FOCUS ON ART

THE LIFE AND DEATH OF THE AVANT GARDE

Art history tells us that the visual arts are both a mirror and a manifestation of the times in which they were created and yet it is the avant garde artist as creative outsider who is remembered the most fondly. Historians like to promote such artists as precursors to a new generation and emphasis the supposedly linear nature of the process but is the artist as radical or even a group as avant garde even a valid idea anymore? A monochromatic square, a painting without a formal subject, a line of footprints stretching across a field, a large object wrapped in plastic sheeting and a work that exists as concept only all redefined what art could be and raised the individual artist above the pack. These approaches all exist simultaneously today clouding the existence of a dominant direction.  Can anything being produced in this era of pluralism once again shock the audience as did much of what occurred before the age of post modernism? Is there anywhere left to go artistically or have we reached the limit of artistic breakthroughs or the possibility of another venture into radical form? Innovation seems a long way off when anything and everything can be considered as art.

It isn’t just the question of an avant garde though, so much as what has been lost. Over a century or more faith in authority of all descriptions has waned and the authentic is increasingly under fire with AI. There is of course nothing new about people believing that they are being insulted by confronting art they do not understand particularly when there is an absence of craft, but it is the loss of moral authority and an encompassing social framework achieved through tradition, that has undermined any coherent set of priorities that might determine meaning. Artists now stand alone with little or no direction from society and everything in flux.

For all of that though art is successful. Today a Bacon sold for $63m and the number of artists in a city such as NY have increased exponentially to say nothing of the hordes hawking their websites and ‘how to do it’ videos. As a would-be artist you can learn how to be a Cubist, or Fauvist or Abstract Expressionist in a series of lessons [and results are guaranteed]. There is nothing radical about what was once avant garde and while superficial novelty abounds such as a swinging paint bucket creating patterns, the links between art and society are increasingly tenuous while the artist lacks the means to evaluate either the art being produced or the goals that it might serve. Art is a lucrative business subject to corporate management techniques [art fairs and artist representation], public relations and professional marketing of the artist and his/her work and as with pop/rock music industry origins, breaking new ground on radio stations is not on the agenda so much as finding a formula that sells product. While there are undoubtedly still avant garde artists in both art and music, their best hope is self-marketing and a niche audience which undoubtedly exists in this pluralist environment of 2025 – if you can find it.

The world in which the artist finds themselves today is quite unlike anything seen in history and even the turbulence of Modern Art with its constant changes in direction seems almost comfortable and familiar through constant reproduction of familiar works and classifications. There is a sense of ennui, if not sensory overload, and while crowds flock to museums and major exhibitions to attain their slice of culture it is to the known and not the radical that they clamour. Even when a recent artist such as a Phyllida Barlow filled a space with accumulated ‘junk’, there was no shock. It was in a gallery which made it automatically art and acceptable even if no one understood what she was doing. It wasn’t avant garde because the expectation of ‘junk’ filling a space had become a norm. People can no longer be shocked by anything. What the porn industry did for film making in freeing it of any scruples, artists did in claiming anything and everything as art. Duchamp would have seen the quality of the joke.

A working definition of Avant Garde is ‘new and experimental ideas and methods in art, music, or literature’. Of late AI has been claimed as just this and there is no doubt that what is being created by an algorithm does produce extraordinary results, but the ‘art’ is as far removed from human experience as the most radical of the modern ideas. Perhaps what comes closest is Surrealism. The pre-computer age exploration of the depths of the human psyche in part fuelled by psychoanalysis, took art into the realm of fantasy. ‘Art’ produced under the influence of psychosis-inducing drugs could also qualify as well as the work of outsiders but while Surrealism had been one of three pillars of modern art, the much- propagated forms of it in music videos, mind-bending sci-fi and experimental theatre have essentially diluted it to the point where it is considered normal.

Is there an answer? For all of the artistic experimentation of the last hundred years and the plurality available today, in painting there has always been an undercurrent of realist work. In the public perception such art will remain as a sort of pinnacle of excellence despite its retrograde sensibilities. There is also a need for traditional telling of stories – just look at any airport bookshop – and a continuation of pop/rock music which follows an AABA formula. It would seem that in these areas of popular culture the best we can hope for is another variation on a theme. The only exception in my mind is sculpture. Artists world-wide are finding ways to use non-traditional materials and methods and while artists from Picasso onwards experimented with the forms sculpture can take, the legacy has contributed to generations of new practitioners even within the figurative tradition. Sculpture though is unfortunately seen as decoration and no matter how radical the form standing on the landscape the best the artist can hope for is ‘isn’t that clever’.