Just Finished Reading: The Avant-Garde – A Very Short Introduction by David Cottington (FP: 2013)

As a complimentary volume to my recent read on Modernism you could hardly find a better book than this. What’s more book of the recent VSI books seemed to be spookily linked to my other holiday read on consumer and counter culture. I did feel a definite shiver of coincidence (or just the Theory of Large Numbers maybe?).

Typically with these things the author had some fun (and no doubt a modicum of pain with definitions – placing the Avant-Garde within the Modern Art ‘movement’ and attempting to distinguish it from other forms of modernism. As with many attempts of definition it was only partially successful and may have just muddied the waters a little. Human cultural endeavours such as art are hard enough to keep within defined boundaries without adding the complication of what work or artist (or period of the artist’s work) that is – or is not – inside the Avant-Garde depending, of course, who is (and when) doing the defining. It’s all rather messy and complex – a bit like the art itself….. I’m looking at you Jackson Pollock.

Funnily, and rather tongue in cheek, there’s a very detailed and complex chart on page 104 with dates and many arrows pointing all over the place which attempts to show how each area of art – Cubism, Surrealism, Bauhaus, Dadaism, Futurism and some of the lessor known varieties of Modernism – all fit in together (if you could accurately draw such a chart as if detailing the evolution of Whales or Mice). Of course being the Avant-Garde and, by definition, on the cutting edge of artistic impression the artists themselves constantly felt the need to push the boundaries of what is art (a very good question in itself) further and further until the public and the critics howled in protest – as some of them actually did! It was often only when such a reaction greeted an artist’s exhibition that they knew they were on the right track. It was even sweeter when other artists said that one of their colleagues had gone too far this time and was to be expelled from their particular little group for unorthodoxy!

I did enjoy my little forays into the unfamiliar territory of modern art history and criticism. It’s not something I would normally read about so I just had to jump in with both feet. OK, they’re ‘only’ VSI books but still I learnt a fair bit but mostly learnt not to be afraid of the subject quite as much as I had been previously. No doubt I’ll investigate a few of the books recommended in the bibliographies and surprise myself (and you?) a little more.