For or Against What Exactly?

I attended Against the Avant-garde? a study organised by Tate Modern and the Open University on the 8 March with a bit of resistance and a lot of curiosity. By doing a post-graduate degree in the fringes of art, I'd already encountered so many uses of the term 'avant-garde' that I had started to doubt its etymological origins. In French, my first language, 'avant' means before and 'garde' means guard, so avant-garde literally means before the guard. Over time, its connotative meaning has come to designate what is thought to be 'cutting edge' or 'ground breaking'. So I attended this event with the glimmer of hope that I would finally walk away with a definition of the Avant-garde that did not resort to metaphor. The title of the event led me to believe that I might even formulate a position with regards to it: maybe I'll become an adamant defender or an inflexible detractor of the avant-garde. How exciting! No, really.

The day started with art historical accounts. Paul Wood argued that the Avant-garde was essentially the critique of the conventions of art. Jason Gaiger then asserted that Duchamp led to a break with the art of the past with his ready-mades by creating works that revolved around ideas rather than aesthetic concerns and that these works now exist in a sort of limbo between their formal qualities and their status in art history. T J Demos followed by subsuming Duchamp, Man Ray and Picabia under the category of the Dada movement and proceeded to demonstrate that the notion of exile was at the heart of their production. Jennifer Mundy, the curator of said exhibition, then presented her view of three artists who didn't belong to any movement or school of thought but influenced and nurtured each other's practice. At this stage, I had yet to be gratified with a unified definition of the Avant-garde and found myself more than ever in no position to endorse or reject it. Was the Avant-garde perhaps a complex set of contradiction? Critique, oppositions, resistance to categorisation and unification. Was it rather a source of frustration? How do you curate the works emerging from a movement that defies classification? How does one neatly document for historical purposes something that aims to evade definition?

Over lunch, I couldn't quite slow down the dizzying activity of my little mind's attempts to answer these questions but the afternoon was a welcome shift of paradigm. Dave Beech, Richard DeDomenici and Carey Young didn't provide more of a definition of the avant-garde, but they demonstrated how the co-opting and appropriation of mass media, popular culture and corporate culture could be used to question a dominant definition of art as well as social values and preconceived ideas. Critique, oppositions, resistance to categorisation and unification are but expressions of a tension that can be productive in affecting changes in our perception of art and perhaps even in our perception of the world a large. In that sense, they are forerunners in their field. Does that make their work avant-garde? I still don't have an answer to that question but I sure hope they never appear before the guard. I guess that means I'm for the Avant-garde... or is it against?
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That Crusty Corner of the Sandbox

Doris Salcedo Shibboleth 2007 Photo: Tate
Image from the Tate Modern Website

It's amazing the things you can find at the end of something else: home at the end of a journey, a fish at the end of your line, a pot of gold at the end of a rainbow. Yesterday, I found artist Richard DeDomenici at the end of the Tate Modern's crack. Equipped with a coffee and a hot chocolate, we headed for one of the windy balconies. I'd come more or less prepared to discuss the place of avant-garde in his work but instead I got to see the smallest gallery ever to be worn on a wrist and was introduced to the progress of his new year's resolution to make bad decisions. So far, smoking, flying and watching a lot of Eurovision seem to indicate success.

But a quick look at his work reveals that although he's not always been an adept of the well assumed disaster, he's often voluntarily privileged the unexpected and the absurd. I would say that forming a boys band with asylum seekers, signing the 80s success 99 Red Balloons while inhaling helium and embracing failure are a fairly good indication of his propensity to create unsettling experiences. Although some of them are no less than giggle-worthy, it's not that simple to faze people enough so they're able to consider their world from a different vantage point.

As the conversation veered to Richard's works in progress and my coffee gradually got cooler , I couldn't help but think that if there is any chance that art can accomplish what politics can't – significant changes in the attitudes of people regarding the various unpleasantness otherwise known as “social issues” – it's via works that jostle people out of their comfortable preconceived ideas. Some of these works are notably uncomfortable to engage with, but some of them present themselves in the guise of a game which is much more efficient. As you all know, whoever doesn't want to play is left to sulk in the crusty corner of the sandbox. And since nobody wants to be left alone in the sandbox, being playful about important issues is serious work.

Finally, we've run out of coffee and hot chocolate when we get around to the avant-garde. In all honesty, Richard is not sure whether his work is neo-avant-garde, post-avant-garde or plain avant-garde but he knows he's an artist. I tend to believe him and promptly commission The Forum's first avant-garde self-portrait. Result soon to be posted...





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