theories of avant-garde

Mélanie Thierry, Clotilde Courau et Hafsia Herzi
Ellen Von Unwerth



Vogue Italia, May 2009
Editorial: The Now Smash of Style
Photographer: Craig McDean
Models: Eniko Mihalik, Suzie Bird, Jourdan Dunn, etc.



Tom Ford Spring/Summer 09



Rrose Selavy

One of the most useful and respected analyses of
vanguardism as a cultural phenomenon remains
the Italian essayist Renato Poggioli's 1962 book
Teoria dell'arte d'avanguardia (The Theory of the Avant-Garde).
Surveying the historical, social, psychological and philosophical aspects of vanguardism, Poggioli reaches beyond individual instances of art, poetry and music to show that vanguardists may be seen as sharing certain ideals or values which are manifested in the non-conformist lifestyles they adopted, vanguard culture being shown to be a variety or subcategory of Bohemianism.

Other authors have attempted to both clarify
and extend Poggioli's study. The German literary critic
Peter Bürger's Theory of the Avant-Garde (1974)
looks at the Establishment's embrace of socially critical
works of art and suggests that in complicity with capitalism,
"art as an institution neutralizes the political content of the individual work."

this excerpt taken from here