The Avant-garde

Avant-garde, comes from the French military word advancing guard or vanguard. The vanguard was a highly trained group of soldiers that would advance ahead of the main army, plotting the route for the rest to follow. This term then was then strongly associated with the arts, artists who would apply the same theory to their work. Pushing boundaries and being experimental, focusing primarily on expanding the frontiers of aesthetic experience, also linked with radical social reforms.

‘The Art Critic’ by Raoul Hausmann (1919-1920) is a good example of “Avant-garde’. It is an example of the Dada movement, a cultural movement that began in Zurich during World War I. Many Dadaists were anti war (many being veterans of the War), the movement among other things was a protest against the barbarism of the War, its works characterized as deliberately irrational and a rejection to prevailing standards of art, their art was to be anti art, to be the opposite of the expected standard. The movement later influenced movements like Surrealism.

‘The Art Critic’ Raoul Hausmann (1919-1920) uses a collage of materials, crayon, ink stamp and photo-montage. Backing away from traditional painting techniques, could be said to be a form of protest against familiar standards. the picture could also be said to be mocking stereotypical artists of the day.

Marc Quinn a member of the YBAs (Young British Artists) made “Self” (ongoing project), a self-portrait of his own head using his own blood. His first was made in his late 20’s in 1991 and he continues to make a new one every 5 years, which documents Quinn’s own physical transformation and deterioration. Each sculpture is made using 10 pints of blood, I believe this to be a very experimental and innovative piece of art and don’t think you could get a more accurate self-portrait considering its actually made from the artist!