- they can see what’s ahead, seek out the enemy, analyze the terrain, and so on.

But what does it mean in art?

Hey guys, It’s Karin, Welcome back to Little Art Talks. Today let’s talk about what is

the avant-garde and why is it important to the arts.

In the arts, Avant-garde can be used both as a noun and an adjective.

It can be used to refer to the artists who introduce these new, experimental ideas

For example, "works by artists of the Russian avant-garde"

But also be used as a way to describe the work:

"a controversial avant-garde composer"

The term first appeared in reference to art during the first half of the nineteenth century

in France.

The influential thinker Henri de Saint-Simon, one of the forerunners of socialism, had this

idea that artists, alongside scientists and industrialists, were leaders of a new society.

He wrote in 1825: We artists will serve you as an avant-garde,

the power of the arts is most immediate: when we want to spread new ideas we inscribe them

on marble or canvas. What a magnificent destiny for the arts is that of exercising a positive

power over society, a true priestly function and of marching in the van [i.e. vanguard]

of all the intellectual faculties!

The term avant-garde pretty much goes hand-in-hand with with modern art. Now, I’ve said before,

that modern art is kind of a difficult thing to pinpoint when exactly it starts, but for

the sake of this video, let’s say it’s around the 1850s with the realism of Gustave

Courbet.

The notion of the avant-garde is based on the idea that art should be judged based on

the quality and originality of the artist’s vision and ideas.

This can be innovations on form, such as in cubism, which rejected traditional techniques

of perspective, modeling, and foreshortening, and instead emphasized the two-dimensionality

of the canvas and used multiple or contrasting vantage points.

Other avant-garde artists had strong social programmes, such as futurism, De Stijl or

surrealism.

Their radical nature in challenging existing ideas, processes and forms makes these artists

no stranger to controversy. So if you ever thought that modern, post-modern, and contemporary

art is a whole lotta nonsense, it’s partially because these avant-garde artists are intentionally

confronting more traditional schools of thought.

While the term was originally used to describe innovative approaches to art making in the

nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, it’s still used today to describe art that

pushes the boundaries of ideas and creativity

I hope this video helped you better understand the meaning of the avant-garde. If you enjoyed

it, please like and subscribe for more videos on art history. Thanks so much for watching,

and I’ll see you guys next time.