High Culture/Low Culture
'Defining the Avant-Garde'
Mass/pop culture v art culture
Dictionaries link term - avant-garde - with terms like innovation in the arts or pioneers
- Idea of doing art/design work that is progressive - innovating
- But also refers to the idea of there being a group of people being innovative
- Being avant-garde in the work that you do - challenging, innovating etc
- Being a part of a group - being a member of the avant-garde
You can be avant-garde while being a part of the group.
The term is used everywhere, for florists, home and bridal companies. Reduces the meaning
The avant garde were a group of radical artists, who were experimental and shocking.
Marcel Duchamp
Defaced Mona Lisa and signed a toilet as art.
'Fauvism'
Wild Beasts
Term applied to avant-garde artists by critics.
LCA quotes prioritise certain concepts:
Innovation
Experimentation
Originality
Creative Genius
Its only when you get to romanticism when you started to get people experimenting your creative self. Previously, a master would have trained you their style of art, and you would practise it until you learnt the skill, and could do it as good as them.
Chaterton couldn't sell any of his poetry work, because he thought he was too clever for anyone to understand it, and killed himself because he thought the world was too stupid.
Artists are seen as, or think themselves as, higher than other people.
The idea of avant-garde relies on the myth that artists are a creative genius, and superior.
Art for Art's sake
Whistler Nocturne in Black and Gold: The Falling Rocket (1875)
Just seeking to look good
End of 19th/early 20th C
Two approaches to avant-garde art
1. art that is socially committed (artists being the avant-garde of society, pushing forward political objectives)
2. Art that seeks only to expand/progress what art is (in itself and for itself)/ art for art's sake
Significant Form
Clive Bell - old critic
He came up with this concept:
The relations and combinations of lines and colours, which when organised give the power to move someone aesthetically.
His favourite painter is Cezanne.
If we are not 'aesthetically moved' by the paintings, it is because we don't understand the significant form, and are idiots.
Jackson Pollock Lavender Mist (1950)
Stalin banned avant-garde art in the 30s, because people didn't understand the radical, experimental art and that people were being elitist.
It seems that if you want to be understandable, and communicate, you cannot be radical or experimental, because if you are, people won't understand it.
Kitsch is commerical art, things that are made to be sold, and mass-produced.
The term comes from art critics, and was used to distinguish high and low culture. (Kitsch being low culture)
Jeff Koons Michael Jackson & Bubbles the Monkey (1988)
Art of kitsch?
It references something that is awful (small figurine)
But it is placed in art gallery, and sold for thousands
Thomas Kikade
Calls himself the 'painter of light'
Carl Andre Equivalent VIII
K-Foundation Award (1994)
Held award for same nominations as turner prize, but for worst artist. The winner for both was the same, suggesting that the specialist judges who chose the best artist are pretentious, as the public chose the same one who thought it was shit and didn't understand it.
Damien Hirst 'For The Love of God'
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