Avant-Garde

(It Will) Never Work: A critique of the Situationists’ appropriation of Johan Huizinga’s theory of play

by Tom Tenney

The Situationist International (1957-1972), or SI, was an intellectual avant-garde collective that used Homo Ludens, a... more The Situationist International (1957-1972), or SI, was an intellectual avant-garde collective that used Homo Ludens, a text written in 1938 by the Dutch historian Johan Huizinga, as a key source informing much of their writing and key tenets of their philosophy. In this paper, I will first look at key elements of Huizinga’s theory of play as outlined in his seminal work, followed by the ways that these ideas were absorbed into the Situationists theories and practices. I will examine the ways that ludic principles were appropriated for, and played out in, the Situationist practices of dérive, détournement, situations, and unitary urbanism. I will argue that while the SI rightly believed that a rediscovery of man’s instinct to play could be used to inform revolutionary praxis, the way in which they utilized ludic ideals in practice tended to ignore essential elements of Huizinga’s theory.

Enlisting and Updating: Ruggero Vasari and the Shifting Coordinates of Futurism in Eastern and Central Europe

by Maria Elena Versari

"International Yearbook of Futurism Studies"
ed. by Günter Berghaus (1) (November 2011): 277–298

"The Little Magazine as Interdisciplinary Space: Literature and the Visual Arts in The Acorn and The Apple"

by Louise Kane

Published in University of Durham Postgraduate Journal of English (peer-reviewed) in Nov. 2011

This paper explores the conflation of literature and visual art within two early twentieth century periodicals: The... more This paper explores the conflation of literature and visual art within two early twentieth century periodicals: The Acorn and The Apple. I use McGann's notion of "bibliographical codes" to examine how it is the material, physical textuality of both periodicals that serves to construct the disctinct type of interdisciplinary modernism that runs through their pages.

The Most Difficult Journey: The Poindexter Collections of American Modernist Painting

by Andrea Pappas

Exhibition catalogue, Yellowstone Art Museum and Montana Historical Society. Three-year tour through Exhibits USA.

They Watch Me as They Watch This'-Alfred Jarry, Symbolism and Self-as-Performance in Fin-de-Siecle Paris

by Ryan Hartigan

published in Australasian Drama Studies 52 (2008) 165-179

Les motifs de la décapitation dans l'art et la littérature d'Occident

by antonio dominguez leiva

Les motifs de la décapitation dans l'art et la littérature d'Occident: du legs médiéval à la post-modernité:(une archéologie du supplice et du macabre), 1450 …

by antonio dominguez leiva

Second versant : quatre procédés pudiques du cinéma de l'extrême

by Pierre-Alexandre Fradet

Écrit en collaboration avec Julie Demers, dossier sur le cinéma de l'extrême dirigé par Simon Laperrière, Pop-en-stock, 2012.

La face pudique du cinéma de l'extrême. Premier versant : Du "tout voir" au "tout saisir"

by Pierre-Alexandre Fradet

Écrit en collaboration avec Julie Demers, dossier sur le cinéma de l'extrême dirigé par Simon Laperrière, Pop-en-stock, 2012.

Die Kunst der Zukunft: Richard Wagners Gesamtkunstwerk als Ausweg aus der Entfremdung und die Vorwegnahme von Strategien der Avantgarden

by Thomas Steller

published as an essay with Grin 2008

Kuhle Wampe: Politics of Montage, De-montage of Politics?

by Gal Kirn

ReD, signal rouge de l'avant-garde tchèque

by Aurèle Letricot

published in 'Revue des Revues'  19, 1995.

The ReD journal (1927-1931) was the means of expression of Devétsil, the Czechoslovakian avant-garde group founded in... more The ReD journal (1927-1931) was the means of expression of Devétsil, the Czechoslovakian avant-garde group founded in 1920 by Karel Teige. The journal was a militant advocate for both constructivism and poetism - despite the fact that they are two opposing concepts, which the journal transposed within its very structure. A reflection of Karel Teige's cosmopolitan culture, ReD was above all an anthology of artistic goings-on worldwilde, strengthened by the eclecticism of its contents, the pluralism of languages used for publication and the strong presence of foreign contributors.

A Brief Survey of Olivier Messiaen’s Harmonic Practise

by James Wilson

The dilemmas of radical nostalgia in British psychogeography

by alastair bonnett

Åke Hodell's "Kerberos" - A Case Study ((work in progress)

by Fred Andersson

To be published in "A Cultural History of the Nordic Avantgarde", vol 3, Copenhagen 2010 (ed. Jesper Olsson, Tania Ørum et al)

The small avant-garde book edition Kerberos was initiated and maintained by the Swedish experimental poet Åke Hodell... more The small avant-garde book edition Kerberos was initiated and maintained by the Swedish experimental poet Åke Hodell between 1963 and 1972. The total body of 16 titles issued by Kerberos mainly comprised works by young Swedish and Danish artists/writers and works by Hodell himself. The edition was instrumental for the breakthrough of Concrete/Visual Poetry in Sweden and provided inspiration for further production of experimental publications in the Swedish artworld.

American Language Poetry and the Definition of the Avant-Garde

by Jacob Edmond

Avant-Garde / Neo-Avant-Garde. Amsterdam: Rodopi. 2005. 173-194.

Resumen: Lo sublime y la vanguardia - Lyotard

by Esen Espinosa

Co-authored with Benjamín Alcarráz Buleje

A Hammer to Shape Reality: Alan Moore’s Graphic Novels and the Avant-Gardes

by Andres Romero-Jodar

Published in Studies in Comics, Volume 2 Issue 1, May 2011, pp. 39-56

Alan Moore’s graphic novels have marked essential standpoints in the history of narrative iconical genres. Works like... more Alan Moore’s graphic novels have marked essential standpoints in the history of narrative iconical genres. Works like Watchmen or V for Vendetta helped reorient the 1980s Anglo-American comic book into the graphic novels of the 1990s by pushing the boundaries of the comic-book genre into the realm of postmodernity. Moore’s graphic novels depict characters that are suffocated by the grand narratives of capitalist societies, Orwellian dystopias and totalizing ideologies. In this vein, his works may be placed in the context of postmodernist thinking postulated by Jean-François Lyotard, Jean Baudrillard or Fredric Jameson. However, the rebellious attitude shown in his narratives against those globalizing definitions of the self and homogenizing social orders strongly recalls the efforts of the early twentieth-century avant-gardes to provoke their bourgeois audiences into action by fostering their radical distaste. The aim of this article is to consider certain examples of Alan Moore’s graphic novels as direct inheritors of the committed ideology and technical experimentalism proposed by avant-garde movements at the beginning of the twentieth century. As Brecht famously argued, ‘art is not a mirror to reflect the world, but a hammer with which to shape it’. This article will thus centre on Moore’s works that best reflect the same experimental spirit of revolutionary art forms fostered by Cubism, Modernism, Futurism and other European avant-garde movements. These movements, by using the power of artistic creation, called audiences to social action against the rising fascist discourses of the first decades of the twentieth century. It is my contention that graphic novels like Lost Girls, Watchmen, From Hell and V for Vendetta connect with the recovery of avant-garde ethics and aesthetics, and seem to renew their attacks against the moral double standard of bourgeois, accommodated social classes. Then, Moore’s graphic novels raise public awareness and serve as social denunciation, becoming, at certain moments, examples of intellectual terrorism against the status quo.

Andy, Nam June, and Me at the Zoo

by Lee Wells

Commissioned by the Guggenheim Museum

http://www.guggenheim.org/new-york/interact/participate/youtube-play/the-take/moving-images/3815-andy-nam-june-me-at-the-zoo

The essay discusses the relationship between online video, the Avant-Garde and 21st century video art. The essay discusses the relationship between online video, the Avant-Garde and 21st century video art.

The Postmodern Avant-Gardes in Post-1975 Galician Literature: Rompente, Antón Reixa and Suso de Toro

by Burghard Baltrusch

in Kirsty Hooper and Manuel Puga Moruxa (eds.): Contemporary Galician Cultural Studies: Between the local and the global, New York: MLA 2011, 237-257.

l argue here that the creators of the Galician vangardista movement introduced Galicia into Western postmodernity and... more l argue here that the creators of the Galician vangardista movement introduced Galicia into Western postmodernity and that they initiated an unprecedented diversification of artistic forms in the Galician cultural field during the last quarter of the twentieth century. In reference to the nineteenth century Rexurdimento and the first Galician Statute of Autonomy in 1936, I propose to speak in cultural terms of a second Rexurdimento, whose emergence coincides with the second Galician Statute of Autonomy in 1981. The vangardista works use traditional forms alongside generic transgressions, multimedia forms, theoretical reflection, and performance. Taking into account the great diversity of styles, genres, and themes that characterized vangardista creative artists, academic readers and critics are confronted with a series of fundamental challenges. How should we describe and define the notion of avant-garde - or, in its Galician context, vangardismo - in the Galician cultural field in relation to the established concepts of modernism, postmodernism, and translation? How should we evaluate the principal vangardista lines of thought and practice in Galicia since 1975 from the perspective of a transcultural dynamic between the symbolic composites of local and national, European and Western, and global and intercultural, which characterize our present situation? Why contribute to the inclusion of antisystem texts in the literary canon? I can only offer partial responses here, starting with the hypothesis that a large part of the twentieth-century Galician cultural polysystem, in this particular case its literature and aesthetic thought, need to be analyzed in terms of postcolonialism, postmodernism, and cultural translation. In this context, it is essential to relocate the old questions: What do we mean by vangardismo in Galicia? What function did it have in twentieth-century Galician culture? Parcial answers will be attempted through the analysis of a poetic text by Antón Reixa and a prose text by Suso de Toro.