To me, being avant-garde involves asking the question "Why?" In other
words, asking "What is the point of such and such?" ...and coming up
with a satisfying answer.
What is art?
To me, the most satisfying answers to this question have come from those
who point out that the aim of art is to enliven our perception of
everyday life, to highten our awareness and appreciation of the
phenomenal world, to make vivid and completely real the experience of
everything around us.
I think this is what Pound meant by the phrase "make it New".... Making
it new, doesn't mean make it new and shiny ;-) in the sense of
commercial products, but rather to liberate our senses, to experience
the world as completely fresh, which it is always, from one point of
view.
Commercialism generally results in a degraded, impoverished version of
what the things we make could be.... That's whats interesting perhaps in
the alternative offered by some of the avant-garde artists that became
interested in design, like Moholy-Nagy for instance...
cheers,
George
Josh Ronsen wrote:
>
> Heiko Recktenwald writes:
>
> >When fluxus began in the Cage class, they were some of the
> >most avantgarde people of its time. Those who call themself
> >"fluxus" today are not.
>
> What does avantgarde mean, today? Who is avantgarde today? These are
interesting questions and I do not know how to approach them.
>
> Don't hate me, but I have been reading an article about Online
(Internet) Education in a recent issue of the New York Times Sunday
Magazine. There is quote from a professor (my copy is at home) who is
trying to get "top-notch" universities to let their faculty lecture for his
online ed company: to paraphrase-- the avant-garde (in art) and capitalism
as similar because they are both concerned with the "new."
>
> I disagree with this statement, or at least with the superficial aspects
of it. My conception of the avant-garde is one of overturning established
orders and ideologies, which I guess could be considered "new," but it is a
new mentality. Capitalism is ALWAYS concerned with producing goods or
services at a profit, and hasn't changed at all. There is a drive for new
goods and markets and a silly marketing spin on Internet Business as "the
New Economy" (tm), but it isn't.
>
> Now the relation between art and capitalism can be scary: is the
avant-garde in art just the capitalist quest for new markets? Ack! I hope
not. Maybe it has become that.
>
> For me, if the avant-garde is "overturning established orders and
ideologies," the one it should be directed against is capitalism.
>
> I'd be interested in thoughts/reactions on this topic.
>
> -Josh Ronsen
> http://www.nd.org/jronsen
>
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