Avant - garde - wikipedia Avant - garde For other uses, see Avant - garde ( disambiguation ). The Love of Zero, a 1927 avant - garde short film by Robert Florey The avant - garde ( from French, `` advance guard '' or `` vanguard '', literally `` fore - guard '' ) are people or works that are experimental, radical, or unorthodox with respect to art, culture, or society. It may be characterized by nontraditional, aesthetic innovation and initial unacceptability, and it may offer a critique of the relationship between producer and consumer. The avant - garde pushes the boundaries of what is accepted as the norm or the status quo, primarily in the cultural realm. The avant - garde is considered by some to be a hallmark of modernism, as distinct from postmodernism. Many artists have aligned themselves with the avant - garde movement and still continue to do so, tracing a history from Dada through the Situationists to postmodern artists such as the Language poets around 1981. The avant - garde also promotes radical social reforms. It was this meaning that was evoked by the Saint Simonian Olinde Rodrigues in his essay `` L'artiste, le savant et l'industriel '' ( `` The artist, the scientist and the industrialist '', 1825 ), which contains the first recorded use of `` avant - garde '' in its now customary sense : there, Rodrigues calls on artists to `` serve as ( the people 's ) avant - garde '', insisting that `` the power of the arts is indeed the most immediate and fastest way '' to social, political and economic reform. Contents 1 Theories 2 Relation to mainstream society 3 Examples 3.1 Music 3.2 Theatre 4 Avant - garde art movements 5 See also 6 References 7 Further reading 8 External links Theories Fountain, a 1917 avant - garde work of art by Marcel Duchamp ; photograph by Alfred Stieglitz Several writers have attempted to map the parameters of avant - garde activity. The Italian essayist Renato Poggioli provides one of the earliest analyses of vanguardism as a cultural phenomenon in his 1962 book Teoria dell'arte d'avanguardia ( The Theory of the Avant - Garde ). Surveying the historical, social, psychological and philosophical aspects of vanguardism, Poggioli reaches beyond individual instances of art, poetry, and music to show that vanguardists may share certain ideals or values which manifest themselves in the non-conformist lifestyles they adopt : He sees vanguard culture as a variety or subcategory of Bohemianism. Other authors have attempted both to clarify and to extend Poggioli 's study. The German literary critic Peter Bürger 's Theory of the Avant - Garde ( 1974 ) looks at the Establishment 's embrace of socially critical works of art and suggests that in complicity with capitalism, `` art as an institution neutralizes the political content of the individual work ''. Bürger 's essay also greatly influenced the work of contemporary American art - historians such as the German Benjamin H.D. Buchloh ( born 1941 ). Buchloh, in the collection of essays Neo-avantgarde and Culture Industry ( 2000 ) critically argues for a dialectical approach to these positions. Subsequent criticism theorized the limitations of these approaches, noting their circumscribed areas of analysis, including Eurocentric, chauvinist, and genre - specific definitions. Relation to mainstream society Further information : Mainstream See also : Media culture and Spectacle ( critical theory ) This section possibly contains original research. Please improve it by verifying the claims made and adding inline citations. Statements consisting only of original research should be removed. ( August 2016 ) The concept of avant - garde refers primarily to artists, writers, composers and thinkers whose work is opposed to mainstream cultural values and often has a trenchant social or political edge. Many writers, critics and theorists made assertions about vanguard culture during the formative years of modernism, although the initial definitive statement on the avant - garde was the essay Avant - Garde and Kitsch by New York art critic Clement Greenberg, published in Partisan Review in 1939. As the essay 's title suggests, Greenberg argued that vanguard culture has historically been opposed to `` high '' or `` mainstream '' culture, and that it has also rejected the artificially synthesized mass culture that has been produced by industrialization. Each of these media is a direct product of Capitalism -- they are all now substantial industries -- and as such they are driven by the same profit - fixated motives of other sectors of manufacturing, not the ideals of true art. For Greenberg, these forms were therefore kitsch : phony, faked or mechanical culture, which often pretended to be more than they were by using formal devices stolen from vanguard culture. For instance, during the 1930s the advertising industry was quick to take visual mannerisms from surrealism, but this does not mean that 1930s advertising photographs are truly surreal. Max Horkheimer ( front left ), Theodor Adorno ( front right ), and Jürgen Habermas in the background, right, in 1965 at Heidelberg, West Germany. Various members of the Frankfurt School argued similar views : thus Theodor Adorno and Max Horkheimer in their essay The Culture Industry : Enlightenment as Mass - Deception ( 1944 ), and also Walter Benjamin in his highly influential `` The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction '' ( 1935, rev. 1939 ). Where Greenberg used the German word kitsch to describe the antithesis of avant - garde culture, members of the Frankfurt School coined the term `` mass culture '' to indicate that this bogus culture is constantly being manufactured by a newly emerged culture industry ( comprising commercial publishing houses, the movie industry, the record industry, and the electronic media ). They also pointed out that the rise of this industry meant that artistic excellence was displaced by sales figures as a measure of worth : a novel, for example, was judged meritorious solely on whether it became a best - seller, music succumbed to ratings charts and to the blunt commercial logic of the Gold disc. In this way the autonomous artistic merit so dear to the vanguardist was abandoned and sales increasingly became the measure, and justification, of everything. Consumer culture now ruled. The avant - garde 's co-option by the global capitalist market, by neoliberal economies, and by what Guy Debord called The Society of the Spectacle, have made contemporary critics speculate on the possibility of a meaningful avant - garde today. Paul Mann 's Theory - Death of the Avant - Garde demonstrates how completely the avant - garde is embedded within institutional structures today, a thought also pursued by Richard Schechner in his analyses of avant - garde performance. Despite the central arguments of Greenberg, Adorno and others, various sectors of the mainstream culture industry have co-opted and misapplied the term `` avant - garde '' since the 1960s, chiefly as a marketing tool to publicise popular music and commercial cinema. It has become common to describe successful rock musicians and celebrated film - makers as `` avant - garde '', the very word having been stripped of its proper meaning. Noting this important conceptual shift, major contemporary theorists such as Matei Calinescu in Five Faces of Modernity : Modernism, Avant - garde, Decadence, Kitsch, Postmodernism ( 1987 ), and Hans Bertens in The Idea of the Postmodern : A History ( 1995 ), have suggested that this is a sign our culture has entered a new post-modern age, when the former modernist ways of thinking and behaving have been rendered redundant. Nevertheless, an incisive critique of vanguardism as against the views of mainstream society was offered by the New York critic Harold Rosenberg in the late 1960s. Trying to strike a balance between the insights of Renato Poggioli and the claims of Clement Greenberg, Rosenberg suggested that from the mid-1960s onward progressive culture ceased to fulfill its former adversarial role. Since then it has been flanked by what he called `` avant - garde ghosts to the one side, and a changing mass culture on the other '', both of which it interacts with to varying degrees. This has seen culture become, in his words, `` a profession one of whose aspects is the pretense of overthrowing it ''. Examples Music Main article : Avant - garde music Avant - garde in music can refer to any form of music working within traditional structures while seeking to breach boundaries in some manner. The term is used loosely to describe the work of any musicians who radically depart from tradition altogether. By this definition, some avant - garde composers of the 20th century include Arnold Schoenberg, Charles Ives, Igor Stravinsky, Anton Webern, George Antheil ( in his earliest works only ), Alban Berg, Henry Cowell ( in his earliest works ), Philip Glass, Harry Partch, John Cage, Morton Feldman, Richard Strauss ( in his earliest work ), Karlheinz Stockhausen, Edgard Varèse, and Iannis Xenakis. Although most avant - garde composers have been men, this is not exclusively the case. Women avant - gardists include Pauline Oliveros, Diamanda Galás, Meredith Monk, and Laurie Anderson. There is another definition of `` Avant - gardism '' that distinguishes it from `` modernism '' : Peter Bürger, for example, says avant - gardism rejects the `` institution of art '' and challenges social and artistic values, and so necessarily involves political, social, and cultural factors. According to the composer and musicologist Larry Sitsky, modernist composers from the early 20th century who do not qualify as avant - gardists include Arnold Schoenberg, Anton Webern, and Igor Stravinsky ; later modernist composers who do not fall into the category of avant - gardists include Elliott Carter, Milton Babbitt, György Ligeti, Witold Lutosławski, and Luciano Berio, since `` their modernism was not conceived for the purpose of goading an audience. '' Theatre Main article : Experimental theatre Whereas the avant - garde has a significant history in 20th - century music, it is more pronounced in theatre and performance art, and often in conjunction with music and sound design innovations, as well as developments in visual media design. There are movements in theatre history that are characterized by their contributions to the avant - garde traditions in both the United States and Europe. Among these are Fluxus, Happenings, and Neo-Dada. Avant - garde art movements Abstract expressionism COBRA Conceptual art Constructivism Cubism Dadaism De Stijl Expressionism Fauvism Fluxus Futurism Happening Hip - hop Imaginism Imagism Impressionism Incoherents Land art Les Nabis Lyrical Abstraction Minimal art Orphism Pop art Precisionism Primitivism Rayonism Suprematism Surrealism Symbolism Tachisme Universalismo Constructivo Viennese Actionism Vorticism See also Avant - garde -- Wikipedia book Anti-art Bauhaus Experimental film Experimental literature Experimental music Experimental theatre L'enfant terrible List of avant - garde artists Outsider art Russian avant - garde Vanguardism References ^ Jump up to : `` Avant - garde ''. Dictionary.com. Lexico Publishing Group, LLC. Retrieved 2007 - 03 - 14. ^ Jump up to : John Picchione, The New Avant - garde in Italy : Theoretical Debate and Poetic Practices ( Toronto : University of Toronto Press, 2004 ), p. 64 ISBN 978 - 0 - 8020 - 8994 - 6. Jump up ^ Peter Bürger, Theory of the Avant - Garde, English translation by Michael Shaw, Forward by Jochen Schulte - Sasse, Theory and History of Literature, Volume 4 ( Manchester University Press, University of Minnesota Press, 1984 ), Jump up ^ Kostelanetz, Richard, A Dictionary of the Avant - Gardes, Routledge, May 13, 2013, ISBN 1136806202 Jump up ^ UBU Web List of artists from Dada to the present day aligning themselves with the avant - garde Jump up ^ Matei Calinescu, The Five Faces of Modernity : Modernism, Avant - Garde, Decadence, Kitsch, Postmodernism ( Durham : Duke University Press, 1987 ),. Jump up ^ Sascha Bru and Gunther Martens, The Invention of Politics in the European Avant - Garde ( 1906 - 1940 ) ( Amsterdam : Rodopi, 2006 ), p. 21. ISBN 9042019093. Jump up ^ Renato Poggioli ( 1981 ). The Theory of the Avant - Garde. Belknap Press of Harvard University Press. ISBN 0 - 674 - 88216 - 4., translated from the Italian by Gerald Fitzgerald, 2nd ed. Jump up ^ Peter Bürger ( 1974 ). Theorie der Avantgarde. Suhrkamp Verlag. English translation ( University of Minnesota Press ) 1984 : 90. Jump up ^ Benjamin Buchloh, Neo-avantgarde and Culture Industry : Essays on European and American Art from 1955 to 1975 ( Cambridge : MIT Press, 2001 ) ISBN 0 - 262 - 02454 - 3. Jump up ^ James M. Harding : Cutting Performances : Collage Events, Feminist Artists, and the American Avant - Garde ( Ann Arbor : University of Michigan Press, 2010 ) :. Jump up ^ Clement Greenberg, `` Avant - Garde and Kitsch '', The Partisan Review Jump up ^ Walter Benjamin, `` The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction '' Archived 5 December 2006 at the Wayback Machine. by Jump up ^ Theodor W. Adorno ( 1963 ), `` Culture Industry Reconsidered : Selected Essays on Mass Culture '', London : Routledge, 1991 Jump up ^ Richard Schechner, `` The Conservative Avant - Garde. '' New Literary History 41.4 ( Autumn 2010 ) : 895 -- 913. Jump up ^ Calinescu 1987, ; Bertens 1995. Jump up ^ Harold Rosenberg, The De-Definition of Art : Action Art to Pop to Earthworks ( Chicago : University of Chicago Press, 1983 ), p. 219 ISBN 0 - 226 - 72673 - 8. Originally published : New York : Horizon Press, 1972 ; reprinted New York : Collier Books, 1973. Jump up ^ George Dickie, `` '' Symposium on Marxist Aesthetic Thought : Commentary on the Papers by Rudich, San Juan, and Morawski ``, Arts in Society : Art and Social Experience : Our Changing Outlook on Culture 12, no. 2 ( Summer -- Fall 1975 ) : p. 232. Jump up ^ David Nicholls ( ed. ), The Cambridge History of American Music ( Cambridge and New York : Cambridge University Press, 1998 ), 122 -- 24. ISBN 0 - 521 - 45429 - 8 ISBN 978 - 0 - 521 - 54554 - 9 ^ Jump up to : Jim Samson, `` Avant garde '', The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, second edition, edited by Stanley Sadie and John Tyrrell ( London : Macmillan Publishers, 2001 ). ^ Jump up to : Larry Sitsky, Music of the Twentieth - Century Avant - Garde : A Biocritical Sourcebook ( Westport, Conn : Greenwood Press, 2002 ), xiv. ISBN 0 - 313 - 29689 - 8. Jump up ^ Larry Sitsky, Music of the Twentieth - Century Avant - Garde : A Biocritical Sourcebook ( Westport, Conn : Greenwood Press, 2002 ), 222. ISBN 0 - 313 - 29689 - 8. ^ Jump up to : Larry Sitsky, Music of the Twentieth - Century Avant - Garde : A Biocritical Sourcebook ( Westport, Conn : Greenwood Press, 2002 ), 50. ISBN 0 - 313 - 29689 - 8. Jump up ^ Larry Sitsky, Music of the Twentieth - Century Avant - Garde : A Biocritical Sourcebook ( Westport, Conn : Greenwood Press, 2002 ), xiii -- xiv. ISBN 0 - 313 - 29689 - 8. Jump up ^ Elliot Schwartz, Barney Childs, and James Fox ( eds. ), Contemporary Composers on Contemporary Music ( New York : Da Capo Press, 1998 ), 379. ISBN 0 - 306 - 80819 - 6 Jump up ^ Larry Sitsky, Music of the Twentieth - Century Avant - Garde : A Biocritical Sourcebook ( Westport, Conn : Greenwood Press, 2002 ), xvii. ISBN 0 - 313 - 29689 - 8. Jump up ^ Larry Sitsky, Music of the Twentieth - Century Avant - Garde : A Biocritical Sourcebook ( Westport, Conn : Greenwood Press, 2002 ), xv. ISBN 0 - 313 - 29689 - 8. Further reading Barron, Stephanie, and Maurice Tuchman. 1980. The Avant - garde in Russia, 1910 -- 1930 : New Perspectives : Los Angeles County Museum of Art ( and ) Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C. Los Angeles : Los Angeles County Museum of Art ISBN 0 - 87587 - 095 - 3 ( pbk. ) ; Cambridge, MA : Distributed by the MIT Press ISBN 0 - 262 - 20040 - 6 ( pbk. ) Bazin, Germain. 1969. The Avant - garde in Painting. New York : Simon and Schuster. ISBN 0 - 671 - 20422 - X Berg, Hubert van den, and Walter Fähnders ( eds. ). 2009. Metzler Lexikon Avantgarde. Stuttgart : Metzler. ISBN 3 - 476 - 01866 - 0 ( in German ) Crane, Diana. 1987. The Transformation of the Avant - garde : The New York Art World, 1940 -- 1985. Chicago : University of Chicago Press. ISBN 0 - 226 - 11789 - 8 Daly, Selina, and Monica Insinga ( eds. ). 2013. The European Avant - garde : Text and Image. Newcastle upon Tyne : Cambridge Scholars. ISBN 978 - 1443840545. Fernández - Medina, Nicolás, and Maria Truglio ( eds. ). Modernism and the Avant - garde Body in Spain and Italy. Routledge, 2016. Harding, James M., and John Rouse, eds. Not the Other Avant - Garde : The Transnational Foundations of Avant - Garde Performance. University of Michigan, 2006. Kostelanetz, Richard, and H.R. Brittain. 2000. A Dictionary of the Avant - Gardes, second edition. New York : Schirmer Books. ISBN 0 - 02 - 865379 - 3. Paperback edition 2001, New York : Routledge. ISBN 0 - 415 - 93764 - 7 ( pbk. ) Kramer, Hilton. 1973. The Age of the Avant - garde ; An Art Chronicle of 1956 − 1972. New York : Farrar, Straus and Giroux. ISBN 0 - 374 - 10238 - 4 Léger, Marc James ( ed. ). 2014. The Idea of the Avant Garde -- And What It Means Today. Manchester and New York : Manchester University Press ; Oakland : Left Curve. ISBN 9780719096914. Maerhofer, John W. 2009. Rethinking the Vanguard : Aesthetic and Political Positions in the Modernist Debate, 1917 - 1962. Newcastle upon Tyne : Cambridge Scholars Press. ISBN 1 - 4438 - 1135 - 1 Mann, Paul. The Theory - Death of the Avant - Garde. Indiana University Press, 1991. Novero, Cecilia. 2010. Antidiets of the Avant - Garde : From Futurist Cooking to Eat Art. ( University of Minnesota Press ) Pronko, Leonard Cabell. 1962. Avant - garde : The Experimental Theater in France. Berkeley : University of California Press. Roberts, John. 2015. Revolutionary Time and the Avant - Garde. London and New York : Verso. ISBN 9781781689127 ( cloth ) ; ISBN 9781781689134 ( pbk ). Schechner, Richard. `` The Five Avant - Gardes or... ( and )... or None ? '' The Twentieth - Century Performance Reader, 2nd ed., ed. Michael Huxley and Noel Witts ( New York and London : Routledge, 2002 ). Schmidt - Burkhardt, Astrit. 2005. Stammbäume der Kunst : Zur Genealogie der Avantgarde. Berlin Akademie Verlag. ISBN 3 - 05 - 004066 - 1 ( online version is available ) Sell, Mike. The Avant - Garde : Race, Religion, War. Seagull Books, 2011. Shishanov, V.A. 2007. Vitebskii muzei sovremennogo iskusstva : istoriia sozdaniia i kollektsii ( 1918 -- 1941 ). Minsk : Medisont. ISBN 978 - 985 - 6530 - 68 - 8 Online edition ( in Russian ) External links Historic Avant - Garde Periodicals for Digital Research, The Blue Mountain Project, Princeton University Library Avant - garde and Modernist Magazines ( Monoskop ) Magazines in Bibliothèque Kandinsky, Centre Pompidou, Paris Periodicals in Iowa Digital Library, University of Iowa Libraries Digital Dada Library of International Dada Archive, University of Iowa Libraries Magazines in Digital Collections of Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library Avant - Garde Periodicals Meet Digital Archives, New York Public Library Dada, Surrealism, & De Stijl Magazines on UbuWeb Historical Index of Modernist Magazines, Davidson College Modernist Journal Project, Brown University and University of Tulsa Spanish and Italian Modernist Studies Forum, Pennsylvania State University Modernism Milestones Le Déjeuner sur l'herbe ( 1862 - 63 ) Olympia ( 1863 ) A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte ( 1886 ) Mont Sainte - Victoir ( 1887 ) The Starry Night ( 1889 ) Ubu Roi ( 1896 ) Verklärte Nacht ( 1899 ) Le bonheur de vivre ( 1905 - 1906 ) Les Demoiselles d'Avignon ( 1907 ) The Firebird ( 1910 ) Afternoon of a Faun ( 1912 ) Nude Descending a Staircase, No. 2 ( 1912 ) In Search of Lost Time ( 1913 -- 1927 ) The Metamorphosis ( 1915 ) Black Square ( 1915 ) Fountain ( 1917 ) The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari ( 1920 ) Six Characters in Search of an Author ( 1921 ) Ulysses ( 1922 ) The Waste Land ( 1922 ) The Magic Mountain ( 1924 ) Battleship Potemkin ( 1925 ) The Sun Also Rises ( 1926 ) The Threepenny Opera ( 1928 ) The Sound and the Fury ( 1929 ) Un Chien Andalou ( 1929 ) Villa Savoye ( 1931 ) The Blue Lotus ( 1936 ) Fallingwater ( 1936 ) Waiting for Godot ( 1953 ) Literature Guillaume Apollinaire Djuna Barnes Tadeusz Borowski André Breton Mikhail Bulgakov Anton Chekhov Joseph Conrad Alfred Döblin E.M. Forster William Faulkner Gustave Flaubert Ford Madox Ford André Gide Knut Hamsun Jaroslav Hašek Ernest Hemingway Hermann Hesse James Joyce Franz Kafka Arthur Koestler D.H. Lawrence Wyndham Lewis Thomas Mann Katherine Mansfield Filippo Tommaso Marinetti Guy de Maupassant Robert Musil Katherine Anne Porter Marcel Proust Gertrude Stein Italo Svevo Virginia Woolf Poetry Anna Akhmatova Richard Aldington W.H. Auden Charles Baudelaire Luca Caragiale Constantine P. Cavafy Blaise Cendrars Hart Crane H.D. Robert Desnos T.S. Eliot Paul Éluard Odysseas Elytis F.S. Flint Stefan George Max Jacob Federico García Lorca Amy Lowell Robert Lowell Mina Loy Stéphane Mallarmé Marianne Moore Wilfred Owen Octavio Paz Fernando Pessoa Ezra Pound Lionel Richard Rainer Maria Rilke Arthur Rimbaud Giorgos Seferis Wallace Stevens Dylan Thomas Tristan Tzara Paul Valéry William Carlos Williams W.B. Yeats Visual art Josef Albers Jean Arp Balthus George Bellows Umberto Boccioni Pierre Bonnard Georges Braque Constantin Brâncuși Alexander Calder Mary Cassatt Paul Cézanne Marc Chagall Giorgio de Chirico Camille Claudel Joseph Cornell Joseph Csaky Salvador Dalí Edgar Degas Raoul Dufy Willem de Kooning Robert Delaunay Charles Demuth Otto Dix Theo van Doesburg Marcel Duchamp James Ensor Max Ernst Jacob Epstein Paul Gauguin Alberto Giacometti Vincent van Gogh Natalia Goncharova Julio González Juan Gris George Grosz Raoul Hausmann Jacques Hérold Hannah Höch Edward Hopper Frida Kahlo Wassily Kandinsky Ernst Ludwig Kirchner Paul Klee Oskar Kokoschka Pyotr Konchalovsky André Lhote Fernand Léger Franz Marc Albert Marque Jean Marchand René Magritte Kazimir Malevich Édouard Manet Henri Matisse Colin McCahon Jean Metzinger Joan Miró Amedeo Modigliani Piet Mondrian Claude Monet Henry Moore Edvard Munch Emil Nolde Georgia O'Keeffe Méret Oppenheim Francis Picabia Pablo Picasso Camille Pissarro Man Ray Odilon Redon Pierre - Auguste Renoir Auguste Rodin Henri Rousseau Egon Schiele Georges Seurat Paul Signac Alfred Sisley Edward Steichen Alfred Stieglitz Henri de Toulouse - Lautrec Édouard Vuillard Grant Wood Music George Antheil Milton Babbitt Jean Barraqué Alban Berg Luciano Berio Nadia Boulanger Pierre Boulez John Cage Elliott Carter Aaron Copland Henry Cowell Henri Dutilleux Morton Feldman Henryk Gorecki Josef Matthias Hauer Paul Hindemith Arthur Honegger Charles Ives Leoš Janáček György Ligeti Witold Lutosławski Olivier Messiaen Luigi Nono Harry Partch Krzysztof Penderecki Sergei Prokofiev Luigi Russolo Erik Satie Pierre Schaeffer Arnold Schoenberg Dmitri Shostakovich Richard Strauss Igor Stravinsky Edgard Varèse Anton Webern Kurt Weill Iannis Xenakis Theatre Edward Albee Maxwell Anderson Jean Anouilh Antonin Artaud Samuel Beckett Bertolt Brecht Anton Chekhov Friedrich Dürrenmatt Jean Genet Maxim Gorky Walter Hasenclever Henrik Ibsen William Inge Eugène Ionesco Alfred Jarry Georg Kaiser Maurice Maeterlinck Vladimir Mayakovsky Arthur Miller Seán O'Casey Eugene O'Neill John Osborne Luigi Pirandello Erwin Piscator George Bernard Shaw August Strindberg John Millington Synge Ernst Toller Frank Wedekind Thornton Wilder Stanisław Ignacy Witkiewicz Film Ingmar Bergman Anton Giulio Bragaglia Luis Buñuel Marcel Carné Charlie Chaplin René Clair Jean Cocteau Maya Deren Alexander Dovzhenko Carl Theodor Dreyer Viking Eggeling Sergei Eisenstein Jean Epstein Robert J. Flaherty Abel Gance Isidore Isou Buster Keaton Lev Kuleshov Fritz Lang Marcel L'Herbier Georges Méliès F.W. Murnau Georg Wilhelm Pabst Vsevolod Pudovkin Jean Renoir Walter Ruttmann Victor Sjöström Josef von Sternberg Dziga Vertov Jean Vigo Robert Wiene Dance George Balanchine Merce Cunningham Clotilde von Derp Sergei Diaghilev Isadora Duncan Michel Fokine Loie Fuller Martha Graham Hanya Holm Doris Humphrey Léonide Massine Vaslav Nijinsky Alwin Nikolais Alexander Sakharoff Ted Shawn Anna Sokolow Ruth St. Denis Helen Tamiris Charles Weidman Mary Wigman Architecture Alvar Aalto Marcel Breuer Gordon Bunshaft Antoni Gaudí Walter Gropius Hector Guimard Raymond Hood Victor Horta Friedensreich Hundertwasser Philip Johnson Louis Kahn Le Corbusier Adolf Loos Konstantin Melnikov Erich Mendelsohn Pier Luigi Nervi Richard Neutra Oscar Niemeyer Hans Poelzig Antonin Raymond Gerrit Rietveld Eero Saarinen Rudolf Steiner Edward Durell Stone Louis Sullivan Vladimir Tatlin Paul Troost Jørn Utzon Ludwig Mies van der Rohe Frank Lloyd Wright Related articles American modernism Armory Show Art Deco Art Nouveau Ashcan School Avant - garde Ballets Russes Bauhaus Buddhist modernism Constructivism Cubism Dada Degenerate art De Stijl Der Blaue Reiter Die Brücke Ecomodernism Expressionism Expressionist music Fauvism Fourth dimension in art Fourth dimension in literature Futurism Hanshinkan Modernism High modernism Imagism Impressionism International Style Late modernism Late modernity Lettrism List of art movements List of avant - garde artists List of modernist poets Lyrical abstraction Minimalism Modern art Modernity Neo-Dada Neo-primitivism New Objectivity Orphism Post-Impressionism Postminimalism Postmodernism Reactionary modernism Metamodernism Remodernism Romanticism Second Viennese School Structural film Surrealism Symbolism Synchromism Tonalism Warsaw Autumn Avant - garde movements Visual art Abstract expressionism Art Nouveau Conceptual art Constructivism Cubism Proto - Cubism Cubo - Futurism De Stijl Devětsil Divisionism Fauvism Impressionism Neo-Impressionism Post-Impressionism Color Field Incoherents Lyrical Abstraction Mail art Minimalism Mir iskusstva Neue Slowenische Kunst Nonconformism Pop art Rayonism Suprematism Vorticism Nouveau réalisme Literature and poetry Acmeism Angry Penguins Asemic writing Cyberpunk Ego - Futurism Experimental literature Flarf poetry Hungry generation Imaginism Language poets Neoteric Nouveau roman Oberiu Oulipo Ultraísmo Visual poetry Zaum Music By style Jazz Metal Pop Rock Prog Punk Others Aleatoric music Ars subtilior Atonal music Drone music Electroacoustic music Electronic music Experimental pop Free jazz Futurism ( music ) Industrial music Microtonal music Minimal music Musique concrète New Complexity No wave Noise music Post-rock Rock in Opposition Second Viennese School Serialism Spectral music Stochastic music Textural music Totalism Twelve - tone technique Cinema and theatre Cinéma pur Dogme 95 Drop Art Epic theatre Remodernist film Structural film Theatre of the Absurd Theatre of Cruelty General Bauhaus Constructivism Dada Expressionism Fluxus Futurism Lettrism Modernism Minimalism Postminimalism Neo-minimalism Neo-Dada Neoism Postmodernism Late modernism Primitivism Russian Futurism Russian symbolism Situationist International Social realism Socialist realism Surrealism Symbolism Book Art movements Medieval Early Christian Migration Period Anglo - Saxon Visigothic Pre-Romanesque Insular Viking Byzantine Merovingian Carolingian Ottonian Romanesque Norman - Sicilian Gothic ( International Gothic ) Renaissance Italian Renaissance Early Netherlandish German Renaissance Antwerp Mannerists Danube school High Renaissance Romanism Mannerism Fontainebleau Northern Mannerism Flemish Baroque 17th century Baroque Caravaggisti Classicism Dutch Golden Age 18th century Rococo Neoclassicism Romanticism 19th century Naïve Nazarene Realism / Realism Historicism Biedermeier Gründerzeit Barbizon school Pre-Raphaelites Academic Aestheticism Decadent Macchiaioli Art Nouveau Peredvizhniki Impressionism Post-Impressionism Neo-impressionism Divisionism Pointillism Cloisonnism Les Nabis Synthetism Kalighat painting Symbolism Hudson River School 20th century Arts and Crafts Fauvism Die Brücke Cubism Expressionism Neue Künstlervereinigung München Futurism Metaphysical art Rayonism Der Blaue Reiter Orphism Synchromism Vorticism Suprematism Ashcan Dada De Stijl Purism Bauhaus Kinetic art New Objectivity Neues Sehen Surrealism Neo-Fauvism Precisionism Scuola Romana Art Deco International Typographic Style Social realism Abstract expressionism Vienna School of Fantastic Realism Color Field Lyrical abstraction Tachisme COBRA Action painting New media art Letterist International Pop art Situationist International Lettrism Neo-Dada Op art Nouveau réalisme Conceptual art Land art Systems art Video art Minimalism Fluxus Photorealism Performance art Installation art Endurance art Outsider art Neo-expressionism Lowbrow Young British Artists Amazonian pop art 21st century Art intervention Hyperrealism Neo-futurism Stuckism Sound art Superstroke Superflat Relational art Related articles List of art movements Feminist art movement ( in the US ) Modern art Modernism Late modernism Postmodern art Avant - garde Aesthetics Philosophers Abhinavagupta Theodor W. Adorno Leon Battista Alberti Thomas Aquinas Hans Urs von Balthasar Alexander Gottlieb Baumgarten Clive Bell Bernard Bosanquet Edward Bullough R.G. Collingwood Ananda Coomaraswamy Arthur Danto John Dewey Denis Diderot Hubert Dreyfus Curt John Ducasse Thierry de Duve Roger Fry Nelson Goodman Clement Greenberg Georg Hegel Martin Heidegger David Hume Immanuel Kant Paul Klee Susanne Langer Theodor Lipps György Lukács Jean - François Lyotard Joseph Margolis Jacques Maritain Thomas Munro Friedrich Nietzsche José Ortega y Gasset Dewitt H. Parker Stephen Pepper David Prall Jacques Rancière Ayn Rand George Lansing Raymond I.A. Richards George Santayana Friedrich Schiller Arthur Schopenhauer Roger Scruton Irving Singer Rabindranath Tagore Giorgio Vasari Morris Weitz Johann Joachim Winckelmann Richard Wollheim more... Theories Classicism Evolutionary aesthetics Historicism Modernism New Classical Postmodernism Psychoanalytic theory Romanticism Symbolism more... Concepts Aesthetic emotions Aesthetic interpretation Art manifesto Avant - garde Axiology Beauty Boredom Camp Comedy Creativity Cuteness Disgust Ecstasy Elegance Entertainment Eroticism Gaze Harmony Judgement Kama Kitsch Life imitating art Magnificence Mimesis Perception Quality Rasa Reverence Style Sublime Taste Work of art Related topics Aesthetics of music Applied aesthetics Architecture Art Arts criticism Feminist aesthetics Gastronomy History of painting Humour Japanese aesthetics Literary merit Mathematical beauty Mathematics and architecture Mathematics and art Music theory Neuroesthetics Painting Patterns in nature Philosophy of design Philosophy of film Philosophy of music Poetry Sculpture Theory of painting Theory of art Tragedy Visual arts Index of aesthetics articles Portal GND : 4133965 - 4 Retrieved from `` https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Avant-garde&oldid=799303088 '' Categories : Avant - garde art Art movements Contemporary art Concepts in aesthetics Modern art Modernism Hidden categories : Wikipedia articles needing page number citations from August 2016 Wikipedia articles needing page number citations from May 2016 Wikipedia articles needing page number citations from May 2008 Wikipedia articles needing page number citations from July 2016 Articles needing more detailed references Webarchive template wayback links Wikipedia articles needing page number citations from September 2012 Use dmy dates from May 2016 All articles with failed verification Articles with failed verification from August 2016 Articles that may contain original research from August 2016 All articles that may contain original research Articles with German - language external links Articles with Russian - language external links Wikipedia articles with GND identifiers Talk Contents About Wikipedia Afrikaans Alemannisch Azərbaycanca Беларуская Беларуская ( тарашкевіца ) ‎ Български Boarisch Català Чӑвашла Čeština Dansk Deutsch Eesti Ελληνικά Español Esperanto Euskara فارسی Français Galego 한국어 Հայերեն Hrvatski Ido Bahasa Indonesia Italiano עברית ქართული Қазақша Кыргызча Latina Latviešu Lietuvių Magyar Македонски मराठी Nederlands 日本 語 Norsk Norsk nynorsk Occitan Oʻzbekcha / ўзбекча ਪੰਜਾਬੀ Plattdüütsch Polski Português Română Русский Scots Simple English Slovenčina Slovenščina کوردی Српски / srpski Srpskohrvatski / српскохрватски Suomi Svenska ไทย Тоҷикӣ Türkçe Türkmençe Українська 中文 Edit links This page was last edited on 6 September 2017, at 21 : 54. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution - ShareAlike License ; additional terms may apply. By using this site, you agree to the Terms of Use and Privacy Policy. Wikipedia ® is a registered trademark of the Wikimedia Foundation, Inc., a non-profit organization. About Wikipedia

Question: where does the term avant garde come from
Answer: from French, "advance guard" or "vanguard", literally "fore-guard"