The book I read to research this post was The Avant Garde A Very Short Introduction by David Cottington which is a very good book which I bought from kindle. Nowadays Avant Garde is a common and well known term in the English language and is often used to sell something supposed to be hip and trendy. Almost everyone has heard of Avant Garde as it pertains to art with there still being Avant Garde art produced. The original term was a French military term and at the time of the French Revolution artists in France would often take military terms and apply them to their paintings. Originally Avant Garde was used to describe the type of politics in France at that time and it was pretty anarchic. Later it would be applied to other things like music and design not just art. France had 3 Republics before they realized what they needed to do was relax censorship and up until that time anyone starting a newspaper had a substantial deposit in case they broke any censorship rules. This rule was relaxed but soon afterwards there was the Russian Revolution which took a lot of inspiration from the French. They started looking at experimenting with non-conformist art. Art had certain rules that Avant-Garde art tried to do away with. There is a notorious so called piece of music by John Cage that doesn’t contain a single note and is in the Guiness Book Of Records as the shortest piece of music ever written. Later on in places like New York there was an Avant Garde revival in the wake of the AIDS epidermic where many people thought the government weren’t doing enough to prevent it’s spread. One issue was they should let victims try experimental drugs not yet on the market. Let’s face it they had nothing to lose. The Catholic Church has come in for criticism because it doesn’t believe in contraception. Later artists started experimenting with African Art and this again was called Avant Garde. Often art is polically motivated and it is difficult to separate the two. Other art movements such as Dadaism have often been referred to as Avant Garde. I really enjoyed this book and it does give you a lot to think about.
