The Avant-Garde Tradition

Writing in her 2002 book, 21st Century Modernism, Marjorie Perloff makes a strong case for a renewal of experimentation in the arts along the lines of the early 20th century. In the introduction to the book, Perloff writes:

But what if, despite the predominance of a tepid and unambitious Establishment poetry [and art], there were a powerful avant-garde that takes up, once again, the experimentation of the early twentieth century? 1

The experimentation that Perloff refers to continues to resonate and has now been underway for over twenty years, not only in poetry but in the visual arts as well. The influence of Dada and Surrealism, among other early 20th century movements, is apparent in much of the art of the past two decades. The legacy of Marcel Duchamp seems particularly relevant to this turn of events, given his contributions to both Dada and Surrealism, and perhaps more importantly, his standing as the prototypical conceptual artist. It’s interesting that Perloff points out that conceptual artist Joseph Kosuth wrote that the question regarding the function of art was first raised by Marcel Duchamp’s unassisted readymade and that Duchamp’s radical gambit shifted the focus from, in Kosuth’s words: “a question of morphology to a question of function.” Kosuth’s contention was that the readymade changed the very nature of art and laid the groundwork for conceptualism. This is a plausible assertion; however, a great deal has changed since Kosuth’s take on the beginnings of conceptual art. Referring to conceptually oriented artists following Duchamp, Kosuth further adds:

The value of particular artists after Duchamp can be weighed according to how much they questioned the nature of art ...And to do this one cannot concern oneself with the handed-down language of traditional art. 2

Really? Kosuth’s assumption that one cannot question the nature of art with the “handed down” language of traditional art has not held up. Investigating the conditions that make art possible is not, nor has it ever been limited to the physical and/or theoretical context in which the work is received. No artwork worth its salt, conceptual or otherwise, springs fully formed from nothing to be given pride of place by virtue of some contextual arrangement. There are always precedents, however obscure. The art that precedes any given work, even by decades, must also be considered in terms of what it might contribute to the formal and/or stylistic evolution of art, but also, significantly, how these considerations might further questions about the nature of art. Couple this with the fact that conceptual art itself has become a tradition, something that Kosuth may not have anticipated. Much conceptual art, or at least art that traffics these days in the ‘conceptual mode,” participates in a kind of “handed-down language” concerning the primacy of ideas. This realization invariably raises the question of how relevant artistic traditions are in any sense of the term. Who today would argue that early 20th century avant-gardes are not now traditions? The questions are: Are artistic traditions relevant for those interested in or involved with art that claims an avant-garde status in the 21st century? And are these traditions relevant today, or even necessary at a time when the commodification of art and/or socio-political agendas seem to be driving much of the culture?

The socio-political and economic pressures facing many commercial art galleries as well as museums, both public and private, seem to be undermining the promise of contemporary art to deliver more than momentary distractions by either pandering to audiences by showcasing the obscurities and solipsism’s of so-called “cutting-edge” artists or instructing people in their moral responsibilities, or both. In light of this, are artistic traditions, particularly those of the early 20th century avant-garde, still useful or even necessary to both artists and arts professionals? Is the commitment to creative experimentation that challenges the aesthetic and/or intellectual sensibilities of the art viewing public without resorting to the elitist preoccupations of many curators and critics still important? Many contemporary artists, curators, critics, and collectors are cognizant of the imprint left by the advanced art of the last century, but many are also wary of the potential influence that those traditions might have, and not just in terms of upsetting the blue-chip applecart. Many of these people do not want to fall into the trap of merely looking back with a nostalgic eye in the mistaken belief that repeating the creative experimentation of the past is enough to ensure a renewal of contemporary art. Of course, whether “repetition” is really possible seems beside the point; it’s the perception of exhibiting art that doesn’t have the requisite “newness” and thus the proper cultural collateral that matters.

The challenge facing artists and arts professionals today is: How to look back reflectively on the art of the early to mid-20th century and build on the insights of past generations of artists and others while at the same time looking forward in the hope that art, theirs and the art of others, might more fully engage people and not just expand its audience for political and/or economic reasons. A lot of contemporary art seems to be losing its appeal, at least among the general public bewildered by some of the art world shenanigans that only insiders are privy to. Add to this the fact that too much contemporary art is facile or slick, or with messages aimed at “informed or informing” audiences; art that often fails to fully engage the aesthetic and/or intellectual capabilities of people in fundamental ways. Their thoughts, feelings, senses and connections to the world and others need not be buried under layers of arcane gibberish or assaulted by social agendas that often leave the art and the art viewing public wanting. In other words, the art is either shallow and pretentious, or driven by motives that overshadow all else. Again, much of it seems obsessed with an endless pursuit of “the new,” or “newness” for its own sake, something that is a hallmark of capitalist culture. The early avant-garde pursued the new not for its own sake motivated by sophistry or solipsism, but in the interests of advancing the insights of previous artists and poets. The underlying assumption today is that “the new” is always “unexpected” and thus truly “creative.” Being open to chance seems essential to creativity, but it doesn’t end there. Creativity always involves building on the unexpected by returning to an experimental aesthetic that offers some continuity with the past. And this is where tradition might play a role.

It is helpful to pause on Kosuth’s contention about artistic tradition and what has clearly become the tradition of conceptual art. I have made this argument elsewhere, but it is worth repeating. I believe that there was a period beginning in the early 1970s when conceptual art began to evolve. That evolution began with what might be described as an overlap where conceptual approaches to art making were being displaced by cognitive approaches. This displacement marks the emergence of a post-conceptual art, not an art of diminution or entropy, as Kosuth and others might argue, but a logical development that offered continuity and innovation. At the time this new attitude toward art making was bridging the divide between Kosuth’s morphology and function, or if you will, appearance and conception. In other words, conceptual art was evolving through, among other things, the recognition of the importance of modes of apprehension other than just thought in the most reductive sense when making and attending to works of art. Artists concerned primarily with ideas were beginning to expand their practices to encompass ideation in formal, structural, and material ways. Furthermore, given this development, many artists intuited that the “handed-down language” of traditional art might even be repurposed through post-conceptual practices. Majorie Perloff writes that this move was apparently anticipated by Duchamp:

Indeed, Duchamp’s conceptualism is best understood, not as the negation of art as such, but as the drive to render unto art the things that are art – which is to say, the realm of the mind as well as the eye, the realm of ideas and intellect as well as visual image. The resulting revolution has transformed both visual and verbal language and is therefore central to poetics in the twentieth century.3

The interesting thing about Perloff’s observation is that it describes both the beginning and the end of conceptual art proper. At its apogee by the end of the 1960s conceptual art had fully embraced a reductive approach perhaps best described by Lucy Lippard as its “dematerialized” phase. This was, of course, an untenable theory because taken to extremes the artist is left with his or her own thoughts and little else. One might, for instance, propose a lecture as one’s art, communicating ideas verbally, which may or may not be recorded, but beyond that the materiality of art seems a prerequisite to its conveyance to others.

The question of the “repurposing” of artistic traditions still needs to be addressed, particularly those of the early twentieth century avant-garde. Early avant-garde practice or practices seemed to dispense with the traditions that preceded the new experimental attitudes toward artmaking that ushered in Modernism. But those new attitudes toward artmaking never fully dispensed with traditional knowledge because anything new depended upon a contrast with what came before it; an implicit acknowledgement that retained some trace of earlier traditions. It is apparent that the early avant-garde had roots in the Symbolist period of the late nineteenth century, drawing much nourishment from the symbolist poets and artists of that time. Any discussion of the application of early avant-garde traditions to contemporary art must also account for this even earlier period, while discounting the metaphysical or mystical presumptions or preoccupations of symbolist artists and poets on contextual grounds. A Wikipedia article on “Symbolism” suggests the influence of nineteenth century symbolism on the avant-garde by way of modernism:

Symbolism had a significant influence on modernism (Remy de Gourmont considered the Imagists were its descendants) and its traces can also be detected in the work of many modernist poets, including T.S. Eliot, Wallace Stevens, Conrad Aiken, Hart Crane, and W. B. Yeats in the anglophone tradition and Rubin Dario in Hispanic literature. The early poems of Guillaume Apollinaire have strong affinities with symbolism. Early Portuguese Modernism was heavily influenced by Symbolist poets, especially Camilo Pessanha; Fernando Pessoa had many affinities to Symbolism, such as mysticism, musical versification, subjectivism and transcendentalism.

A lot of contemporary art, much of it practiced through the filter of 1960s and 70s conceptual art, carries on in an experimental spirit. Very little of it, however, reveals implicit ties to the early avant-garde and its echo of the symbolist preoccupations of the 19th century. These traditions are important, an importance that has little or nothing to do with nostalgia, pastiche, or the overruling of innovation in favor of resurrecting moribund “retro” styles of artmaking. This is not about reviving or simply repeating what has already been done. Under the entry on “Tradition” in A Companion To Aesthetics (1992) the authors write:

Simply to repeat what has gone before can seem insipid, or worse. But once one allows that individual creativity and expression and originality are important artistic values, it becomes impossible to say in advance just which departures from tradition are to be sanctioned at any given moment 4

Individual creativity, and originality, remain important values, but individual creativity and originality have never existed in any absolute sense. While these values have been somewhat reinstated since the heyday of poststructuralism, individual creativity and  originality are still suspect in the eyes of some artists and others who rightfully recognize that influences and borrowings are an inherent part of art making. These concepts have always been contentious; not everyone will agree on what art is inventive and unprecedented. Therefore, it’s important to establish some footing for these concepts in relation to an artist’s practice. What does it mean to be creative and original? To begin with, an evolving sense of self seems essential. While most of us evolve or mature in various ways over time, not everyone is blessed with the skill and imagination to realize art that engages others in significant ways. As cliched as it might sound, I believe that being creative and original begins with being true to oneself. It is a truth that requires insight into and honesty about what one is doing, understanding that one’s predecessors can be neither fully embraced nor fully ignored. To err one way or the other results in a kind of psychic stasis, a condition that is hardly conducive to true creativity and originality. This static sense of self often depends upon an emphasis on “self-identity,” a psychic condition that when taken to extremes is actually the flip side of the “loss of self,” and no less illusory. The key for creative people, or anyone sailing these deep waters, is to find psychic balance, to chart a middle course between one’s subjective concerns and the realities of society that might be enlivened through art and other means by expanding the cognitive potential of people.    

Artists, like other thinkers, build on the work of others. The larger point here is that without originality in a relative sense how are we to sanction or even recognize the departures from a tradition that are valuable? My concern as an artist is not so much in departing from tradition, in this case, the traditions of the early 20th century Avant Garde and more generally, conceptual art. Rather, my artistic practice is committed to honoring and maintaining the spirit of conceptual art through the use of found material and appropriation techniques that might also reflect something of the work of the early avant-garde, particularly surrealism. Advancing a conceptual spirit or attitude is made possible by revisiting the musings of earlier artists like Duchamp and viewing or reviewing their art in a new light. Traditions in the arts not only offer continuity with our past, they can be used to advance our cognitive potential. This advancement is my creative mission.

1. Marjorie Perloff, 21st – Century Modernism, The “New” Poetics, Black Well Publishing 2002, p. 4-5.

2. Ibid., p. 83

 3. Ibid., p. 84

 4. A Companion To Aesthetics, “Tradition,” Blackwell Publishers, 1992, p. 433