Retroactivating the Idea of the Avant Garde

Science Avant-Garde

o think that the neoimpressionists are painters who cover canvases with little multicolored spots is a rather widespread mistake, " wrote Paul Signac in his manifesto of their movement. " This mediocre dot method has nothing to do with the aesthetic of the painters we are defending here, nor with the technique of divisionism they use. " Signac was referring to, among others, Georges Seurat, who...

reADing the LAte AvAnt- gArDe

Schumpeter: Theorist of the avant-garde

This paper argues that Schumpeter’s 1911 edition of ‘Theory of Economic Development’ can be fruitfully read as a theory of the avant-garde, in line with such theories developed by artistic avant-garde around the same time, in particular by the Italian Futurists. In particular it will show that both Schumpeter and other avant-garde theorists sought to break with past (1), identify an avant-garde...

Aporias of the Digital Avant-Garde

This article maps two divergent trajectories within a narrowly defined sphere of short-form, time-based digital media created between 1995 and 2005. Works discussed include music videos, design-oriented short films, and motion graphics by directors Michel Gondry, Virgil Widrich, Mike Nourse, Barbara Lattanzi, Rico Gatson, and design firms Logan, Ramon & Pedro, and H5. These works are considered...

Free Jazz and the Avant-Garde

Free jazz refers to a historical movement that, despite earlier precedents, first significantly flowered in the late 1950s in the US. Its central focus was a liberation from musical conventions – but from a jazz player’s perspective, since no liberation is ever complete. Initially known simply as the New Thing, it became Free Jazz by borrowing the title of a seminal 1960 album by saxophonist/co...