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Advances in Social Sciences Research Journal – Vol. 10, No. 10
Publication Date: October 25, 2023
DOI:10.14738/assrj.1010.15800.
Fortuny-Agramunt, J. (2023). An Insight on the Inconsistency of the Theoretical Construction of Avant-garde Concept in 20th- Century Art. Advances in Social Sciences Research Journal, 10(10). 231-239.
Services for Science and Education – United Kingdom
An Insight on the Inconsistency of the Theoretical Construction of
Avant-garde Concept in 20th-Century Art
Jaume Fortuny-Agramunt
Faculty of Fine Arts, University of Barcelona, Barcelona, Spain
ABSTRACT
This paper analyses avant-garde art theory through the concept of originality,
understood as shock. The initial hypothesis is that this theoretical construction is a
misunderstanding because it neglects the body during the experience lived before
the work of art. It reminds us that if we are aware of our presence, it is thanks to the
fact that we are psychosomatic individuals. Even so, we tend to evaluate the work of
art from philosophical reflection rather than from analysing the form that excites
us. It shows how the materialisation of the work of art sought by the avant-garde
should have destroyed our cognitive baggage. It concludes that it only succeeded in
initiating a tendency in art towards rhetoric that reaches the present day, where
theoretical constructions are the only works of art. The emptiness of this avant- garde art theory concerning the touching causes its inconsequentiality, being left
without any other pretension as only art. The author relies on the fact that we
understand ourselves as people through our subjection to what we see to make us
understand that looking without feeling is a contradiction.
Keywords: Avant-garde theory, beauty, originality, Walter Benjamin, shock, aesthetic
cognition.
INTRODUCTION
Contemporary aesthetics developed out of the general crisis of the mid-nineteenth century. It
succeeded in displacing the traditional category of Beauty as the foundation of aesthetic
reflection and artistic praxis. Since then, the intersection between Aesthetics and Creativity has
increasingly assumed a supra-categorical role. Today, most dictionaries contain the
lexicographical definition of Aesthetics as the science of the beautiful. However, reality shows
how the beautiful ceases to personify aesthetic value in general and becomes a specific aesthetic
value of categorical description. The beautiful leaves a generic void space, superior in the
hierarchy- that is, supra-categorial- occupied by the axiom of romantic genius: originality.
The approach that aesthetic values can go beyond the limit imposed by beauty is already found
in the development of the aesthetic categories of the eighteenth century, for example with
Burke (A philosophical inquiry into the origin of the sublime and the sublime and the beautiful,
1757), Kant (Beobachtungen über das Gehül des Schönen und das Erhabenes, 1764),
Mendelssohn (Über das Erhabene und Naive, 1771), or Diderot (Recherches Philosophiques sur
l ́Origine et la Nature du Beau, 1772); it is Romanticism that establishes the repudiation between
Beauty and Art. The Aesthetics proposed by Hegel [1] provokes the critical moment of the
classical conception: the beautiful no longer functions as a predicate of a value judgment and
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Advances in Social Sciences Research Journal (ASSRJ) Vol. 10, Issue 10, October-2023
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consequently no longer involves a laudatory judgment. The distinction attributed to the subject
of an aesthetic quality gives way to a differentiated manifestation. Hegel's deep concern for
underlining the concept of autonomy in relation to the aesthetic domain sprouts: without
sensible attire, the idea no longer needs art. The Hegelian inheritance leads to a subject-object
relationship defined by the new strategy of the original as a supra-categorial status where new
categorical resources can be found: the beautiful, the monstrous, the sinister. Nevertheless,
here we will deal with the heritage of the avant-garde concept ― the surprising and the obscene
[2] ― using ready-made Fontaine as a catalyst for conjecture as its best example.
TO DEEPEN THE MEANING OF AVANT-GARDISM
The transition from the nineteenth to the twentieth century changed Weltanschauung, which
shifted from the concept of genius to the concept of the contentious. Although the Romantic
resource of eccentric and self-inspective manifestation in the face of reality is maintained, the
committed insertion takes power within it. Multiple formulations coincide with the same
axiological emergence: heroic avant-gardism. This emergence is, fundamentally, a cultural
phenomenon of a hostile, critical and combative sign, with opposition to the reification of
objective cultural forms as its primary reason. Nonetheless, if we want to go deeper into the
meaning of avant-gardism, it is unavoidable to turn to the origin of its meaning. Avant-garde is
a military concept with later political deviations that a group of poets used metaphorically in
the middle of the 19th century [3]. At the beginning of the same century, the war theorist Carl
von Clausewitz [4] defined the vanguard as a shock force whose primary task was the
instantaneous destruction of the enemy. Spectating this linguistic sign of army strategy in
literature does not remain a simple syntactical convergence but rather engrosses its aesthetic
theory. The apology of provocation is intimately linked to militarism ― the war ― when the word
leaves the space of metaphor to occupy that of aggressive actions. This concept of aggression
does not intend to refer to the destructive and merciless action of the Futurists nor Tzara's
apology for the slap in the face. We must understand the aggressive as an aesthetic cult of fright
that seeks to satisfy an ambiguous pleasure through a presence with the character of shock.
In this sense, we cannot accept that the first avant-garde appeared in 1874 with the formation
of the Societé Anonyme group in Paris, which defended Impressionism. The rejection of Courbet
and Manet by the Salon des Indépendants gave rise to a creative activity which, by speculating
on reality, colour and the dissolving effects of light, only undertook the correction of form. The
importance of this (supposed) avant-garde lies in its capacity to contribute to the loss of visible
reality -in living the shipwreck of the so-called object. From there, we establish that Seurat's
systematisation gave rise to Ce zanne's ordinations, which would influence Cubism, and the
latter would affect Geometric Abstraction. On the other side, there would be the current of
Impressionism with the dissident genius of Van Gogh, who would bring to painting the
existential drama that through Les Nabis group and Fauvism would reach figurative
expressionist exasperation, Dadaism, Surrealism and the whole of Abstract Expressionism. In
the 1960s-70s, new avant-garde movements appeared (with the adjective heroic being replaced
by speculative) as a development of the two trends mentioned above.
On the one hand, New Figuration, Pop Art, Neo-Surrealism, Hyperrealism and Critical-Social
Realism; on the other, New Abstraction, Op Art, Minimal Art, Kinetic-Luminescent Art, and
Computer Art. With the latest trends, we have Ambient, Conceptual Art, Land art, Process art,
and even Happening. The extensive list obliges us to consider three fundamental currents:
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Fortuny-Agramunt, J. (2023). An Insight on the Inconsistency of the Theoretical Construction of Avant-garde Concept in 20th-Century Art. Advances
in Social Sciences Research Journal, 10(10). 231-239.
URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.14738/assrj.1010.15800
Constructivism, Informalism and Populism. The first is within a geometric order. The second is
within the exploration of matter. And the third within a social testimony. This long trail
continues to negate Dada and its surrealist consequence, demonstrating that we are still
trapped in the institutionalised postulation of the historical and cultural continuum to maintain
contradictory justifications of an ambiguous theoretical launching.
This launching comes from dragging along the Hegelian legacy of the split
between Kuntswissenschaft and Äesthetik. The historical fact of the destruction of the aesthetic
reflection of the classical world, with the replacement of Beauty as a supra category by the
differentiated search for personal originality, entails a dissimilation of two levels.
• On the first level, originality functions as the predicate of a value judgement. That is,
originality is the aesthetic quality that brings admiration.
• On the second level, it simply asserts that something is original with the sole intention
of differentiating it from other results with other aesthetic qualities.
Here, we no longer find a value judgment but only a judgment of reality. Unfortunately, the latter
is the one we usually explain in terms of the language used in analysing the aesthetic field of the
avant-garde. Three intentional coincidences that unite them justify the previous trace of
(supposedly) avant-garde movements: founding art as a specific language, as a means of social
transformation, or as a means of expression of the subject, three foundations that Combalia [5]
calls the analytical option, the constructive option, and the expressive option.
The fact that the normative value judgement no longer exists explains the use of the descriptive
value judgement. Without a categorical realm with an underlying ideal aspiration, originality is
defined relationally in the corresponding artistic context. However, the problem arises when we
realise that originality is a concomitant element of artistic praxis, and then we decide to make
it an essential and defining requirement. Kant determines originality as an attribute of genius.
Fichte establishes the decisive formulation of the infinite absolute I AM: the spirit is like the God
of the Bible, who creates everything out of nothing. That entails transferring the significance of
artistic praxis to an activity's result. The artistic object is now what matters ― consequently, its
creative matrix ― making it possible to accentuate the concept of originality to the point of
pronouncing that of innovation. We have thus arrived at an unfortunately stereotyped
cumulative ideology of avant-gardism, considering it simply as a linear conception of history
where each subsequent moment surpasses the preceding one and novelty becomes the guiding
criterion of its analysis.
Innovation is Misunderstood as a Potential for Shock
This misconception of avant-gardism creates a view of art's becoming, such as that enthroned
by Hughes [6]. There is a constant search for innovative work through identifying its shock
potential, and for Hughes is Duchamp who achieves the most remarkable index. The Fontaine
art object is chosen (discerned) for its significance (concept). But if, as we saw earlier, there is
no standardised supra-categorical sphere, the term originality cannot take on an entitative
sense. Consequently, the evaluative-prescriptive dimension in which Hughes finds himself is
only constituted by an estimative plane because the gnoseological-descriptive aspect of the
categorial realm ―that systematises when something is original ― cannot merge with the
axiological aspect for lack of a valuational plane. This lack of a value judgement in favour of a