RUSSIAN Vanguard. MAIN DIRECTIONS (part 1)
The concept of avant-garde. And its differences from modernism.
What is the difference between avant-garde and modernism? This issue is still controversial; There are several enduring traditions of understanding the differences between avant-garde and modernism. There is only one way out: use the version that seems the most intelligible and logical.
First, chronologically, modernism preceded the vanguard. Vanguard is a product of the revolutionary era of the early twentieth century, while modernism arose at the end of the nineteenth.
Secondly, one should pay attention to the origin of the term: the first ranks of the army were traditionally called the “vanguard”; to be “at the forefront” means to be ahead of everyone, and in a risky, combat situation. The term, as you see, is taken from military vocabulary. And not in vain.
The utopian goal – the radical transformation of human consciousness by means of art – is inherited by the avant-garde from modernism; however, the avant-garde went further, suggesting that not only consciousness, but also society could be reconstructed through art.
And finally, if modernism was primarily an aesthetic rebellion, a revolution within art, not against tradition itself, but inside it, then the avant-garde is a revolt against the artistic tradition itself, as well as against any traditions. I quote Lev Rubinstein: “Modernism, as it were, accepts the basic values of traditional art, but is engaged in updating artistic means in solving the so-called eternal tasks of art. In this sense, it is the same traditional art, but occupied by a new language to describe the same thing. Avant-garde is constantly creating another art, does not renew its means, but the object of art itself.Moreover, the avant-garde implies an active social position of the artist, which before, by and large, could not be discussed. By its nature, the avant-garde, as a rule, is combined with radical political convictions, for example, it is well known that many surrealists were communists, while the Russian avant-garde, as we know, set out in order to serve the cause of the October Revolution. …
In general, it’s sad and funny to follow two fundamentally different paths that led to the avant-garde crisis. In liberal Western society, the avant-garde gradually lost the pathos of “confrontation” by the middle of the century, and with it the “utopian” optimism and revolutionary energy; the avant-garde, contrary to its nature, has become an aesthetic tradition – one of. In a totalitarian situation (primarily in the USSR and Nazi Germany), the avant-garde was declared anti-people (or “degenerative”) art and simply banned, extinct by art from censorship.
However, instead of lamenting the “end of the vanguard,” I note that many of his ideas, strategies, and ambitions were resurrected, rethought, and adopted by radical artists of the nineties.
Vanguard (amendment) – (French avantgardisme, from avant-garde – advanced detachment) The symbolic name of art movements and the minds of artists of the 20th century uniting them. They are characterized by a desire for a radical renewal of artistic practice, a break with its established principles and traditions (in including with realism), the search for new, unusual in content, means of expression and forms of works, the relationship of artists with life. The contradictory movements of the avant-garde were refracted by the most acute social antagonisms of the era, reflected confusion and despair in the face of social disasters and the desire to find new ways of aesthetic impact on real life. Features of avant-garde in the 20th century. manifested themselves in a number of schools and currents of modernism, intensively developed in the period 1905-30-ies. (Fauvism, Cubism, Futurism, Expressionism, Dada, Surrealism, abstract art, a number of rationalistic currents of modernism, etc.). In fact, it was a coup movement, but in the 30s it was dying away as a popular trend. Only after the 2nd World War 1939-45 in the art of several countries of Zap. Europe and Lat. America along with the strengthening of the positions of realistically “biased” art is a revival of avant-garde trends. Neo-avant-garde arises, which is now fully within the framework of modernism. The main representatives of this trend in Russia are V. Malevich, V. Kandinsky, M. Larionov, M. Matyushin, V. Tatlin, P. Kuznetsov, G. Yakulov, A. Exter, B. Ender and others.