Someone once said…

[Unseen]

“The problem is that there is no difference between the avant-garde and a parody of the avant-garde.”

What is the avant-garde? Is it a real “thing”? Or is all avant-garde a parody of art?

Take, for example, Dali. Was he avant-garde or a joker making fun of people who take art seriously.

• This topic was modified 7 years, 2 months ago by Unseen.

[_Robert_]

I visited the Dali Museum last year. I soon realized his greatness was no joke. Some people wept. When it comes to art a 3×5 inch photo  just doesn’t work like a lit-up 12×6 foot painting.

[Unseen]

Back when I lived in the Cleveland, OH area, and back when that was where The Dali Museum was located, I saw the same paintings, and they are just as impressive as you say. A gigantic photorealistic paintinhag is an experience of a lifetime. Dali definitely was a master painter with talents on a par with Vermeer (an artist he very much admired).

But was he a masturpainter at the same time?

Surrealism, as so often happens to the avant-garde, was coopted into a “school” or “movement,” which always makes it mainstream and emasculated.

Here’s a contemporary video. Avant-garde? or just a kick in the art lover’s crotch?

The artist (whose butt is featured) is a French Canadian Youtube personality and small-time porn actress going by the name Piper Blush.

[Unseen]

Is avant-garde possible anymore? And if not, is it because we are past being able to be shocked?

[_Robert_]

Avant-garde doesn’t have to be shocking, just innovative.

[Unseen]

_Robert_ wrote:

Avant-garde doesn’t have to be shocking, just innovative.

An example, please. In art. The term “avant-garde” is used almost exclusively in context of the arts.

[Unseen]

In the books department I am currently working in as a curator, we have a shelf labeled “POP CULTURE/COUNTER-CULTURE.” I think this explains what happens to to anything that thinks it’s avant-garde.

[_Robert_]

Well to start with much of today’s art is digital, Books?, really?

https://www.deviantart.com/?offset=0

I would call fractal art innovative. Now we can harness massive computational power

https://www.deviantart.com/tbchola/art/Puffed-Up-782772041

And secondly do you really think many artists go around calling themselves avant-garde? They create what they create. Critics have the need to go around labeling everything.

[Reg the Fronkey Farmer]

I visited the Dali museum in Barcelona a years ago and was impressed by the collection.

I was never able to see eye to ear with Picasso so maybe he is avant-garde?

[Strega]

I visited the Dali exhibition when it was in Amsterdam. Do I need to say any more?

[Simon Paynton]

I think “avant-garde” has become the new normal.  We aim to be avant-garde and to break boundaries and be new, these days.

[PopeBeanie]

Unseen wrote:

Is avant-garde possible anymore? And if not, is it because we are past being able to be shocked?

Perhaps an internet overflowing with supposed “avant-garde” content and circulation pretty much dilutes any specialness it could have had.

[PopeBeanie]

Perhaps an internet overflowing with supposed “avant-garde” content and circulation pretty much dilutes any specialness it could have had.

However, I don’t see why it couldn’t exist in (say) museums, and other privatized and/or elite venues. After all, upper classes in our civilizations have enriched the possibilities of leisure activity, at least for those who can afford it, and for those who’ve been lucky enough to get a hand up from their mundane day-to-day survival sagas.

[Reg the Fronkey Farmer]

Would anyone consider “The Lady in Gold” by Gustav Klimt as Avant-garde? I think the story behind it is great. I saw it here a few years ago. An exhibition by Munch was on the top floor that week. Would “The Scream” (any version of) be described likewise?

[Unseen]

You ask if a work, say Munch’s The Scream, is avant-garde. Well, is avant-gardedness a property of a painting the way “rectangular in shape” or “mostly blue in color” or “photorealistic” is a property? Is a painting avant-garde in the same way it might be surrealist?

[Author]

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