Avant Gardes And Partisans Reviewed

By addressing key issues in visual culture and the politics of representation, this book provides a reference and an analysis of the work of Orton and Pollock, internationally acknowledged as the leading exponents of the social history of art.

The neo-avant-garde of the 1950s, 60s and 70s, is due for a thoroughgoing reassessment. This collection of essays represents the first full-scale attempt to deal with the concept from an interdisciplinary standpoint. A number of essays in this book concentrate on fine art, particularly painting and sculpture, thereby adding significantly to the growing art historical literature in the field, but a number of the contributions also focus on poetry, performance, theatre, film, architecture and music. Given that there are also major essays here dealing with geographical blindspots in current neo-avant-garde studies, with thematic issues such as art’s entanglement with gender, mass culture and politics, with key neo-avant-garde publications, and with the purely theoretical problems attaching to the theorisation of the topic, this collection offers a multi-dimensional approach to the subject which is noticeably lacking elsewhere. Taken together these essays represent a consolidated attempt at re-thinking the ‘cultural logic’ of the immediate post-World War II period.

A critical history of avant-garde performance and the problematic relationship of text to performance

This stunning contribution to the field of theatre history is the first in-depth look at avant-garde theatre in the United States from the early 1950s to the 1990s. American Avant-Garde Theatre offers a definition of the avant-garde, and looks at its origins and theoretical foundations by examining: *Gertrude Stein *John Cage *The Beat writers *Avant-garde cinema *Abstract Expressionism *Minimalism There are fascinating discussions and illustrations of the productions of the Living Theatre, the Wooster Group, Open Theatre, Ontological-Hysteric Theatre and Performance Group. among many others. Aronson also examines why avant-garde theatre declined and virtually disappeared at the end of the twentieth century.

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.

A Dictionary of the Avant-Gardes recognizes that change is a driving force in all the arts. It covers major trends in music, dance, theater, film, visual art, sculpture, and performance art--as well as architecture, science, and culture.

This revised edition features ten new articles and is fully updated to take account of new critical approaches to post-war American art.

In this major book, renowned art historian Griselda Pollock makes a compelling intervention into a debate at the very centre of feminist art history: should the traditional canon of the Old Masters be rejected, replaced or reformed?