HAS THE AVANT-GARDE DIED ?

• Authors: Kappanyos A.
• Languages of publication: EN

Abstracts

EN

The study offers a new perspective on a frequently researched question of the supposed end of the Avant-gardes. He mentions various researches on this issue to finally disagree with Peter Bürger who claims the end of the Avant-gardes as inevitable consequence of their basic structure. Bürger wants to discredit the whole 'neo' Avant-garde as a rootless, meaningless phenomenon and criticizes Adorno for not distinguishing between faddish (arbitrary) and historically necessary newness. What Bürger ignores here is the historical fact that Pop Art and its heirs (especially Fluxus) reflects very consciously this difference, and this in itself makes them legitimate. Bürger attributes to Avant-garde the intention of destroying the institutional system of arts and holds the whole Avant-garde a failure as it failed to fulfil this aim. The general acceptance of Duchamp's 'Fountain' as a work of art is for Bürger a proof of the Avant-garde's fall, or even of its failure. However, this is possible to interpret also as its success, because even Duchamp never wanted to destroy these institutions altogether: he wanted to subvert them. As he managed to make them accept an urinal as a work of art, he certainly achieved his goal to change the institutions of art. Moreover, by no means is the Duchamp's radical conception of anti-art the only incarnation of Avantgardes. The author mentions dadaists, expressionists and others. Finally he recognizes the acceptance of Duchamp's urinal as the success of subversion, the chief goal of Avantgarde movements, claiming that the refusal of it would have meant that 'we stay with a 19th century concept of art plus an ordinary urinal that remains outside the history of art'.

Keywords

EN

ANTI-ART; AVANT-GARDE; DUCHAMP; POP ART; SURREALISM

Discipline

• PHILOLOGY_&_LINGUISTICS: PHILOLOGY & LINGUISTICS

• Publisher: Institute of World Literature, Slovak Academy of Sciences
• Journal: Slovak Review. A Review of World Literature Research
• Year: 2004
• Volume: 13
• Issue: 1
• Pages: 90-96
• Document type: ARTICLE

Contributors

author

Kappanyos A.

• A. Kappanyos, MTA Irodalom Intézete, Ménesi út 11-13, 1118 Budapest, Hungary

Identifiers

CEJSH db identifier

06SKAAAA00962224