Avant-Garde Neo-Avant-Garde (Avant-Garde Critical Studies 17)

This collection of critical essays explores new approaches to the study of avant-garde literature and art, film and architecture. It offers a theoretical framework that avoids narrowly defined notions of the avant-garde. It takes into account the diversity of artistic aims and directions of the various avant-garde movements and encourages a wide and open exploration of the multifaceted and often contradictory nature of the great variety of avant-gardist innovations. Individual essays concentrate on cubist collage and dadaist photomontage, on abstract painting by members of the Dutch group De Stijl, on verbal chemistry and dadaist poetry and on body art from futurism to surrealism. In addition, the collection wishes to open up the discussion of the avant-garde to a thorough investigation of neo-avant-garde activities in the 1950s and 1960s. For decades the appreciation of neo-avant-garde art and literature, film and architecture suffered from a general and all-inclusive rebuke. This volume is designed to contribute to a breakthrough towards a more competent and more precise investigation of this research field. Contributions include a discussion of Warhol’s multiples as well as Duchamp’s editioned readymades, forms of concrete and digital poetry as well as the architectural “Non-Plan”. The main body of the volume is based on presentations and discussions of a three-day research seminar held at the University of Edinburgh in September 2002. The research group formed around the Avant-Garde Project at Edinburgh will continue with its efforts to elaborate a new theory of the avant-garde in the coming years. Contents Preface I. Theorising the Avant-Garde Dietrich SCHEUNEMANN: From Collage to the Multiple. On the Genealogy of Avant-Garde and Neo-Avant-Garde Rhys WILLIAMS: Wilhelm Worringer and the Historical Avant-Garde Hubert van den BERG: On the Historiographic Distinction between Historical and Neo-Avant-Garde II. Reviewing the Autonomy of Art Michael WHITE: Abstraction, Sublation and the Avant-Garde: The Case of De Stijl David HOPKINS: Sameness and Difference: Duchamp’s Editioned Readymades and the Neo-Avant-Garde Ben HIGHMORE: Paint it Black: Ad Reinhardt’s Paradoxical Avant-Gardism III. On the Alchemy of the Word Keith ASPLEY: Verbal Chemistry and Concrete Poetry Anna SCHAFFNER: How the Letters Learnt to Dance: On Language Dissection in Dadaist, Concrete and Digital Poetry Jacob EDMOND: American Language Poetry and the Definition of the Avant-Garde IV. Body Arts Günter BERGHAUS: From Futurism to Neo-Futurism: Continuities and New Departures in Twentieth-Century Avant-Garde Performance Olga TAXIDOU: Actor or Puppet: The Body in the Theatres of the Avant-Garde Uta FELTEN: Fragmentation of the Body in Spanish Surrealism V. The Vanguard in Cinema and Architecture David MACRAE: The Surface of Illusion: Avant-Garde Apperception and Antecedence in Structural/Materialist Film Gérard LEBLANC: What Avant-Garde? Richard WILLIAMS: The Limits of “Non-Plan”: Architecture and the Avant-Garde VI. Crossing the Genres Jennifer VALCKE: Montage in the Arts: A Reassessment Tania ØRUM: Means and Metaphors of Change: Technology and the Danish Avant-Garde of the 1960s Klaus BEEKMAN: Literature under the Impact of Film: On Dutch Author-Critics of the Avant-Garde and Neo-Avant-Garde List of Illustrations Index