Avant-Garde Art

3 units

Derived from the military vanguard, the term avant-garde is used within discourses pertaining to art since the mid-19th century. In the 20th century, theorists such as Renato Poggioli, Matei Calinescu and in particular Peter Bürger have characterized the avant-garde as artistic movements that strive for a connection between art and life with the ultimate goal to effect societal and political changes through aesthetic practices. Avant-garde categories include the critique of the institution of art (i.e. its independent status), and its institutions (i.e. museums and galleries), the use of everyday non-art materials (i.e. newspapers or cheap and mass-produced materials), the questioning of the uniqueness of the artwork, the obliteration of a coherent aesthetic experience through montaged, collaged and fragmented images, and the expansion of traditional art forms (painting and sculpture) into forms that embrace non-art and everyday realms (i.e. montages, objects, and installations). This seminar will explore these themes by reading texts by avant-garde artists and discussing avant-garde art works. We will consider movements such as Cubism, Futurism, and Dadaism in the early 20th century, Pop Art, Minimalism, and Conceptual art in the latter twentieth as well as contemporary art practices that like the earlier avant-gardes expand art into the everyday. Artists such as Pablo Picasso, Umberto Boccioni, Kazimir Malevich, Robert Rauschenberg, Sol LeWitt, Joseph Beuys, Sigmar Polke and Isa Genzken played important roles in shaping such avant-garde ideas.