The Challenge of the Avant-Garde is the fourth of six books in the series Art and its Histories, which form the main texts of an Open University course. The course has been designed for students who are new to the discipline but will also appeal to those who have undertaken some study in this area. This volume traces the challenge posed to the academic canon by the emergent avant-garde of the early and mid-nineteenth century.It looks at significant shifts in the development of the concept, both in moves away from the sense of social leadership to a desire for artistic autonomy in the later nineteenth century and then a reverse movement to bridge the gap between art and life in the revolutionary avant-gardes of the early twentieth century. The book closes with an examination of the eventual incorporation of the avant-garde as a form of modern canon by the eve of World War II. Throughout, it seeks to relate the discourse of artistic avant-gardism in all its forms to contemporary social and political histories.

In Modernism, Expressionism and Theories of the Avant Garde, Richard Murphy mobilises theories of the postmodern to challenge our understanding of the avant-garde. He assesses the importance of the avant-garde for contemporary culture and for the debates among theorists of postmodernism such as Jameson, Eagleton, Lyotard and Habermas. Murphy reconsiders the classic formulation of the avant-garde in Lukacs and Bloch, especially their discussion of aesthetic autonomy, and investigates the relationship between art and politics via a discussion of Marcuse, Adorno and Benjamin. Combining close textual readings of a wide range of films as well as works of literature, it draws on a rich array of critical theories, such as those of Bakhtin, Todorov, MacCabe, Belsey and Raymond Williams. This interdisciplinary project will appeal to all those interested in modernist and avant-garde movements of the early twentieth century, and provides a critical rethinking of the present-day controversy regarding postmodernity.

How did the concept of the avant-garde come into existence? How did it impact on the performing arts? How did the avant-garde challenge the artistic establishment and avoid the pull of commercial theatre, gallery and concert-hall circuits? How did performance artists respond to new technological developments? Placing key figures and performances in their historical, social and aesthetic context, Günter Berghaus offers an accessible introduction to post-war avant-garde performance. Written in a clear, engaging style, and supported by text boxes and illustrations throughout, this volume explains the complex ideas behind avant-garde art and evocatively brings to life the work of some of its most influential performance artists. Covering hot topics such as multi-media and body art performances, this text is essential reading for students of theatre studies and performance.

This book offers the first in-depth look at avant-garde theatre in the United States from the early 1950s to the 1990s looking at its origins and its theoretical foundations through an examination of literature, cinema and art.

The Avant-Garde and Geopolitics in Latin America examines the canonical Latin American avant-garde texts of the 1920s and 1930s in novels, travel writing, journalism, and poetry, and presents them in a new light as formulators of modern Western culture and precursors of global culture. Particular focus is placed on the work of Roberto Arlt and Mario de Andrade as exemplars of the movement. Fernando J. Rosenberg provides a theoretical historiography of Latin American literature and the role that modernity and avant-gardism played in it. He finds significant parallels between the cultural battles of the interwar years in Latin America and current debates over the role of the peripheral nation-state within the culture of globalization. Rosenberg establishes that the Latin American avant-garde evolved on its own terms, in polemic dialogue with the European movements, critiquing modernity itself and developing a global geopolitical awareness. In the process these writers created a bridge between postcolonial and postmodern culture, forming a distinct movement that continues its influence today.

This book offers a critical reinterpretation of the Spanish avant-garde, focusing on narrative, transculturality, and intermediality. Narrative, because it prioritizes the analysis of prose over poetry, against the traditional use of critical literature on the subject up to this point. Transculturality, because the Spanish avant-garde simply cannot be understood without the acknowledgement of its multi-linguistic reality and the transnational scope of the experience of Modernism in Europe – of which Spain was an integral yet underexposed component. And intermediality, because the interrelations of painting, photography, film, and literature articulate a correlation and mutual affect among different media, creating a rich cultural tapestry that needs to be addressed. Contributors: Rosa Berland, Jennifer Duprey, Marcos Eymar, Regina Galasso, Eduardo Gregori, Juan Herrero-Senés, John McCulloch, Andrés Pérez-Simón, Lynn Purkey, Domingo Ródenas de Moya, Evelyn Scaramella and Antonio Sáez Delgado.

Avant-garde poetry in the Antipodes causes all sorts of trouble for literary history. It is an avant-garde that seems to arrive too late and yet right on time. In 1897, Christopher Brennan made his own version of Un Coup de Des, the same year Mallarme published it in Cosmopolis. In the 1940s, the same period avant-gardism was declared dead or fatally injured due to the Ern Malley affair, Harry Hooton began writing a significant body of experimental poetry. From the 1950s to the 1970s, Australian Dada emerged 'belatedly' through figures like Jas H. Duke (Tristan Tzara had previously sung Aboriginal songs at the Cabaret Voltaire in 1916). First Nations and Migrant poets then began reinventing avant-garde poetry in the twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. This book maintains that such a confounding literary history poses a distinct challenge to the theories of the avant-gardes we have become accustomed to and changes our perspective of avant-garde time.