Avant Garde - What does it mean?

[andrew]

I am always willing take time from my day to pour some hatorade on Greenberg.

 

[elschic111]

excellent thread!

 

[SiennaInLondon]

I love tFS - we talk about art'n'sh*t , and even engage in Clembashing!!! No, really - this is cool. I just hope this doesn't get moved to the shopping section

Karma!!

 

[fuchimama]

I think at one time, avant-garde played a crucial role in preventing stagnation... now as far as fashion is concerned too many designers are classified as avant-garde. It's so easy to make critics love amateurish, poorly tailored clothing when you have the "experimental" label to hide behind.

Pretenders that don’t understand how people’s bodies actually work must resort to childish antics to save face-- so we saw the masks and unhemmed craziness this season (and don't tell me you buy into all that semiotic hype) detracting from the poor craftsmanship of the clothes.

It's a good racket these designers have going. They get major attention without doing any quality work.

 

[sullen_femme]

OK so then if everyone has a rough idea ABOUT it, why is Tokyo the avant garde capital of the world? That doesn't seem right, but then again I've never been there.

 

[Multitudes]

Ooh... The greatest Illusion that the modernist project ever created... avantgarde.. the idea of progress... the idea of moving forward... to an ideal of something "new" to break boundaries and dominant discourses... an idea based on subjectivity and subjects of statements...
... transgressing the boundaries, adopting the darring stance of rebellion, has little importance in itself, for weather one accepts or rejects "prohibition", one's identity/idea is still formed on its basis. So for me this term avantgarde is of little use(Isn't also a huge contradiction by defing it we fixate it..?), either way you see it, cliche or not...
Instead of directing desires towards either the permisible or forbiden "persons", we should encourage the connection of desires... one enters pacts with innumerable parts, the necessary condition is that such flows can never become subjects of statement(or language), even though they may be territorial and expressive. Desire no longer flows between subjects who to a greater or lesser degree express a normalized, majoritan ideal; desire is no longer simulated by the resonance of subjects of statements. In stead, desire is territorial and machinic... One desires something together with which one can function in order to produce things. There is no need to dismantle the assemblage which has produced a subject(the dominant, majoritan etc..), because as soon as the assemblage gains another component, it is significantly changed with which it will function... it is in the connection we discover other modes of expressions... And not in what avantgarde suggest in "moving forward".. in "progress".... or in the "new"...

 

[brian]

I know this is going to make me sound dumb, but what exactly is avant garde? So far the only thing I can find is that it is unexpected. I don't know if that's even right.

hey! you're from san antonio! ...

 

[sullen_femme]

^^ yeah A lesbian in San Antonio who can't get enough of fashion- did you ever think you'd see the day?

 

[sullen_femme]

As much as I understand what everyone's saying, it seems a little odd to me. Who are these people who separate avant garde from just plain bad design? or is it something we see only in retrospect like "wow that person was so ahead of their time"

 

[Bidwell]

Individualism is the ultimate catalyst. No one can dispute a genius like Duchamp was entirely his own in his view of what constituted art. Call it eccentricity or even madness, it's the deeply personal view of the world that fuels true creativity regardless of ongoing trends or progress.
Unique ideas are apt to be studied or at least considered for their "oddness" and if valid enough, absorbed into the body we call society.
Only in hindsight do we acknowledge the pioneers who forever changed our collective viewpoint.
Unfortunately, it's too often tagged to almost anything out of the ordinary, good or more often, bad.

 

[andrew]

OK so then if everyone has a rough idea ABOUT it, why is Tokyo the avant garde capital of the world? That doesn't seem right, but then again I've never been there.

Claiming that x is the capital of some abstract art concept is silly at best, and mostly just done by people with vested interests (ie, $$$$ and elitism) I mean, I could say my pants are the capital of the avant garde and it would be worth just as much as a statement... If not more

If we're talking about Greenberg's avant garde, such a statement becomes even more problematic, as it genuinely makes no sense; since the avant garde is largely ignored by the masses (whom are distracted by the dominant culture of kitsch), it would be impossible to have a central geographic capital of something being done purely by a few individuals done outside culture (which is the point of Greenbergian formalism).

IMO, "avant garde" is a term that critics and the ilk like the throw around to create artificial distinctions and strata between art they like and art they dislike, nothing more. At one point in a given context it could have actually meant something but at this point in time it's about as useful as saying something is "deconstructed" (don't even get me started) or has "minimalism". Basically... useless.

As they say, "everything changes but the avant garde".

 

[Honey~Blade]

Yes I'm sick of people, especially those marketing guru's loosely using the word as something cool. Just like how limited tees and that are so played out by brands etc.

 

[*sayan]

(btw, I hope you didn't get offended at my previous comment - now that I am rereading it, it sounds a little rude)

karma..hehe

 

[artxstatic]

Avant Garde is the driving force of creativity. It’s about not being on axis and refraining from conformity.

 

[Multitudes]

... for me... The driving force of creativity lies in the connection of desires... bonds that exists between people "here and now"... in the politics of desires... A society of desires....

 

[Avant Garde]

[to me] avant garde is experimenting in areas like art, and pushing the boundaries.

 

[Multitudes]

... for me... The driving force of creativity lies in the connection of desires... bonds that exists between people "here and now"... in the politics of desires... A society of desires....

Just to ad.. ... A society of desires, which is collective, which differentiate from the modernist project of the "avant garde" which relies on the notion of the singular subject(the basis... which in away it so much want to escape, but hasn't realized it yet...)

 

[artxstatic]

there's something almost intelligent about being odd.

 

[Multitudes]

there's something almost intelligent about being odd.

yes... and what an interesting form of intelligence oddness(or excenricity..) propose...

 

[artxstatic]

referring to multitudes

...the term avant garde doesn't essentially need to be considered singular...applying the ideologies of the romanticism movement here, artists in the mid nineteenth century considered individual expression avant garde because it meant not having to pay any importance to intellectual disciplines. Avant Garde would be synonymous with individual progression then. But today it applies differently. Today there are so many manifestations of avant garde that it has cultivated into something big and varied. It talks about people as a whole progression, something collective. Today individual progression is not as effective as collective resistance to conformity.

...that reminds me we need a new renaissance.