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How To Avant-Garde
How To Avant-Garde
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How to Start an
Avant-Garde
BY ROBERT B. RAY
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How to Start an Avant-Garde 35
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36 The Antioch Review
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How to Start an Avant-Garde 37
Romanticism(ColeridgeandWordsworth,GoetheandSchiller),Cub-
ism (Picasso and Braque), Surrealism(Breton, Eluard,and Aragon),
Deconstruction (Derrida, DeMan, and Miller), Punk Rock (the Sex
Pistols, the Clash). Othermembersof yourgroupwill referto you, cite
you, make contacts for you, and collaborationtypically proves aes-
thetically stimulating as well. From the outset, the Impressionists
understoodthis principle.As earlyas 1864, Monet,Renoir,Sisley, and
Bazille painted together in the Forest of Fontainebleau,and subse-
quently they shared Parisian studios or apartments.Even Manet, a
relativeloner amongthe Impressionists,maintainedan informalsalon
at the Caf6 Guerbois,where writers(especially Zola) and otherartists
(e.g., the photographerNadar)mixed with the painters.
2. TheImportanceof the Name. A crucialfactorin the Impression-
ists' success was the movement's name, which Harrisonand Cynthia
White point out "was in the greattraditionof rebel names. Thrownat
them initially as a gibe to provide a convenient handleto insult them,
it was adoptedby the group in defiance and for want of a betterterm
and made into a winning pennant.""Impressionism"aptly describes
much of theirwork;the name was easy to rememberand carriedwith
it the theoretical justification for a style that seemed unfinished,
especially when comparedto the 'fini" or "licked"surface of their
official, acceptedcontemporaries,thePompiers.No avant-gardegroup
has ever achieved majoracceptancewithout a catchy name: think of
"Futurism,""Structuralism," "Situationism,""theYale School,""Fau-
vism," "La Nouvelle Vague," and even "Dada,"a parody of such
names, meaningless, or at least intendedto be. The name provides a
group identity. Using "The Impressionists,"Zola and other critics
lumped the individual painters together, and they began to think of
themselves as a more coherent group than at first they had actually
been. The name provided a hook for critics and dealers, furthering
publicity:to review one of the Impressionistswas to review them all.
The final stage of this groupidentitygenerallyresultsin the formation
of some official institute or association: the Impressionists formed
their own joint stock company which staged their exhibitions.
3. The Star. Avant-garde movements need a key figure whose
glamorandprolificnesswill attractandfocus the attentionof outsiders.
The Impressionistshad Manet-rich, witty, articulate,and shocking,
while also being, by virtue of his trainingand disposition, the most
clearly linked to the greattraditionsof Frenchpainting. Othermove-
ments had their own stars:
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38 The Antioch Review
Cubism: Picasso
Futurism: Marinetti
The Bauhaus: Gropius
Modernism(musical branch):Stravinsky
Surrealism: Breton
Relativity: Einstein
Situationism: Debord
AbstractExpressionism: Pollock
Pop Art: Warhol
La Nouvelle Vague: Godard
Punk Rock: JohnnyRotten
Structuralism: Levi-Strauss
Semiotics: Barthes
Deconstruction: Derrida
Rap: Public Enemy
4. TraditionalTraining.Even if you eventuallyrejectits precepts,
some encounterswith a profession's more or less official schools give
you a sense of what to expect. With thatwork behindyou, you have a
betterchance of justifying your own deviationsby demonstratingthat
you have chosen to ignore standardsthatyou have mastered.With the
bourgeoisaudience,nothinghelpedPicasso's reputationmorethanhis
masterfulskills in conventionaldrawing.Almost all of the Impression-
ists (Cezanne is the great exception) studied at either the Ecole des
Beaux-Arts or privately with Academic painters. Sometimes the
definitionof "traditionaltraining"may prove less obvious. WithPunk
Rock, for example,formalmusic studymatteredfarless thanextensive
experience in workingbands:thus, for all its self-propagatedmyth of
amateurism, Punk's important bands always contained pros. Yes,
JohnnyRottenand Sid Vicious were novices, but drummerPaul Cook
and guitaristSteve Jones were certainly not.
5. The Conceptof the Career.The Impressionistsdemonstratethe
effectiveness of refocusing one's attention away from individual
paintings,executed for specific occasions designatedby a patron,to a
whole career and its evolution. Thinking in terms of a career means
constructinga narrativethat will make sense of an artist's develop-
ment. The Gap, of course, makes such careerthinkingmore subtle, a
matterfor continuousrenegotiation.Adopting the extreme long view
amounts to accepting a success that will be, at best, posthumous.
Stendhal's famous line-"I have drawn a lottery ticket whose first
prize amountsto this: to be readin 1935"-represents the test case. As
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How to Start an Avant-Garde 39
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40 TheAntioch Review
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How to Start an Avant-Garde 41
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42 The Antioch Review
event occurredthat upped the stakes: less than two years before his
death, for a ratherordinaryeffort by his own standards(a painting
called M. Pertuiset, the Lion Hunter),Manetwon the Salon's second-
place medal. A few monthslater, thanksto a friend in the Ministryof
Arts, he also received the Legion d'honneur.The importanceof these
circumstances,in FrancisHaskell's opinion, cannot be overstated:
Manet, the greatest enemy the Academy had ever known, Manet who had been
mocked as no otherartistever before him:Manetwas now honouredby the Academy,
decoratedby the State, accepted (however grudgingly) as an artistof majorsignifi-
cance. Everything will now be acceptable at the Salons: that is the implication that
is drawnfrom all this... .The acknowledgementthattherehadbeen a war, but thatthe
critics had (so to speak) lost it and that it was in any case now over, is perhapsthe
single most importantpreludeto the developmentof what we now thinkof as modern
art. (Past and Present in Art and Taste, Yale, 1987)
From this point on, critics grow wary. Aware of previous mistakes,
reviewers become increasingly afraid to condemn anything, since
anything might turn out to be the next Manet. Hence, the second of
modern criticism's two great dangers, what Max Ernst called
"overcomprehension"or "the waning of indignation":having prop-
agatedthe notions of rejectionandincomprehensibilityas promisesof
ultimatevalue, the avant-gardehad protecteditself frombad reviews.
Ininitiatingthismove, ImpressionismprefiguresPostmodernism's
diminishedconcernfor the workof artitself, as opposedto the contexts
in which such work might occur. With the rise of what GerardGenette
has called "the paratext,"meaning and value become highly nego-
tiable, just like commodities, just like paintings themselves. And
theory and publicity turnout to be the principaltools for influencing
the ways in which art will mean.
In the age of Madonna,publicity's importanceshouldbe obvious.
The Impressionists,however,over a centuryago, recognizedits role in
startingan avant-garde.By the second half of the twentieth century,
strange things had become possible. Here is an example. Between
1952 and 1959, Hollywood filmmakerDouglas Sirk,a Germanemigre
of Danish extraction, made a series of big-budget, commercially
successful melodramas,usually starringRock Hudson: Magnificent
Obsession,All ThatHeavenAllows, Writtenon the Wind,andImitation
of Life (without Hudson). At their release, these movies received no
critical attention;like most Hollywood products,they did theirjob-
they entertainedand made money, and then they were forgotten.
In the late 1960s, however, from his retirementretreatin Switzer-
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How to Start an Avant-Garde 43
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