Avant-Garde and Neo-Avant-Garde: An Attempt to Answer Certain Critics of Theory of the Avant-Garde

Abstract

Peter Bürger reflects on the reception of his Theory of the Avant-Garde and crafts a spirited response to his critics, while expanding on and refining his original claims. For Bürger, what continues to distinguish the avant-garde are two interrelated principles: the attack on the institution of art and the revolutionary transformation of everyday life. Underscoring the explicitly theoretical, rather than merely historical, thrust of this definition, he defends this generalizing strategy as a necessary means of achieving clarity about the changing role of art in society. He reiterates his argument about the failure of the historical avant-garde (to overcome the distinction of art and life), while placing a new emphasis on its equal measure of success (in transforming the internal logic of the art institution). The avant-garde’s appropriation of outdated and popular materials, for example, played a key role in challenging the norms of the art world, helping to bring about the leveling of distinctions often associated with postmodernism. On the one hand, the avant-garde failed in its attempt to revolutionize social reality; on the other hand, its impact on the norms and values of the art institution was significant and far-reaching. Contemporary or neo-avant-gardes remain caught on the horns of this contradiction, insofar as their aesthetic experiments—whatever the explicit intentions of the artist—only shore up the walls of the institution rather than breaking them down.

Literary theorists in and beyond French academic space (1960–1970s)

“…From this point of view, the avant-garde appears at the same time as a strategy and as the product of a strategy, as well as a combination of individual and collective action. According to Peter Bürger (1984, p. 47), the politicization of the avant-gardes can be understood as a refusal of the autonomy of art. Contrariwise, numerous works have now underlined that the politicization of intellectual, artistic and literary productions can be a way for the incomers and/or the dominated agents to stabilize or maintain a position in a field and ultimately to achieve a relative autonomy for the field itself (e.g.…”

Failure, revolution and institutional critique

“…The historical avant-garde aspired to transgress the sanctuary of art, and to explode the 'promesse de bonheur' of art in the midst of life praxis. The eventual inclusion of Dada, Surrealism and Constructivism in the canon of twentiethcentury art, and their powerful influence on commodity aesthetics, marks the absorption of a revolutionary project into the protean and cynical consensus of bourgeois culture (Bürger 1984).…”

Salman Rushdie, aesthetics and Bollywood popular culture

“…If we exclude Ray and Kurosawa on grounds of race but, perhaps, more importantly because of their strong realist tendencies, we are left with European avant-garde films made during a very short period between Bergman (1957) and Godard (1965). It must be said that for Rushdie the 'avant-garde' constitutes, in this instance, a particular and historically specific form with quite specific 'effects' (Bürger 2010). It is extremely unlikely that Rushdie saw Pather Panchali in India because he left the country when he was 13.…”