Especially the Adorno inspired standardisation/absorption that has has been discussed by many on this thread.
It is worth bearing in mind that Adorno was not sympathetic to certain manifestations of didactic opposition to tradition in the name of the 'avant-garde', as for example in Dada.
I have a problem with the term's historical associations on two levels, it's origins and its appreciation through formalist notions. The first level is avant gardes' (Napoleonic) militaristic and (left-wing) political antecedents, even before it gets applied to cultural activity.
The first use of the term 'avant-garde' may have come from Claude Henri de Rouvroy, comte de Saint-Simon (1760-1825), begetter of the Saint-Simonians, a weird pre-Marxist socialist group in which was involved several composers, most significantly Félicien David, but also Liszt. The term can be found in the volume
Opinions littéraires, philosophiques et industrielles (Paris: Galérie de Bossange Père, 1825), pp. 210-211, cited in Matei Calinescu –
Five Faces of Modernity: Modernism, Avant-Garde, Decadence, Kitsch, Postmodernism (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1987), p. 101. Calinescu argues that whilst attributed to Saint-Simon, this volume was actually a collaborative enterprise between Saint-Simon and some of his students and disciples (pp. 101-102).. Saint Simon argued in 1820 that ‘New mediations have proved to me that things should move ahead with artists in the lead, followed by the scientists, and that the industrialists should come after these two classes.’ (
Oeuvres de Claude-Henri de Saint-Simon (Paris: Editions Anthropos, 1966), Vol. 6, p. 422, cited in Calinescu, p. 102).
The militaristic roots seem to imply a condition of cultural warfare exists for Avant Garde to exist, notably the battle against tradition in its various manifestions.
That is true and a reason for scepticism about the term, I think, though I'm less convinced about the 'militaristic roots' (it would be hard to argue that the Saint-Simonians were a particularly militaristic group).
Although atagonistic to mainstream culture (whatever that is) I'm not always convinced there is always dialectic confrontation with mainstream culture or whether, perhaps, parallel historical paths are trodden.
Certainly, and often 'avant-garde' work sets itself in opposition to a notion of the mainstream that may have existed in the early 20th century, but in an era of highly commercialised mass culture (far more so than could probably have been envisaged even in the 1930s), the whole role of the mainstream and tradition in contemporary society has changed quite fundamentally. This is where artists need to get out more!
The basis in radical (left wing) politics is based upon an over-simplified understanding stemming from a polarisation of many political forces. This may have been 'avant garde' at the start of the 20th century - or not, but I believe the terrain of the political has become way more varied. The perpetual revolution didn't happen; pockets of resistance can be observed and though I do not underestimate their importance, certain pockets of resistance grew and became recognized through their continued stylised manifestations and the fact that an ever more literate populace is able to easily engage with them or define them (even negatively). These are as much part of our cultural and political landscape as anything 'mainstream'.
All of this is very true, and a reason why the paradigms of that earlier era cannot be simply adopted in an identical form nowadays. There is another aspect to add, which has to do with the appropriation of the 'avant-garde' into the commercial arena, turning it into just yet another species of exotic novelty, another exotic consumer good. Many of those thinking they are producing something whose radicalism has wider applications should be more aware of this phenomenon, I feel. 'Avant-garde' can become just another marketing label.
My second problem stems from the accent given to formal considerations in relation to the avant garde. Although I seek and adore formal experimention, I in no way consider this to the the basis of avant garde practice. For me its also about cutting edge performance and distribution techniques, new models of economy.
Well, formal considerations had a meaning in terms of, for example, the dialectical strategies of cinematic montage (and their application in non-cinematic artistic media) as opposed to more 'organic' formal working of previously (though of course it would be a caricature to suggest that all temporal art up to that point simply fulfilled that model). But a great many once-radical formal techniques have been appropriated, and I see little reason to doubt that others will be as well. To make a fetish out of form (or out of novel sonority, or whatever) without considering what is achieved by those means, their specific use, is to miss the point. And, of course, there have been a significant number of radical artists (in terms of their artistic means) associated with the right (including the far right) as well as the left.
I'm thus intrigued by Ian's call for a consideration of performance as well an debate about economics. (It strikes me this would be closer to Marx' radical conceptions rather than endless deliberation on artistic form, upon which Marx had little to say). Digital technologies have 'revolutionised' production, distribution and consumption of music. Another reason for the revival of Benjamin. I for one, am very confused about what constitutes the norm, and what is cutting edge. However, perhaps its because I'm getting older and can not percieve of the future as clearly as I can the past, but I wonder if the radical is a return to the analogue and the live experience! Or at least how that is interpreted by and within a digital generation. Is progression cyclical?
Those are very interesting thoughts. Very roughly, I suppose I see the difficulty in forming aesthetic responses to our own time being to do with the fact that on one hand the nature of mass production characteristic of late capitalism seems to pervade much art, with all the consequent de-individualisation and de-subjectivisation of the process, whilst the 'easy' response, of seeking a return to individuated production (and consumption) is hard to justify without a concomitant rejection of that industrialisation itself, which can easily slip into pre-industrial nostalgia, an ideology which accords too easily with right-wing agrarianism and the lik. Disengaged aestheticism of the type that can still be found amongst many artists (especially in the field of music) too often goes hand-in-hand with contempt for democracy, mass education and the like, and a yearning for a return to the cult of the specialist aesthete, for whom a privileged position is accorded. This was the position of many early-20th century artists who opposed aspects of mass industrial capitalism as much as any socialist, but looked backwards rather than forwards. Engagement with the very phenomenon of global mass culture on the part of 'high' artists seems rarely to take much more than a superficial form - either shallow 'accomodation' (through the incorporation of a few attributes of that mass culture in their own work), or an adoption of some of the approaches to marketing and image that one finds in popular culture. Art which seeks to actually engage critically and unflinchingly with the very phenomenon of that mass culture, without simply holding up an elitist aestheticised alternative, seems thin on the ground.
