scientist: ‘It is we, the artists, who will serve as your avant-garde [i.e., as the prophets of future events].’ During the 19th century, the term continued to be associated particularly with radical political thought, but from the early 20th century it was used more neutrally to denote cultural innovators of any persuasion; the earliest quotation in the Oxford English Dictionary to illustrate this sense (‘The pioneers or innovators in any art in a particular period') dates from 1910. Many 20th-century writers, however, have used the term in more loaded ways, often suggesting that the avant-garde has an exalted role beyond the mass of humanity. In his book Concerning the Spiritual in Art (1912), Kandinsky argued that the artist was at the very apex of a triangle that led mankind upwards to greater spirituality. Clement Greenberg saw avant-garde art as necessarily elitist in its distance from mass culture, and some writers have argued that the term should be applied only to modern art that actively challenges not just the traditional forms of art but also its existing institutional status.

In 1967 the American art historians Barbara Rose (1937– ) and Irving Sandler (1925– ) published (in the periodical Art in America) the results of a large survey they had conducted among New York artists asking the question ‘Is there an avant-garde today?'; the majority answered ‘No'. Eight years later, another American art historian, H. W. Janson (1913–82), published an essay in which he addressed the same issue (‘The Myth of the Avant-Garde’ in Art Studies for an Editor: 25 Essays in Memory of Milton S. Fox, 1975). Summarizing recent writings on ‘the death of the avant-garde', he wrote: ‘the avant-garde demands as a condition of its existence a social environment sufficiently set in its traditions and taste to be disturbed and offended by works of art that abandon accepted standards in the search for new form and meaning. From the Romantic era (i.e., the early nineteenth century) to the 1950s, significant innovation in art enjoyed just such a social environment … Before 1800, in contrast, there was no sense of alienation among artists, because the public was more sympathetic … The official rejection that came to be the artist's fate from the early nineteenth century on produced suffering as well as freedom, and the avant-garde artist depended on it in articulating his attitude toward his work. What, then, broke the pattern? It was the acceptance by the public of the New York School of painters in the years 1955–60 … suddenly and surprisingly … these artists were eagerly bought by museums and private collectors … the new attitude of acceptance is just as indiscriminate as the older attitude of rejection … Change, titillation, had become a positive value in itself.’ Janson then goes on question whether ‘there ever was … such a thing as an artistic avant-garde'. He concludes that ‘There never seems to be only one avant-garde but several, striking out in as many directions at once’ and that ‘Once we acknowledge this state of affairs, we can continue to employ the term avant-garde only in rather watered-down fashion for artists whose work is in some sense exploratory, regardless of the direction it takes.’

In The Avant-Garde in Exhibition: New Art in the 20th Century (1994), Bruce Altshuler writes that ‘considered as part of the history of modernism, the avant-garde seems to have disappeared with the arrival of the cultural, social, and economic changes that together have been designated “postmodern”. Judging by verbal practice, today young artists do not even use the term, burdened as it is with such notions as complete originality and faith in artistic progress.’ In spite of such theoretical objections, if avant-garde art is judged merely by its ability to shock, alienate, disgust, or dismay members of the public (and certain critics), then it still seems to be alive and the term is certainly still used a good deal. The annual award of the Turner Prize, for example, regularly attracts a good deal of unfavourable press comment, and in 1997 the London Sunday Times published an article on ‘the shock artist’ in which it discussed some of the recent works and events in ‘the avant-garde world of “shock art”’ that had ‘caused predictable apoplexy among the Disgusteds of Tunbridge Wells'. These included, in the world of British art, Damien Hirst's ‘pickled cows’ that won the 1995 Turner Prize; a work by the Palestinian-born Video artist Mona Hatoum (1952– ), short-listed for the same prize, in which she explored the inside of her own body with a miniature camera; Piss Flowers (1994) by the sculptor and Performance artist Helen Chadwick (1952–96), consisting of a ‘series of 12 bronzes cast from cavities made in the snow where she and her male partner had urinated'; and—the event that prompted the article—‘the arrest of the sculptor Anthony-Noel Kelly [1955– ] on suspicion of possessing human remains for use in his work'. From the world of American art, the article singled out the photographs of Andres Serrano (1950– ), which include Piss Christ (1987) a picture of ‘a crucifix suspended in a tank of his own urine’ (which ‘caused a huge row in Congress') and ‘blurred photographs of his own semen in a series called Ejaculate in Trajectory'.

In 1997 an exhibition of such deliberately shocking art (loaned by the Saatchi Collection) was held at the Royal Academy, London; it was provocatively entitled ‘Sensation’ and generated a great deal of controversy even before it opened. The work that aroused the fiercest debate was a giant portrait (1995) by Marcus Harvey (1963– ) of the infamous 1960s child murderer Myra Hindley, based on a much reproduced police mugshot. There were calls for the picture to be withdrawn on the grounds that it would cause ‘unnecessary suffering to the victims' relatives’, and protesters defaced it with ink and eggs on the first day of public viewing. Michael Sandle resigned from the RA in protest against the exhibition, and Brian Sewell described the show as a ‘pathetic attempt at sensationalism’ by an institution that was desperate to ‘bring in the hordes to alleviate its financial problems … They should be ashamed.’ Some critics, however, were impressed by the show or at least by some of the works on view. The word ‘avant-garde’ was used in many of the reviews or discussions of the exhibition. For example, an article in The Times on 15 September (three days before the exhibition opened) was entitled ‘Avant-garde kicks itself out of view', and in it Rachel Campbell-Johnston described the avant-garde as being ‘rather like the family lunatic brought down from the attic—ranting, unpredictable and a bit threatening'.