Talk:Avant-garde

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The picture is not actually Marcel Duchamp's famous work - it appears to be an imitation. Maybe somebody photoshopped out Duchamp's signature! The real work contains the signature "R. Mutt" painted in black on the bottom left of the work, as can be seen in these photographs of the original: [1][2] You might want to see if you can find a photograph of the actual work, which we have permission to reproduce, for the sake of authenticity. unsigned by: User:203.173.44.52 07:45, May 27, 2004 (UTC) poop

Page move

The page was originally called 'Avant garde' (Also sometimes referred as 'Avant-Grade'), and the first sentence told us that it was actually written 'avant-garde'; the rest of the article spelt it as 'avant garde'... I've made the whole thing consistent, removed any double redirects, and I'm correcting internal links in other articles. Mel Etitis (Μελ Ετητης) 12:58, 18 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Expanded version of "avant-garde"

I'm new to Wiki but this article caught my eye. I've drafted a revision expanding and (in some cases) correcting the original. I'm hesitant to post it yet. Perhaps someone will look it over and respond. unsigned by: User:PBishopfl 07:25, July 24, 2005 (UTC)

Looks fine here, except that it is much better NPOV style to avoid adjectives like "boldly" in describing people, and statements such as "But modernism accelerated the disaffection of Western artists from society and a wider public." because it isn't a slam dunk everyoen believes it kind of thing. Better to cite which person or school of thought believes this and argues that avante-gardims is part of that alienation. Happy editting Stirling Newberry 15:18, 24 July 2005 (UTC)

Criticism of avant-garde from comic strips

I removed that part. It would be nice to have some substantiate criticism, but i dont't think that some Calvin & Hobbes meet the requirements. --Zinnmann 12:52, 3 September 2005 (UTC)

Zorn

Minor edit, changed john Zorn to American Musician, he's certainly better known for this.Felix-felix 21:28, 11 January 2006 (UTC)

avante garde music...

it says "Thus avant-garde in music refers to an extreme form of musical improvisation in which little or no regard is given by soloists to any underlying chord structure or rhythm."

thats Quite close minded, first of all, perhaps somewhat applicable in free jazz, the ornette colemen double quartet, perhaps, but even things like "free jazz" have underlying structure and form, it just isn't the usual or accepted "norm"al one, so to speak.

"avant-garde in music" MUSIC constitutes a lot more than just jazz. avante garde in music can refer to many things, depending how you look at it. the serial works of pierre boulez, milton babbit, or Anything that has been at the "envelope-pushing" forefront. it would be much more effective to say that avante garde in music refers to the music of Pierre Boulez and John Cage. Their techniques (mid 20th century) included total serialism and aletory, or music which has many of its dimensions determined by often non-musical processes not previously used in such manner.

205.240.75.199 03:48, 21 May 2006 (UTC)

relevance section and the notion of provocation

The Relevance section is problematical for me. It is bias to say that art would "stagnate and become ... merely craft" "repeating the same style over and over." This is an avant gardist claim and it is not authoritative to present this as its empirical relevance. The statement implies that art was stagnant and limited to craft in the centuries preceding the advent of the avant-garde.

Also I think it should be mentioned and elaborated on somewhere in the article, that the avant-garde often assumes a provocative posture and that many avant-garde artists are devoted provocateurs.

-jason d. gliptitude@gmail.com

Avant-garde musicians

Almost none of the musicians listed could, or should, ever be described as avant-garde. The 'They Might Be Giants' entry almost had me in stiches. This really ought to be edited, quickly.

- A. P. Boland

I'm thinking the whole section should be deleted. Basically, the article defines avant-garde as synonymous with different, and then people get to add artists, mostly musicians, they think are different. Yeah, I really hope the inclusion of TMBG is a joke, and I'm going to delete it. But do Les Claypool, Kate Bush, and Bjork belong any more than they do? If we define something as pushing "...the boundaries of what is accepted as the norm within definitions of art/culture/reality." then people will include artists they think are important and novel, no matter how mediocre they sound to the rest of us. We need a better system for inclusion, or we should delete the whole thing. Atripodi 10:11, 22 August 2006 (UTC)

John Zorn, The Residents, Lou Reed, Laurie Anderson, Mike Patton, Captain Beefheart, and those guys are avant-garde. Progressive rock isn't. You could make a persuasive argument for exceptions like "In the Court of the Crimson King" and "The Lamb Lies down on Broadway," but that kind of detail is tedious. I'm going to remove a few prog rockers. Joseph N Hall 07:08, 19 September 2006 (UTC)

I agree with the above, but I still contend that without some criteria for deciding what exactly qualifies. Otherwise we'll be fighting a losing battle with a slew of Radiohead and Yes fans. The key to a solid set of criteria is having the article itself be worth a damn, i.e. defining the term and putting it in an historical context. Without a good article, the examples are meaningless.Atripodi 12:47, 28 September 2006 (UTC)

>>I have no problem at all with the inclusion of Bjork. tmbg does not belong. But Bjork does have a sustained and rigorous modernism and has been a musical vanguard, albeit pop. She has worked with Lars Von Tier, a premier vanguard filmmaker of our time, if not an avant-gardist. She has also had a child with acclaimed artist Matthew Barney, which does not affect her classification, but does suggest a distinction between her and what you dismissively term Progressive Rock. I think the advent of pop has opened up the floodgates for a watered down novelty/psuedo-dynamism/exploito-progressivism. but the origin of "avant-garde" as a vital term historically precedes that of pop/rock etc. The moniker was not created as a distinction from such cultures as Prog rock because prog rock did not exist. There is a conscious and disciplined evocation of avant-garde aesthetics and values in some popular music. So I think you can still be objective AND inclusive. It looks like Bjork has been deleted. I'm not passionate either way. But the list is really secondary in importance to the article, which is lacking. It definitely needs to be fleshed out and maybe have more section headings. For example the section titled "examples" mentions only music and grafitti. This is absurd since the term's origin and primary relevance is to the plastic arts, and typically it is executed with discipline. Maybe there could be an additional section for "Aspects of Avant-Garde Works" which is more specific than "cutting edge" and "boundary pushing".