Objectives:
Understand avant- garde.
Questioning art/ design that relies on concepts.
Understanding "art for art's sake"
Questioning the notion of "genius"
Considering political perspectives relating to avant - gardism
Questioning the validity of the concept "avant - garde" today.
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Dictionary definition:
1. Ideas of doing something that is progressive - innovating, challenging, radical etc..
2. A group of people that are innovative - "part of the avant - garde"
- The phrase is always used in popular culture to the point where it becomes meaningless. Avant Garde typeface, hotel, florist, bridal shop etc...
A group of radical artists who were shocking, rebellious, and engaged in experimentation.
Marcel Duchamp
- Defaced urinal (not even in his own name) - "Fountain"
-Defaced print of Mona Lisa - the letters at the bottom, when said quickly in French sound like "she's got a hot ass"
"Fauves" - WIld Beasts
LCAD Quotes (from description of each course) prioritises certain concepts:
1. Innovation - creating new stuff
2. Experimentation - process in order co create new stuff
3. Originality - to copy is bad, to be original is good
4. Creative Genius - to bring out a hidden creative depth within a student
If every course is challenging conventions and producing things new, isn't the idea of challenging conventions being conventional in itself?
Art & Design used to be learnt and taught, specific styles were learnt pre - mid 18th Century. It was never seen as innovative and different?
There are certain myths about the creative person born from mid 18th C.
Chatterton - Painting where he has killed himself with his poetry ripped up, and taken lots of Arsenic. This exemplifies that artists are trying to show that they are different - the cruel world can't understand him, and the everyday man has killed him.
Fine artists can see themselves as a special breed and superior. Poverty is seen as a positive thing. Artists don't live on fresh air. Artist practise is talked in a special way where it is romanticised, and tries to be separated from other disciplines.
The notion of Avant - Gardism relies on the myth that the indvidual is a genius. You are dealing with the concept that someone sees themself as a leader or separate.
The French use the term previously with "elite soldiers". To be part of the avant garde, you need to judge yourself as a superior. Through artistic practise, a variety of groups have said they are - left and right wing political groups.
Right Wing Avant Gard - Art for Art's Sake
Just for aesthetic, no political meaning. Avant Garde in the way that it looks.
Whistler - Nocturne in Black and Gold: The Falling Rocket (1875)
"No my lord, I got payed 20 guinies for alll the knowledge I've learnt in a life time"
End of the 19th / Early 20th C
Two approaches to avant garde:
1. Art that is socially committed, pushing forward political objectives.
2. Art that seeks to expand - politically shaking things up - art for art's sake.
Writers and critics explain to us iAvant Garde's importance, and there is a cycle between an artist and a critics opinion. Artists do the work, then critics explain to the world why it is any good. Art gets driven away from society, and artists don't seem to care if people like their work.
Clive Bell - The one quality shared by all art is "significant form" - "The relations and combinations of lines and colours, which when organised gives the power to move someone aesthetically"
Clive's fave painting - Cezanne - Mount St Victoire - 1900
If you don't feel "moved" by it, you "don't understand it"
In Russia, there Stalin banned genuine Avant Garde art, as people did not understand it, and it was being elitist. All you can make now is conservative art that isn't radical at all.
A major problem for the avant- garde is that it seems to necessitate "Elitism" - you need to accept no one will understand your work.
If you're interested in being understanding, you can't be experimental. For those members who were`'left wing", they have to stick to academic techniques.
Avant Garde and Kitsch
Kitsch - "commercial art, designed to be mass marketing and mass produced" - Greenberg
The term comes from art critics, to distinguish high culture from low culture - an elitist value.
A painting that is not kitsch can be reproduced in a bad frame or on a plate, then it is seen as kitsch.
Durer - Praying Hands (1508) - replicated in several ways.
Charles and Diana 1981 commemoration mug.
Anything with animals has the danger of being kitsch.
Jeff Koons: Michael Jackson & Bubbles the Monkey (1988)
- The one quality shared by all art is "significant form".
Life size sculpture replica of something he found, and it sold for thousand of pounds.
Thomas Kinkade - "painter of light"
He's one of the richest artists in the world. He appears on QVC, and sells prints, mugs, all sorts of tat.
If most people like this and call it art, then being in the minority, does it just make me a snob?
Carl Andre - "Equivalent VIII"
Scorn by the media.
The public get told why it is an important piece of minimalist sculpture, but a description is needed.
People aren't that interested in the Turner prize, but rely on critics to tell them how to understand it.
Yung Cai - Tracey Emins work isn't avant garde at all, but they were - they took their tops off and jumped on the bed, pulling everything off it. The REAL avant garde express themselves.
K Foundation Award (1994) - Radical art terrorists. Famously burnt a million pounds. Instead of £20,000 - The Turner Prize, the K Foundation Award was £40,000, and judged by the public instead of select few. Rachel Whiteread won both, proving that the most hated piece of art was also liked the most by critics.
Damian Hurst - Shark Sculpture- Came about when in the Gaucho club in Soho, a rich friend gave him money to produce it. A shark was killed them taken to Germany to be put in formaldehyde. Hurst had very little input at all, then Saatchi bought it for his gallery.
" For The Love of God" - 2007- How can a skull with diamonds in it (which he did not produce) be avant - garde or even art?.
If there is an avant garde today, it is more likely to be found in media, film making, or design. These things speak to people in an understandable language, and aren't excluded.