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 --- from list avant-garde-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu ---
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