File spoon-archives/avant-garde.archive/avant-garde_1996/96-09-01.085, message 145


Date: Sat, 17 Aug 1996 17:30:52 -0500
From: bd81085-AT-binghamton.edu (Leigh George)
Subject: Re: When is traditional.... avant-garde?


Dear Giles and Dick-
you said this about what is avant-garde:
>
>>When everyone is looking to the newest technique, or the following the
>>vogue or whats in vogue, who's not to say that the man who looks back and
>>works in what would be considered ultra-traditional to be avant-garde.
>>
>Right on. It is not that it is traditional which makes a thing suitable for
>an avant garde tecghnique or me4ssage, but that it has been overlooked and
>undervalued, whereas working off the fashionable makes for a reiteration of
>what the "rudel" (German) is doing-(the term translates as "pack, mob,
>crowd, etc."). Rudelism is what the pomo crowd does, for the most part-very
>boring and shallow, though only scarcely more so than what "most artists"
>have done at most times in art history or in my own lifetime (1938-  ).
>
>>Perhaps it is the reconditioning of the process that makes it avant garde.
>>Its necessary for avant garde - forward thinking to have a social
>>responsibility. That is - not to be elitist and therefore tyrannical.
>>
>That's only partly true. I am sure that the art collector Adolf Hitler
>thought he had a social responsiubility, don't you think? At some point we
>must ask ourselves what kind of social responsibility is appropriate and
>should also, perhaps, blend it with our other cultural responsibilities.
>For example, if I am not gifted for social conscious art but have a gift
>for abstract design, would you want me to make mediocre social art rather
>than magnificent design art?
>
>>Thoughts as the sun breaks over the misty rooftops of London
>>
>Alas, so much of the mists of London are lartgely in peoples' heads. How
>long it has been since one could think great thoughts in London. Being
>English by birth, I regret this. Is it perhaps your social responsibility
>to change that in your city?

I argue that the status or identity of any art (or any thing for that
matter) as "avant-garde" is wholely contingent upon its relation (located
at a specific historical moment) to a status quo or standard. Something can
only be "avant-guarde" in juxtaposition with or in contrast to established
practices, conventions, and institutions.

Leigh George




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