The Avant Garde in Art and Design

Modernity

If modernity is the idea of exploration of new ideas, then the concept of the avant garde is just a more radical version of modernity. Through revolutionary techniques, the avant garde exists in opposition to tradition, and so, consumed so entirely with fighting the tendencies of the past, according to Calinescu, does not operate in a forward-thinking manner. Finally, the avant garde, though thoroughly founded upon the concept of modernity, is distinct in that it radicalizes modernity beyond recognition.

The “Avant Garde”

The use of the term "avant garde" by Pasquier merely acknowledged a confrontation between new ideas and older traditions, but the more modern term "avant garde" implies that this confrontation is an intentional one, that new ideas have a conscious role in this, born of the "illusion of self-consciousness". Calinescu attributes the emergence of this "self-consciousness" to the political upheaval of the French Revolution and goes on to say that use of avant garde in the arts during this period was derivative of the use of the avant garde as a political term.

Writers of the nineteenth century, such as Balzac and Sainte-Beuve engaged in social commentary could hardly ignore the avant garde and what it meant to revolutionary rhetoric, something "that would blow up all the existing social structures" to make way for a utopian world.  Baudelaire however was less inclined towards the avant garde, and criticized its implication of instability, as the revolutionary nature of avant garde requires constant rejection of norms, even as they are newly established.

The avant garde expanded into not only a social revolution, but also an artistic one during the 1870s in France. While the artists made the avant garde a mode of constant experimentation, the political revolutionaries who used the term were intent on propagandizing the avant garde to stimulate social revolution. In fact, there were Marxist implications to the word avant garde as political revolutionaries imagined it as an overthrow of the bourgeois, and the idyllic triumph of the working class. The artistic movement, however, diverged from this political rendering of avant garde as artists refused to create material for a fixed social cause but prefered to remain within the ever-changing realm of artistic experimentation.

Art, Modernity, and Commodity

According to Calinescu avant garde has manifested first in French poetry as a confrontation between past and modern, then gained aspects of social consciousness during the political upheaval of the French Revolution, before diverging into a concept of experimentalism in literature and many schools of art, and then broadening into a more accessible idea among the public. The unifying factor among the many historical expressions of avant garde would be how the concept serves as a constant driving force for advancing modernity. Finally, it materializes as a connection between current culture and future culture. Nowadays, experimental art and design has become increasingly commodified- everything from the Nissan Rogue to office and metro building design. This is in part due to the changes in technology, as well as the rise of the middle class and increased access to information. Cultural movements are now embedded in the web of globalized capitalism and creativity has become an instrument for marketing, designing, and innovating products. Cars, houses, urban planning, and even mass transit systems are designed based on market principles. Whether commodified art can still be cutting edge is something widely debated by academics and art historians alike.

The Future

The avant garde could be said to have encompassed many movements and influences, but throughout, it existed as a connection between present and future culture. Avant garde art and design, whether as commodity, or as high art, demonstrates the connection between the present world, say, “a confused and misguided age” and the potential future world as the artist might envision it, being the “lucid visionary” he or she is. Visionary thinking also can sell products and keeps the capitalist system in full swing-- it just remains for us to decide what role experimental art has in our future.