Date: Thu, 14 Apr 1994 21:02:52 -0400 (EDT)
From: Ben Friedlander <V080L3NP-AT-ubvms.cc.buffalo.edu>
Subject: avant garde


a minor point:

avant garde is a metaphor, a way of understanding art (& by extension 
politics):  art (politics) as a military operation.  to speak of an avant 
garde politics is to speak of a revolutionary politics that understands 
itself according to the models of "advanced" art.  it may seem natural to 
conceive of politics in military terms, as a progress toward some goal 
achieved in the manner of a military goal, but to think of art this way is 
(was?) startling:  the power of this metaphor, the hold it displayed over 
thought in the era of high modernism, is evident in the seemingly redundant 
application of it to politics (i.e., the peculiar desire to say that 
revolutionary politics is like an art that is like revolutionary politics!).

do we still think of art in military terms, of art as progressing toward some 
goal?  if not, if art has, to some extent, retained its startling freedom by 
freeing itself even from these metaphors, from a teleological self-conception 
for instance, then is it possible for us to imagine a politics that would 
likewise free itself, that would again rediscover some vital aspect of itself 
by analogy to art?  & what would we call this?

harold rosenberg tells an anecdote in one of his essays about a painter (but 
who?  i can't remember) looking at an abstract painting (a mondrian or 
kandinsky) & whistling the internationale, not even realizing he or she was 
doing so.  the association of "advanced" art with "progressive" poliutics 
was that strong.

if we take this unconscious whistling as a mark of just how powerful an idea 
"avant garde" was, i'd submit that the power has waned some.

just some thoughts.

--goofus

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