Avant-Garde Art 1900-39
How useful is the term 'avant-garde' in explaining the development of art in Europe between 1900-1939? Between 1900-1939 there were many different movements in art mainly due to two reasons, modernisation and the First World War. The term 'avant-garde' does not have one single meaning and has become synonymous with the evolving modern movement of art. 'Although 'art for art's sake' is a term not often used positively today this modernist sense of the avant-garde relates to that tradition insofar as art is not seen to require any external justification - ethical or political - for it's products' . However looking at the term in historical context the term has a different provenance. The term was used for the first time in the 1830's not in a debate concerning art but in the 'early socialist tradition as left-wing intellectuals and politicians tried to think through concepts of progress and freedom in emerging modern societies' . In his book 'Opinions litteraires, philosophiques et industrielles' Henri de Saint Simon the French Utopian Socialist philosopher used for the first time the term avant-garde in the relation to art. Saint-Simon constructed an imaginary debate between an artist, a savant (a scie!
Walter Benjamin dubbed Paris as 'the capital of the 19th century'. Between 1900-1939 three main movements took place in modern art; Cubism; The Futurists; and Dada, Constructivism and Surrealism. This meant avant-gardism, that originated in France was spread across Europe and even to America and avant-garde artists were growing up in different places but most importantly under different circumstances. The new ideology of Futurism set itself with violent enthusiasm against the weighty inheritance of an art tied to the Italian cultural tradition and exalted the idea of an aesthetic generated by the modern myth of the machine and of speed. - The Grove Dictionary of Art - Internet. Russian developments gave the concept of the avant-garde a new impetus. We rebel against the supine admiration of old canvases, old statues and old objects, and against the enthusiasm for all that is worm-eaten, dirty and corroded by time; we believe that the common contempt for everything young, new and palpitating with life is unjust and criminal. Such methods, which were taken further in pictures such as The Port, 1909 clearly provided a stimulus for Picasso's faceting of buildings and sky in his Horta de Ebro landscapes of summer 1909, for example Factory at Horta de. In works such as Houses at L'Estaque, a restrained use of shifting viewpoints is combined with a rendering of forms in space in terms of a continuous pattern of flat surfaces, subdued in colour, that tilt in and out across the picture plane. The tension between the avant-garde's and the socialist politicians has already been mentioned. 'Hitherto, sculpture had been either carved or modelled; now it could be constructed out of anything - not just marble or bronze but bits of tin, cardboard or cloth. Left-wing politicians believed they needed something new if it was to deal with the changing conditions of modern capitalism. Vauxcelles references of cubes was not in itself innovative however there were two basic methods favoured in early cubism. The outbreak of the war in 1914 led to the collapse of the culture which had generated the avant-garde and 'all leading avant-garde movements themselves - Cubism, Futurism and Expressionism - were either destroyed or transformed by the was and the revolutions that followed it.
Common topics in this essay:
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Russolo Severini,
Utopian Socialist,
World War,
Vladimir Tatlin,
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Berlin Moscow,
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France Cubism,
modern art,
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volume mass terms,
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mass terms flat,
terms flat planes,
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Acceptance Essays
