Dictionaries link term – ‘avant-garde’ with terms like innovation in the arts or pioneers
-Idea of doing art/design work that is progressive – innovating
-but it also refers to the idea of there being a group of people being innovative
- 1. Being avant-garde in the work you do – challenging innovating etc
Idea of modernising, culture leading the way to improve.
- 2. being part of a group – being a member of the avant-garde
Collective definition of a group of people
The concept of ‘Avant-Garde’ being neutralised almost to the point of meaning.
Marcel Duchamp – fountain, taken a urinal and put it in a gallery and called it art.
Mona Lisa print – put a moustache and beard on it. In French – "she’s got a huge ass" – talking about the loss of meaning in art.
Aiming to challenge conventional understanding of what art is.
Questioning who gives meaning to art and the ‘Avant-Garde’.
Talking about the things that surround the art that make it art.
He would only choose objects that he felt neutral towards – challenge conceptions about what we take for granted for art, or what the institutions calls art. It seeks to push forward our understanding or art. Radical/progressive.
‘Fauves’ Wild Beasts – Shocking, provided themselves on not having gone to art school, doing something different, something they defined.
Re-defining style and techniques with a traditional subject, simple portrait.
Conventional, accepted form of art, very historic, seeking to hold conventions. Fantasy scene.
‘Avant-Garde’ similar ideas of experimentation run through the creative subjects. (quotes from LCA prospectus)
The princiiples of this institution (different artists and designers) are the principles of fine art, no matter what your subject, i.e. textiles, design etc. May have been a reason for changing the name from ‘Leeds College of Art and Design’ to ‘Leeds College of Art’.
Hierarchy of artistic disciplines, art is always at the top, design lower down.
Learn a system of rules, and once they are learnt you can bend and break them.
Henry Wallace – Death of Chatterton– Young, heroic, good-looking poet. Trying to write the immortal poem, show a path for society to follow.
The idea that he is ahead of an un-feeling cruel world.
A myth of the artist as tortured genius – romanticism, celebrates the human potential of the individual. Ideas that the artist is somehow special.
Only people to buy art – the rich, art was less about individual creative genius but more about visually representing the class of the rich. Examples – Kurt Kobaine.
– Leads to a system of elitism, that some people are better than others.
Stonebreakers – different ideas of ‘Avant-Garde’, paintings of the real world, doesn’t represent the upper class world. Challenges conventions, the appropriate social message to art, telling people that they are worthy to be subjects of art. Political form of ‘Avant-Garde’
Art for Art’s Sake – Whistler Nocturne in Black and Gold, The Falling Rocket (1875)
No be concerned on the world, create a system of aesthetic experimentation, where we only think about things such as beauty and form. The more we look at them the more they will become socially accepted.
Idea of art being something greater than what the world could possibly understand. This path of ‘Avant-Garde’ can separate from society
The rise of the critic – Engaging with someone who is telling you what’s good and what’s bad,
Significant form.
Clive Bell – “The relations and combinations of lines and colours which when organised give the power to move someone aesthetically.”
Value is given by tastemakers
The “Art for Arts Sake” approach dominated much thinking and practice in the 20th C, Art
Pollock Lavendar Mist (1950) – Chatterton myth, all art was developing to this, pure aesthetic emotion portraying drama (something pretentious) where as most people wouldn’t understand it in any other than decorative sense.
Americans commissioned Pollock, showing ideas of the expression and freedom of capitalism.
A major problem for the avant0garde is that it seems to necessitate ‘elitism’
Beatrice Warde (1955) ‘The crystal Goblet’ – talking about the fate of the designer, it shouldn’t be seen, its failing.
http://www.scribd.com/doc/18521082/Crystal-Goblet-Beatrice-Warde
“good design is invisible” – one method is appropriate
Jock Kinnear (1963) – Transport font
Communication design, audience centred, utterly succeeds at graphic design because of its individuality.
Stephan Sagmiester (1997)
Different concepts and ideas, possibly the idea of ‘Avant garde’, or art for arts sake.
What is Kitsch?
“Kitsch is a form of art that is considered an inferior, tasteless copy of an extant style of art or a worthless imitation of art of recognized value. The concept is associated with the deliberate use of elements that may be thought of as cultural icons while making cheap mass-produced objects that are unoriginal. Kitsch also refers to the types of art that are aesthetically deficient (whether or not being sentimental, glamorous, theatrical, or creative) and that make creative gestures, which merely imitate the superficial appearances of art through repeated conventions and formulae. Excessive sentimentality often is associated with the term.
The term kitsch is considered derogatory, denoting works executed to pander to popular demand alone and purely for commercial purposes rather than works created as self-expression by an artist. The term is generally reserved for unsubstantial and gaudy works that are calculated to have popular appeal and are considered pretentious and shallow rather than genuine artistic efforts.”
Vernacular typography – typography designed but not by designers or typographers.
Saying art can only be placed in specific, significant galleries or spaces, really elitist view.
Simplification of style – repainted masterpieces for the modern eye – condensed from a huge painting. New style isn’t faithful to the modern style, gothic font not appropriate all make it kitsch.
Commemoration – Kitsch because of its sentimentality, supposed to become something other than a tea cup.
Thomas Kinkade – painter of light
Extremely popular but disgusting, does this make it Kitsch?
Carl Andre ‘Equivalent VIII’ Bricks in the Tate
Adbusters – they do culture jamming, changing billboards portraying different ideas through similar design.
Graphic design also cares about communication,
Why does our work have to be ‘original’?
It is possible to be ‘avant-garde’ and/or ‘original’?
If I make my work socially committed so that people can understand it can be it still be avant-garde / innovative?
