Date: Sat, 27 May 95 09:01:16 EDT
From: ma-AT-dsd.camb.inmet.com (Malgosia Askanas)
Subject: Re: Simon Ford's article


Reijo wrote: 

> It seems to me that to understand the significance of the concept 
> of the a-g, one has to internalize the essence of the actual effect 
> avant-garde practice has  had on the artists themselves. The mere pop 
> appeal of the term is insignificant. Paul Goodman said somewhere that 
> silence, exile, and cunning are essential to the constitution of the 
> artist with an avant-garde attitude. 

Well, one of the things that the Ford article waves its hands over
is precisely this dichotomy.  He quotes Kuspit's view that the "true" 
avant-garde artist's aim was "to undertake a sincere, risky search,
carried out in social obscurity, for the touchstone primordiality that
could reoriginate the self".  Now if one takes this description
seriously, where do movements such as dada, futurism, constructivism,
fit in?  These were certainly not characterized by social obscurity
or by silence.  Now Ford quickly dismisses Kuspit for un-true-avant-gardedly
promoting the view of the artist as a heroic figure struggling to 
communicate trascendental truths.  Instead, Ford stresses the
_collective_ aspects of the historical avant-garde, and its recognition
of the "need to theorise and construct forms of organization and the
possibility of eventual strategic alignment with larger social forces". 
Nevertheless, it seems to me that one cannot simply pass over the deep
connection between these two aspects of the avant-garde -- the
individualistic, "touchstone primordiality" aspect and the collective.
This is a connection also characteristic of fascism, and it is perhaps
this resemblance to fascism, more than anything else, that makes the
idea of the avant-garde questionable now.  My dissatisfaction with the
Ford article has to do mainly with the fact that instead of exploring
these links, he is satisfied with flatly declaring the correctness of one 
side and the uncouthness of the other.  He never poses the question of 
whether some form of the Kuspitian view is not a necessary pre-condition 
for the belief -- which I think he would regard as characteristic of the 
avant-garde -- that _artistic production_ can have the power to achieve 
"the total eradication of the institution of art" and that this in turn can, 
"by extension", bring about the eradication of the prevailing social order. 


- malgosia 


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