Death of the avant-garde
Related: death of the author - avant-garde - death
Death of Modernist architecture: Pruitt-Igoe (1954 - 1976)
Key texts: The theory-death of the avant-garde (1991) - Paul Mann - The Death of Avant-Garde Literature (1964) Leslie Fiedler
Followed by: the rise of postmodernism
Though one often hears about “the death of the avant-garde, - usually from publicists with cemeteries to defend, it is not the purpose of this book to engage in an argument I take to be irrelevant at best. --A Dictionary of the Avant-Gardes (1993) - Richard Kostelanetz
That is why the death of the avant-garde must not be confused with any termination, any closure, which has not yet occurred and will never occur [...] The death of the avant-garde is precisely the cultural explosion of the so-called postmodern era. --Masocriticism (1999) - Paul Mann
Notes on the "death of the avant-garde"
Conservative American art critic Hilton Kramer was one of the first to write about the death of the avant-gardes in his The Age of the Avant-Garde (1973). He situates the avant-garde from the 1850s (Courbet) until the 1950s (abstract expressionism) and defines it as art that meets with resistance society at large.
Camille Paglia proclaimed the avant-garde dead in the 1990s. Her argument is stated in a 1999 salon.com response to a reader's question:
It's a central thesis of my work that in the 20th century (which I call the Age of Hollywood) pagan popular culture overtook and vanquished the high arts. Thanks to advances in technology, pop became a universal language, as catholic in its reach as the medieval church. Once pop art embraced commercial iconography, the avant-garde was dead.
But wasn't punk a new resurgence of avant-garde sensibilities? And won't some artists always be ahead of their time, destined to be discovered and re-evaluated after their death? And what about contemporary transgressive artists? [Jan 2006]
The theory-death of the avant-garde (1991) - Paul Mann
The theory-death of the avant-garde (1991) - Paul Mann [Amazon.com] [FR] [DE] [UK]
See also: death - avant-garde
The avant-garde is dead as a social force and as an agent of progressive action
Which brings us, again, to the Eulogist School, a critical trend that peaked in the 1950s and 1960s, but has remained a critical touchstone ever since. The debate concerning the supposed "death" of the avant-garde was carried on within some of the most prestigious journals and university departments in the United States, Germany, and France. Hilton Kramer, Hans Magnus Enzensberger, Leslie Fiedler, Roland Barthes, and the so-called New York Intellectuals (Daniel Bell, in particular) all agreed that the avant-garde was dead as a social force and bankrupt as an agent of progressive action. One rarely finds such an ideologically diverse group of critics agreeing on any topic. --Avant-Garde Performance & the Limits of Criticism, Mike Sell, 2005.The End of the American Avant Garde (2000) - Stuart D. Hobbs
The End of the American Avant Garde (2000) - Stuart D. Hobbs [Amazon.com] [FR] [DE] [UK]
"By 1966, the composer Virgil Thomson would write, "Truth is, there is no avant-garde today." How did the avant garde dissolve, and why? In this thought-provoking work, Stuart D. Hobbs traces the avant garde from its origins to its eventual appropriation by a conservative political agenda, consumer culture, and the institutional world of art.