Theorizing the Avant-Garde
Theorizing the Avant-Garde

Author: Richard John Murphy

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 1999-04-22

Total Pages: 340

ISBN-13: 9780521648691

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

In Modernism, Expressionism and Theories of the Avant Garde, Richard Murphy mobilises theories of the postmodern to challenge our understanding of the avant-garde. He assesses the importance of the avant-garde for contemporary culture and for the debates among theorists of postmodernism such as Jameson, Eagleton, Lyotard and Habermas. Murphy reconsiders the classic formulation of the avant-garde in Lukacs and Bloch, especially their discussion of aesthetic autonomy, and investigates the relationship between art and politics via a discussion of Marcuse, Adorno and Benjamin. Combining close textual readings of a wide range of films as well as works of literature, it draws on a rich array of critical theories, such as those of Bakhtin, Todorov, MacCabe, Belsey and Raymond Williams. This interdisciplinary project will appeal to all those interested in modernist and avant-garde movements of the early twentieth century, and provides a critical rethinking of the present-day controversy regarding postmodernity.

The Theory of the Avant-garde
The Theory of the Avant-garde

Author: Renato Poggioli

Publisher: Harvard University Press

Published: 1968

Total Pages: 262

ISBN-13: 9780674882164

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Convinced that all aspects of modern culture have been affected by avant-garde art, Renato Poggioli explores the relationship between the avant-garde and civilization. Historical parallels and modern examples from all the arts are used to show how the avant-garde is both symptom and cause of many major extra-aesthetic trends of our time, and that the contemporary avant-garde is the sole and authentic one.

The Originality of the Avant-Garde and Other Modernist Myths
The Originality of the Avant-Garde and Other Modernist Myths

Author: Rosalind E. Krauss

Publisher: MIT Press

Published: 1986-07-09

Total Pages: 324

ISBN-13: 9780262610469

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Co-founder and co-editor of October magazine, a veteran of Artforum of the 1960s and early 1970s, Rosalind Krauss has presided over and shared in the major formulation of the theory of postmodernism. In this challenging collection of fifteen essays, most of which originally appeared in October, she explores the ways in which the break in style that produced postmodernism has forced a change in our various understandings of twentieth-century art, beginning with the almost mythic idea of the avant-garde. Krauss uses the analytical tools of semiology, structuralism, and poststructuralism to reveal new meanings in the visual arts and to critique the way other prominent practitioners of art and literary history write about art. In two sections, "Modernist Myths" and "Toward Postmodernism," her essays range from the problem of the grid in painting and the unity of Giacometti's sculpture to the works of Jackson Pollock, Sol Lewitt, and Richard Serra, and observations about major trends in contemporary literary criticism.

Hollywood Flatlands
Hollywood Flatlands

Author: Esther Leslie

Publisher: Verso Books

Published: 2020-05-05

Total Pages: 465

ISBN-13: 1789609534

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

With ruminations on drawing, colour and caricature, on the political meaning of fairy-tales, talking animals and human beings as machines, Hollywood Flatlands brings to light the links between animation, avant-garde art and modernist criticism. Focusing on the work of aesthetic and political revolutionaries of the inter-war period, Esther Leslie reveals how the animation of commodities can be studied as a journey into modernity in cinema. She looks afresh at the links between the Soviet Constructivists and the Bauhaus, for instance, and those between Walter Benjamin and cinematic abstraction. She also provides new interpretations of the writings of Siegfried Kracauer on animation, shows how Theodor Adorno's and Max Horkheimer's film viewing affected their intellectual development, and reconsiders Sergei Eisenstein's famous handshake with Mickey Mouse at Disney's Hyperion Studios in 1930.

Making Theory/Constructing Art
Making Theory/Constructing Art

Author: Daniel Alan Herwitz

Publisher: University of Chicago Press

Published: 1996-05-15

Total Pages: 374

ISBN-13: 9780226328928

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Artists and critics regularly enlist theory in the creation and assessment of artworks, but few have scrutinized the art theories themselves. Here, Daniel examines and critiques the norms, assumptions, historical conditions, and institutions that have framed the development and uses of art theory. Spurred by the theoretical claims of Arthur Danto, a leader in the philosophy of the avant-garde, Herwitz reexamines the art and theory of major figures in the avant-garde movement including John Cage, Jean-François Lyotard, Jean Baudrillard, and Andy Warhol.

The Return of the Real
The Return of the Real

Author: Hal Foster

Publisher: MIT Press

Published: 1996-09-25

Total Pages: 332

ISBN-13: 9780262561075

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

In The Return of the Real Hal Foster discusses the development of art and theory since 1960, and reorders the relation between prewar and postwar avant-gardes. Opposed to the assumption that contemporary art is somehow belated, he argues that the avant-garde returns to us from the future, repositioned by innovative practice in the present. And he poses this retroactive model of art and theory against the reactionary undoing of progressive culture that is pervasive today. After the models of art-as-text in the 1970s and art-as-simulacrum in the 1980s, Foster suggests that we are now witness to a return to the real—to art and theory grounded in the materiality of actual bodies and social sites. If The Return of the Real begins with a new narrative of the historical avant-gard, it concludes with an original reading of this contemporary situation—and what it portends for future practices of art and theory, culture and politics.

Dada's Manifestos and Peter Bürger's Theory of the Avant-garde
Dada's Manifestos and Peter Bürger's Theory of the Avant-garde

Author: Marco Hompes

Publisher: GRIN Verlag

Published: 2011-01-18

Total Pages: 16

ISBN-13: 3640804058

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Essay from the year 2010 in the subject Art - Art Theory, General, grade: 8,5 , University of Amsterdam (Cultural Analysis), course: Art as an Institute and its Critique, language: English, abstract: 1. Introduction The avant-garde intends the abolition of autonomous art by which it means that art is to be integrated into the praxis of life. At least this is what Peter Bürger states in his groundbreaking book Theory of the Avant-garde. In the book Bürger gives some examples that shall acknowledge and prove his theory, e.g. René Magritte or Marcel Duchamp. It is clear that such examples need to stay eclectic in order to fit the developed theory. In the following Bürger’s text will be put to the acid test by analysing some avant-garde works through the eyes of Peter Bürger, and it shall be examined if specific, programmatic avant-gardist works go well with his theory. The manifestos by the (first) Dadaists in Zürich seem to be extremely useful for this attempt. Their “productions” haven’t been canonised yet and have served as an example for further Dadaistic productions in Germany, the USA, the Netherlands, Romania, Georgia, Poland etc. They (excessively) produced manifestos and declared their ideals and plans. However, these declarations always remain a bit opaque as they avoid clear statements and explicitly write absurd. In their works the Dadas often make statements and shortly afterwards reject them again. Tristan Tzara’s manifestos are great examples of this kind of text, therefore this paper focuses on his writings but will consider manifestos by Walter Serner, thoughts by Marcel Janco or Hugo Ball as well. Can Theory of the Avant-garde be a key to excerpt meaning from the Dadaistic text production, or do the manifestos go beyond Bürger’s theory, or even prove him wrong?