Vanguard(fr. avant-garde - avant-garde) - a direction in the visual arts, which is based on the rejection of classical canons and traditions and experiments with new forms and images. The avant-garde arose at the beginning of the 20th century and was closely associated with modernity and modernism, within which the beginning of the revision was born. classical traditions. The ideas of avant-garde have been developed in almost all areas of art, characterized by a desire for new solutions in the implementation of creative ideas: futurism, surrealism, abstractionism, expressionism, cubism, suprematism, constructivism, fauvism, etc.

The original meaning of the French word "avant-garde" has surprisingly little to do with art, and even more so with the fine arts. “Advanced Detachment”, a term more military than artistic, however, such a definition perfectly reflects the mood of experimental painters. The rejection of the conventions of classical painting, the creation of new forms and finding non-standard solutions - this is the main leitmotif of innovative creations in the spirit of avant-garde.

Avant-garde as a direction of art has no stylistic unity. A sign that an individual artist belongs to the vanguard of experimenters is a non-classical implementation of creative ideas and an uncompromising attitude towards established stereotypes. A true avant-garde artist creates not just an object of art, but an eloquent opposition with an undisguised attitude in line with active controversy.

There is an opinion that artistic thinking in the style of the avant-garde is typical of the progressive age and a logical consequence of the development of civilization. Within the framework of such thinking, purely pragmatic values ​​are replacing humanistic ideals. This point of view was formulated and described by Spengler in his work The Decline of Europe.

The works of avant-garde creativity are distinguished by the ideological intention of the artist. If you do not think about the meaning of these outrageous creations, then it is quite difficult to see anything but outright nonsense. For example, the Dadaist and surrealist Marcel Duchamp (Marcel Duchamp) under the sonorous and figurative name "Fountain" presented to the public a picture depicting a urinal with his own autograph. Another avant-garde artist Francis Picabia (Francisco Picabia), simplified the embodiment of the painting "The Holy Virgin" to an unattractive blot. However, taking into account the time when such controversial masterpieces were created - the end of the First World War and the absolute unwillingness of the society of that time to put up with such unjustified savagery, it is easy to guess that the specificity of such avant-garde paintings is due precisely to the desire to expose the real, not the apparent order of things.

Interestingly, the avant-gardists are relatively omnivores. Certain areas of the avant-garde may be inspired by African folk art or the art of ancient world civilizations, while others may draw inspiration from innovative scientific developments or their own subconscious.

Despite the fact that avant-garde artistic creations evoke completely unpredictable reactions from the viewer, many of them have long been included in the treasury of the world's greatest works of art. Among the recognized masters of the "advanced detachment" can be noted Kazimir Malevich, Salvador Dali ( Salvador Dali), Marc Chagall, Piet Mondrian (Piet Mondriaan), Pablo Picasso (Pablo Picasso), Wassily Kandinsky and others.

Wassily Kandinsky. Circle painting. 1911 National Museum Georgia

One of the main directions of the avant-garde. Unlike traditional art, it does not imitate reality and does not reproduce its elements. The object of abstract art is the artist's toolkit: color, line and form. The first abstract works were created by Wassily Kandinsky in the late 1900s and early 1910s; The first abstract work is considered to be his "Picture with a Circle" (1911). In 1912-1915, abstract pictorial systems of Luchism (Larionov, 1912) and Suprematism (Malevich, 1915) appeared.

Vanguard

At first, the term was used in military affairs and in relation to political events - until, in 1885, the French critic Theodore Duret used it in art criticism. However, in this sense the word did not take root. Only in the 1950s did it return to art history thanks to the French critic Michel Sefort, who for the first time called Russian art of the early 20th century avant-garde.

Allness

The term was coined in the spring of 1913 by Ilya Zdanevich, an artist, writer, publisher and journalist. The artistic and aesthetic ideas of Mikhail Larionov and the artists of his circle formed the basis of omnipotence: in the catalog for the exhibition "Target", he recognized all existing styles - cubism, futurism, orpheism and others. On November 5 of the same year, Zdanevich publicly presented his concept in Moscow at the closing of the exhibition of Natalia Goncharova. The lecture was called "Natalia Goncharova and All-Happiness". After that, Zdanevich went to St. Petersburg to propagate the ideas of omnipotence there in lectures and debates. These performances were characteristic of the avant-garde outrageous character. So, at the end of the “Face Painting” performance on April 9, 1914, Zdanevich painted his face with black paint, and on April 17 of the same year, at the “Shoe Worship” action of the same year, he denied everything that was considered beautiful, and sang the beauty of the shoe, “beautiful, like cars and engines ".

fence painting

Appeal to the plots and style of the inscriptions on the fences is one of the most characteristic features of the avant-garde and neo-primitivism. This direction is especially noticeable in the works of Larionov of the neo-primitivist period.

Constructivism

El Lissitzky. Project of a skyscraper near the Nikitsky Gates, view from Tverskoy Boulevard charnelhouse.org

From the Latin constructio - "construction". The main features of constructivism are rigor, conciseness and geometric forms. The style was officially designated in 1922 in the book of the same name by the artist and art theorist Alexei Gan. Among the most famous constructivists are Vladimir Tatlin, Alexander Rodchenko, Varvara Stepanova, architects Moses Ginzburg, Konstantin Melnikov, and the Vesnin brothers. Constructivism has spread in a variety of areas artistic creativity: theatrical scenery and costumes, book design, architecture, etc.

Cosmism

Lazar Khidekel. Cities of the future. Above ground city. 1927 newsfeed.kosmograd.com

A philosophical concept that originated in the 1870s and refers to philosophers and scientists who thought about extraterrestrial space and the cosmos. The development of cosmism was facilitated by non-objective, or abstract, art, while Malevich's students — artist Ivan Kudryashov and architect Lazar Khidekel — developed the cosmic aspect of geometric non-objectivity and the ideas of cosmism.

Cubism

Georges Braque. Violin and candlestick. 1910 San Francisco Museum of Modern Art

Cubism was formed in France in the autumn of 1908 in the works of Georges Braque and Pablo Picasso. It penetrates into Russia in different ways. Thus, the artist Alexandra Exter regularly brings various information about the new fashionable style from Paris, and in 1908 the collector Sergei Ivanovich Shchukin opens his mansion in Bolshoy Znamensky Lane to everyone. Among other things, the collection contains works by the Cubists, and future tambourines regularly visit the gallery. In 1912, an article by the artist and poet David Burliuk "Cubism" was published in the collection "A Slap in the Face of Public Taste". Cubism, he writes, implies a flat understanding of the world or a canon of a shifted construction, and its most important technique is the depiction of an object from several points of view. Three years later, in the manifesto “From Cubism to Suprematism”, Kazimir Malevich defines the essence of the movement as “dissonance” resulting from the “meeting of two forms”: “In the principle of Cubism, there is still a very valuable task, not to transfer objects, but to make a picture.<...>In our era of cubism, the artist destroyed the thing as such, with its meaning, essence and purpose.

cubofuturism

Natalia Goncharova. Factory. 1912 State Russian Museum

For the first time this concept was used in 1912 by the French critic Marcel Boulanger, and the next year the term becomes widespread in Russian culture. The poetic-artistic group "Gileya", as well as the artists of the circle of the "Union of Youth" consider themselves to be Cubo-Futurists. In cubo-futuristic works, the world appears fragmented into fragments or disassembled into elements. In November 1913, Malevich calls his works cubo-futuristic in the catalog of the Union of Youth exhibition. In 1912-1913, the cubo-futuristic painting of Natalia Goncharova ("The Factory") appeared.

left art

Alexander Rodchenko. Magazine cover option
"Lef" "Lef"- "Left Front", a magazine published in Moscow in 1923-1925, Chief Editor— Vladimir Mayakovsky. Several rooms are decorated by Alexander Rodchenko.(cartoon of O. Brik). 1924 State Museum fine arts them. A. S. Pushkin

In the spring of 1915, after the Exhibition of paintings of leftist trends in Petrograd, the term "leftist art" along with the concept of "futurism" began to be applied to innovative art. Three federations were created in 1917; one of them was called "left" and united the majority of avant-garde artists. By 1919, the term changed its meaning: now it is called non-objectives and proletarian artists. In the early 1920s, the latter formed a group around the Lef magazine.

Lineism

Alexander Rodchenko. Linear design No. 108. 1920 monoskop.org

In 1919, the term was invented by Alexander Rodchenko, denoting one of the currents in non-objective art. “Introduced and announced the line as an element of construction and as an independent form of painting,” he wrote in the Manifesto of Early Constructivism.

Rayism

Mikhail Larionov. Rooster (Radiant study). 1912

One of the first systems non-objective painting, developed by Mikhail Larionov. Rayonism, Larionov believed, should connect the visible material world and the spiritual world in a single harmony. The artist created the first Luchist works in 1912, and at the same time they were shown at the exhibitions of the World of Art. In 1913 and 1914, Larionov's Luchist painting was exhibited at the Target and Number 4 exhibitions. Realistic Rayonism is characterized by animalistic plots. For the next stage of rayonism - pneumorayism - the use of other techniques (for example, papier-mâché inserts, signs like notes, crosses, etc.).

Orientalism

An important part of the program of early avant-garde artists. The influence of Oriental art was mainly reflected in theories and manifestos and attracted avant-garde artists more with plots and themes than with techniques. What was important was the very immersion in the atmosphere of the East, and not the study of the features of art. Theoretical justification Orientalism was developed by Mikhail Larionov and Ilya Zdanevich. And it was precisely the love for the East that became the reason for Larionov’s break with the “Jack of Diamonds” - the artist accused its members of imitative Westernism. However, by the mid-1910s, the theme of the East was forgotten, and Orientalism had exhausted itself.

Primitivism

Mikhail Larionov. Spring. Seasons (New primitive). 1912 State Tretyakov Gallery

The direction of the early Russian avant-garde (late 1900s - early 1910s). Among the features of primitivism are infantile, childish forms and proportions of figures, awkward plasticity, imitation of amateur drawing, and naive fabulousness. Here the reliance on national tradition, on samples of ancient and folk art, especially the icon, popular print, sculptural archaic. The word was first used by the poet and critic Sergei Makovsky in an article about the Blue Rose exhibition: “They are heralds of the primitivism that modern painting, seeking rebirth at the very springs - in direct creativity, not exhausted by the weight of historical experience.<...>Modern conscious primitivism, understood as the main task, is the last victory of artistic liberation. In the summer of 1907, the term was also used in the announcement of the Burliuk exhibition in Kherson.

Suprematism

Kazimir Malevich. Untitled. Around 1916 The Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation Peggy Guggenheim Collection, Venice

So in December 1915, Malevich described his works shown at the "Last Futurist Exhibition" 0.10 "". His "Black Square" opened up a new field of experiments - a purely geometric non-objective form. At the beginning of 1920, Malevich left to teach in Vitebsk, and there Suprematism became the basis of the new pedagogy of Unovis - "Affirmatives of the New Art".

Futurism

Giacomo Balla. Speed ​​+ sound. 1913-1914 The Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation Peggy Guggenheim Collection, Venice, 1976

From the Italian futuro - "future". Futurism originated in Italy in 1909 thanks to Filippo Tommaso Marinetti and spread to all areas of artistic creativity. The basis of futurism new language art, corresponding to the changed world. According to David Burliuk, Russian artists and writers began to use the term in 1911. The Futurists themselves, however, at that time called themselves futurists or future people. The groups closest to futurism were the Donkey Tail and the Youth Union. Futurism was especially popular in Russian painting until 1914.

The concept of modernism. Currents of modernism, their characteristics

Disappointment in the reality of life and the artistic realistic way of reproducing it led to interest in the latest philosophical theories and the emergence of new artistic movements, called decadent, avant-garde and modernist. french word"decadence" means decline, "avant-garde" - advanced protection, and "modern" - modern, most. These terms began to denote qualitatively new phenomena in the literary process, which stood at the forefront, avant-garde positions and were associated with the decline and crisis of public opinion and culture, with the joking of positive ideals, turning in these searches to God and faith, to the mystical and irrational.

Modernism- the general name of the areas of art and literature late XIX- early XX century., Reflected the crisis of bourgeois culture and characterized the break with the traditions of realism and the aesthetics of the past. Modernism arose in France at the end of the 19th century. (Baudelaire, Verlaine, Rimbaud) and spread to Europe, Russia, Ukraine. Modernists believed that one should not look for any kind of logic, rational thought in a work of art. Therefore, the art of modernism was predominantly irrational in nature.

Protesting against outdated ideas and forms, the modernists were looking for new ways and means of artistic reflection of reality, found new artistic forms, and strove for a radical renewal of literature. In this regard, modernism has become a real artistic revolution and could be proud of such epochal discoveries in literature as an internal monologue and images of the human psyche in the form of a “stream of consciousness”, the discovery of distant associations, the theory of polyphony, the universalization of a specific artistic technique and its transformation into a general aesthetic principle, enrichment of artistic creativity through the discovery of the hidden content of life phenomena, the discovery of the unreal and the unknown.

Modernism is a social rebellion, not just a revolution in the field art form, because it caused speeches against the cruelties of social reality and the absurdity of the world, against the oppression of man, defending his right to be a free person. Modernism protested against crude materialism, against spiritual degeneration and poverty, stupid self-satisfied satiety. However, protesting against realism, modernism did not exclude all its achievements, but also used them, developed and enriched them in its search for new ways in art.

Common features of modernism:

o special attention to the inner world of the individual;

o invited self-values ​​of man and art;

o preference for creative intuition;

o understanding of literature as the highest knowledge, is able to penetrate into the innermost niches of the depth of the existence of the individual and spiritualize the world;

o search for new means in art (metal-language, symbolism, myth-making, etc.);

o the desire to discover new ideas that transform the world according to the laws of beauty and art. Such extreme, radical modernist currents how Dadaism or Futurism got

title avant-garde(from French avant - forward, garde - watchman, forward detachment) - a direction in the artistic culture of the 20th century, which consisted in the rejection of existing norms and traditions, the transformation of new artistic means into an end in itself; displaying crisis, painful phenomena in life and culture in a perverted form. Rebelliousness is inherent in avant-garde.

Avant-garde trends and currents (Futurism, Dadaism, Surrealism, " new novel"," drama of the absurd "," stream of consciousness " etc.) enriched and diversified literary process, leaving world literature many masterpieces of artistic creativity. They also significantly influenced writers who did not abandon the artistic principles of realism: a complex interweaving of realism, symbolism, neo-romanticism and the “stream of consciousness” arose. Realists also used the ideas of Z. Freud in their works, conducted formalistic searches in the field of artistic form, widely used the “stream of consciousness”, internal monologue, combined different time layers in one work.

Modernism as an artistic movement was an internally heterogeneous conglomeration of artistic phenomena, which were based on common worldview, philosophical and artistic principles. At the end of the XIX century. arose impressionism, symbolism and aestheticism. At the beginning of the XX century. expressionism, futurism, cubism were added to them, and during and after the First World War - Dadaism, surrealism, the “stream of consciousness” school, and literature, which included anti-novel, theater of the absurd.

Impressionism(from the French. "Impression") originated in the second half of the XIX century., And flourished in the XX century. It arose as a reaction to salon art and naturalism, first in painting (C. Monet, E. Manet, A. Renoir, E. Degas), from where it spread to other arts (A. Rodin in sculpture, M. Ravel, C. Debussy, I. Stravinsky in music) and literature. Here the Goncourt brothers and Paul Verlaine became the founders of impressionism. Expressed manifestations of impressionism were in the work of Guy de Maupassant and Marcel Proust, Knut Hamsun, Hugo von Hofmannsthal, Yu. Tuwim belonged to the impressionists.

Protesting against overdependence on real life, against copying reality, the impressionists described their impressions of what they saw - visual and sensual, which were changeable, like the world itself, as well as shades of impressions and colors, their representations and associations were often fantastic and always sub "objective. The work of an impressionist is not an objective picture of the world, but a system of complex subjective impressions about it, brightly colored by the creative individuality of the artist.The impressionists are especially vulnerable to the sensual beauty of the world; they perfectly reproduced nature, its beauty, the diversity and variability of life, the unity of nature with the human soul.

The most among the decadent trends of the late XIX - early XX century. became symbolism. The symbol was used as a means of expressing the incomprehensible essence of life phenomena and secret or even mystical personal ideas, creative insights, irrational insights of the artist. Symbols were considered the most perfect embodiment of ideas. Images-symbols reproduced the mysterious and irrational essence human soul and her life, the majestic advancement of an inevitable fate, depicted afterlife, the metaphysical world of "other being", hinted at the mystical essence of the phenomena of life.

For the Symbolists, poetry, like music, was the highest form of cognition of secrets - the search and discovery of "otherness". The symbol gave rise to numerous associations, captivated by its ambiguity, deep hidden meaning which is difficult or even impossible to understand. The Symbolists attached great importance to the inner sound, melody and rhythm of words, the euphony and melodiousness of the language, the emotional excitement that gripped the reader due to the rhythm and melody of the verse, and the play of various associations. French poets Paul Verlaine, Mallarme, Arthur Rimbaud began symbolism. Having "conquered" France, symbolism quickly spread throughout Europe. In its various countries, symbolism was represented by Gabriel d'Anunzio (Italy), Rilke and Hugo von Hofmannsthal (Austria), Stefan George (Germany), Oscar Wilde (England), Emil Verhaern and Maurice Maeterlinck (Belgium), Gen-God Ibsen (Norway), Stanislav Przybyshevsky (Poland).

Aestheticism originated in the last decade of the 19th century. in England. He gave rise to the cult of refined beauty. The creators of aestheticism believed that realism was doomed to complete collapse, that social problems do not at all concern real art, and put forward the slogans "art for art's sake", "beauty for the sake of beauty itself". The most prominent representative of English aestheticism was Oscar Wilde.

Expressionism(from fr. "Expressiveness, expression") was also founded in the 19th century. This avant-garde trend received its full sound and weight in the first quarter of the 20th century. and became a significant contribution to the development of world literature. The expressionists were closely connected with reality - it was she who shaped them and deeply moved them. They condemned the ugly phenomena of life, the cruelty of the world, protested against war and bloodshed, were full of philanthropy, affirmed positive ideals.

But the vision of the world by the expressionists was peculiar: the world seemed to them a chaotic system, which was led by incomprehensible forces, incomprehensible, unknowable, mysterious, and there was no escape from them. The only true was only the inner world of man and artist, their feelings and thoughts. It was he who should have been the focus of the writer. And it should be reproduced clearly, vividly, using grandiose conditional images, with broken proportions, overly intense, with the most clear intonations, that is, depicted using expressive images using paradoxical grotesque and in a fantastic perspective. Or not the most outstanding expressionist, Johannes Becher, considered the poetic image of "tension, open mouth in ecstasy" characteristic of expressionism. So, in the works of expressionists there is a lot of satire, grotesque, a lot of horrors, excessive cruelty, generalizations and subjective assessments of reality. Expressionism appeared first in painting (E. Munch, W. Van Gogh, P. Gauguin. P. Cezanne and others) and in music (Richard Strauss), to soon move into literature. G. Trakl and F. Kafka in Austria belong to the most expressionists; I. Becher and A. Frans in Germany; L. Andreev in Russia.

Imagism(from the French. "Image") - a trend that led to the emergence of Russian imagism. It appeared in England on the eve of the First World War and lasted until the mid-1920s. In Russia, for the first time, the Imagists declared themselves in 1919. The image of the Imagists and the Imagists proclaimed the end in itself of creativity. "A poem is not an organism, but a wave of images, one image can be extracted from it, ten more can be inserted," the theorist of Russian imaginism V. Shershenevich claimed. So, the representatives of this movement considered the poem to be a "catalogue of the image", an exquisite interweaving of metaphors, metonyms, epithets, comparisons and other tropes - a kind of capricious accumulation of colors, shades, images, rhythms and melodies. The content of the Imagists was relegated to the background: it "eats the way." Of course, Imagism could not, even if it wanted to, completely neglect the content. The work of S. Yesenin is the best confirmation of this idea. Representatives of Imagism in England and the USA are T.S. Eliot, R. Aldington, E. Pound, E. Lowell and others.

The concept of avant-garde. Avant-garde currents in world literature

Futurism(from Lat. "Future") arose in 1909, in Italy, its ancestor was F. Marinetti. From there it spread throughout Europe, receiving the name of cubism in France (M. Jacob, B. Cendrars), its futurism and cubo-futurism in Russia (I. Severyanin, take fur, V. Khlebnikov, V. Makhnovsky and others), avant-garde in Poland (Yu. Przybos and others). Ukrainian futurism, founded by M. Semenko, later called "pan-futurism".

Futurists proclaimed that they created the art of the future, which was in tune with the rhythms new era"skyscraper-machine-automobile" culture, and urged to discard the traditions of the old culture, which they called disparagingly "spittoon". Futurists sang hymns to technical progress, the city, cars, motors, propellers, "mechanical" beauty, noted the need to create a new man, worthy of his time technology, a man of a new mentality. They rejected tradition realistic literature, her language, poetic technique. Introducing their own language, new words and phrases, the futurists even reached the point of absurdity: time invented words without any meaning.

The French cubists and Russian cubo-futurists were closely associated with the painters-mi-cubists, who tried to shock, amaze the townsfolk with the sharpness of colors and unusual content: they decomposed the image depicted into the simplest geometric elements - cubes (hence the name), squares, rectangles, lines, cylinders, circles, etc. Having proclaimed the cult of form, the Cubists relegated content to the background, elevated it to form. Writers puzzled the layman not only "in a language that no one had yet heard," but also by moving away from euphony towards cacophony, dissonances, and the accumulation of consonants that were difficult to pronounce.

Surrealism from fr. "sur" - over, that is, over-realism), which arose in France in the 1920s. Its founder and main theorist was the French writer Andre Breton, who called for "destroying the contradictions that exist to this day between dream and reality." He stated that the only area where a person can fully express himself is subconscious acts: sleep, delirium, etc., and demanded "automatic writing" from surrealist writers, that is, at the level of the subconscious.

School "stream of consciousness"- this is a means of depicting the human psyche directly, "from the inside", as a complex and current process, deepening into the inner world. Such works were characterized by the use of memories, internal monologues, associations, digressions and others artistic techniques. Representatives: D. Joyce, M. Proust, V. Wulff and others.

AT "drama of the absurd" reality was portrayed through the prism of pessimism. A dead end, a constant premonition of collapse, isolation from real world - character traits works. The behavior, the speech of the characters is illogical, the plot is destroyed. Creators - S. Beckett, E. Ionesco.

Questions for self-control

1. How literature is on the verge XIX-XX centuries is closely connected with all the vicissitudes of its time?

2. Name the most visible factors literary development in the first half of the 20th century.

3. Give a general description of modernist literature.

4. What currents and trends are avant-garde? Give them a general description.

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avant-garde is a negative tendency historical tradition, continuity, experimental search for new forms and ways in art. The concept is the opposite of academism.

Avant-garde has its origins as it grew out of the art of the period Modern.

Despite the fundamental antagonism between avant-garde art and the traditions of spirituality artistic culture, the nihilistic appeals of the participants in this movement, the claims to comprehend "pure essences" and the expression of the "absolute" without the burden of the past and the primitive imitation of the forms of the outside world, the ideas of the artistic avant-garde are akin to the spiritual turmoil of art on turn of XIX and XX centuries.

Avant-garde art has its own romantic mythology.

Romantic and even religious is the main avant-garde idea of ​​absolutization of the very act of creativity, which does not involve the creation artwork, its "self-sufficiency", the justification of a person by creativity, in which the "true reality" is revealed.

This, above all, shows the continuity of the most extreme forms of avant-garde art from the symbolism of the Modern period.

At the same time, the excessive expansion of this concept based on etymology must also be recognized as dangerous: “an advanced detachment ready to sacrifice itself in a swift attack in order to achieve the goal.”

Such a militaristic reading of the term inevitably leads to the idea that "the avant-garde arose many centuries ago during the transition from one era to another ... and cannot be one of the trends of art only in the 20th century."

If we assume that avant-garde art "draws its spiritual strength from the inexhaustible source of the past, archaic consciousness" and it is not a decline, but a "rethinking of the past", then the most essential thing is blurred, obscured - the irreconcilable, hostile attitude of avant-garde artists to the history of culture, which is lots of evidence.
If in the art of the 20th century a “parting with a person” really takes place, then this is an anti-cultural, anti-historical movement.

Futurists at the very beginning of the new century called for "tame this world and overthrow its laws at your own discretion." This thesis alone denies the main content of culture: "cultivation of the soul through reverence, worship."

The shift of meaning from a work of art to the process of its creation is also nothing but a verbal masquerade, since in a spiritual sense main value in the history of world art, there has always been a process - an act of Creation, and not individual work in its material form.

Therefore, the idea that at the beginning of the 20th century the “Russian religious-philosophical renaissance” and the “Russian artistic avant-garde” were not identical, but developed simultaneously, “both found themselves in the context of cultural history sign of the Russian mentality.
In all the main trends of the Western European and Russian avant-garde at the beginning of the 20th century: futurism, abstractivism, surrealism, dadaism, pop art, op art, there was a consistent distraction of the process of shaping from the spiritual meaning of art.

Russian avant-garde artist Lyubov Popova defined it like this:

"distraction of the artistic form from the form visible in reality».

Lyubov Sergeevna Popova "Portrait of a Philosopher", 1915

This emancipation of form from the content traditionally invested in it gave rise to the pathos of unrestrained, often stupid and aggressive freedom, and, at the same time, the need for analytical, scientific approach to the laws of shaping in art (which was carried out in the German Bauhaus and Moscow VKHUTEMAS). But the break with the artistic tradition inevitably turned " laboratory work on the study of the formal elements of art" into an aimless and naive game - combinatorics, technicalism.

Concepts creative direction, method, style lost their meaning; art forms differed only in "material".
Thus naturally arose the idea of ​​“internal identity of the means of art”, propagated by V. Kandinsky, "art synthesis" and even " turning art into the content of life.

Wassily Vasilyevich Kandinsky Kandinsky In the blue, 1925

That is why the avant-garde movement as a whole reflects the process of displacement of culture by civilization, characteristic only for the 20th century, of historical spiritual values ​​- by the pragmatic ideology of the technical age.

At the very beginning of the twentieth century, vague ideals silver age"were literally swept away by a powerful pressure technicism, constructivism, functionalism.

Emotionality was replaced by sober calculation, artistic image– design aesthetics, harmonization of elementary forms, lofty ideas- utilitarian.

Using the terminology of O. Spengler, one can say that the complex organism of spiritual culture was rapidly degenerating into an inhuman “mechanism”. This trend was especially pronounced in the maximalism of Russian history.

Oswald Arnold Gottfried Spengler (German: Oswald Arnold Gottfried Spengler; May 29 - May 8)- a German idealist philosopher, a representative of the philosophy of life, a publicist of a conservative-nationalist direction.

In the 1910s according to N. Berdyaev, Russia was growing"hooligan generation".

Bazarov's heirs, developing the ideas of the 1860s, decided to replace "purposeless art" with the ideology of life-building, "engineering", which later naturally joined with communist ideas and the calls of anarchists.
Russian maximalism, so vividly manifested in the movement of "Wanderers" and "Sixties" 19th century, was only strengthened by the Russian revolution, but led to the fact that all over the world Soviet, Bolshevik Russia began to be considered the birthplace of the artistic avant-garde.

"The Great Utopia moved the history of Russia and contained a discrepancy with reality."

Russian religious philosopher I. Ilyin defined avant-garde as "the spirit of aesthetic Bolshevism, the theory of irresponsibility and the practice of permissiveness".

Another Russian thinker, priest S. Bulgakov, emphasized:

« Creativity has a religious value... Nihilism is the ultimate negation of creativity».

Avant-gardism is nihilism insofar as it breaks with artistic tradition as a source of creative imagination artist.

The past, according to the Russian avant-garde artist, "may remain unused, as material that has lost a significant part of its active power and thus its cultural significance."

For example, for Lazar Markovich Lissitzky in architecture “One equals one”, and everything else: “Egyptian-Greek-Roman-Gothic masquerade”, the historical and artistic meaning of the architectural composition is replaced by a simple construction. Such logic naturally leads the avant-garde artist to the thought: “the past has nothing to do with the present” and “there is no development in art”.
In a dangerous period social revolutions such nihilism in an artistically poorly educated person with a complex of unsatisfied ambition led to devastating consequences.

Lissitzky Lazar (El). Title page album "Victory over the sun." 1923

The Soviet avant-gardists did not advocate the creation of new trends or schools in art, but proclaimed themselves prophets and leaders of "parties", assigning the rest the roles of nameless performers in "collective proletarian labor". K. Malevich, M. Chagall, D. Shterenberg were appointed "commissars", "authorized" and the revolution gave them the power to impose their ideas and forms of organization by force.

This was Bolshevism in art, but without a tradition, without a culture that unites people: an artist with an audience, an artist with an artist; these people were left alone with emptiness. The mask of nihilism, irony, "carnival" covered fear, envy, hatred. In the history of art, only geniuses who were ahead of their time endured such loneliness, but they were saved by love for people and faith in God...
The avant-gardists - atheists and anarchists - were not geniuses; sensing this, they proclaimed themselves geniuses. Therefore, each sought to overthrow the other.

Malevich was at enmity with Kandinsky, Kandinsky with Malevich and Tatlin, Tatlin, Lissitzky, Matyushin - with everyone. At the same time, they were united by the will to power.

Kazimir Malevich "Women in the field" 1928-1932.

They dreamed of reorganizing life, at the very least: "on the scale of the globe."

Vladimir Tatlin. Scenery sketch for opera "The Flying Dutchman" , 1915.

The avant-gardists wanted "party art" and in the end they got it in the form of "socialist realism". And although not all Russian avant-garde artists were connected with politics, many remained true romantics and idealists, in general, the avant-garde testified to the defeat of national culture.

This is also reflected in the terminology. The “illusionism” of classical painting was opposed by the avant-gardists, denying the concept of figurativeness in general, “visionism” (from the Latin visionis - a phenomenon).

Matyushin Mikhail Vasilievich Pointlessness. 1915-1917.

Technical methods and terms became decisive: collage, actionism, virtuality, clip.
It is significant that the art of the avant-garde in its rather long history has not been able to form a coherent artistic direction, no style, no school.

In the works of the avant-garde lack of integrity they always, to one degree or another, eclectic, compiling and speculative.

For representatives of avant-garde art, regardless of nationality and creative individuality, due to the separation from the historical tradition, the general desire for "liberation from the integrity of the form" is characteristic.

If the old masters carried on their shoulders the heavy burden of caring for harmony visual means and expressive possibilities, then the avant-garde artists with carefree ease discarded this artistic tradition for the sake of "freedom of expression".

Contemporary art has really become free. With this unbridled freedom and audacity, it conquers, captivates and captures, but at the same time testifies to the destruction of harmony, the integrity of the worldview, which is in a state of discord with itself and the world around it. Such freedom immediately had devastating consequences for the creative personality itself.
At the very beginning of the 20th century, Italian futurists, praising violence and the "instinct of the beast", voluntarily went to the front of the First World War and almost all died.

The German expressionist E. L. Kirchner, having received a mental trauma in the war, went crazy and committed suicide.

V. Lembruk committed suicide, O. Dike was close to insanity.

However, avant-gardism has always been characterized by another, commercial side.

Unlike the art of modernism, which is also focused on the fundamental innovation of form and content, “avant-garde art primarily builds a system of innovative values ​​in the field of pragmatics.

The meaning of the avant-garde position, "as V. Rudnev very accurately defined," in active and aggressive influence on the public. Produce shock, scandal, outrageous– without this, avant-garde art is impossible about".

An avant-gardist cannot work “for himself” in order to achieve an ideal “pure form”.

“The reaction must be immediate, instantaneous, excluding a long and concentrated perception of aesthetic form and content. It is necessary that the reaction had time to arise and gain a foothold before their deep comprehension, so that it, as far as possible, hindered this comprehension, made it as difficult as possible. Misunderstanding, complete or partial, organically enters into the avant-garde artist's intention and turns the addressee from the subject of perception into an object, into an aesthetic thing.».

Vanguard -the product of absurdity, the discrepancy between the spiritual meaning of the reality of art and life.

This is where the “new pragmatics” arises, in which artistic values ​​are consistently replaced by aesthetic ones, and aesthetic ones by speculative ones.

This is the essence of installations, actionism and pop art: the "sculptor" M. Duchamp demonstrates a toilet bowl on a pedestal instead of a work of art, and E. Warhol - a "composition" of cans.

Signed with pseudonym R. Mutt urinal Marcel Duchamp "Fountain"

That is why avant-gardism should be to start from the essential artistic currents of modernist art: Acmeism, Symbolism, Cubism, Orphism, Fauvism, Expressionism.

Andy Warhol "Tin Cans"

And although in the middle of the 20th century, in the art of postmodernism, this pragmatics was somewhat softened (perhaps simply because the avant-garde ceased to be avant-garde), it is quite obvious that neglecting the school and the complexity of comprehending the art form is the easiest way, attracting mainly those who it delights to profitably fool simpletons, deceive an insufficiently cultured public, poorly educated critics and ignorant patrons.

After all, in order to fully realize the inner emptiness and lack of spirituality of avant-garde, a considerable “visual experience” is needed. The more elementary art is, the more difficult it is for an ignorant viewer to understand, to separate true values from the imaginary.

This is the same plot of "The Tale of the Naked King". Understanding contemporary art It is also complicated by the fact that innovative aspirations in it constantly collide with attempts to return to tradition, so it turns out that the avant-garde by name is not always such in essence.
As a reaction to this natural phenomenon, since the 1970s. the names neo-avant-garde, post-avant-garde, transavant-garde appear more and more often. In Russian art criticism, the word "avant-garde" was first used by A. Benois in 1910 in an article about the exhibition of the "Union of Russian Artists", in which he strongly condemned the "avant-garde" P. Kuznetsov, M. Larionov, G. Yakulov.

Kuznetsov Pavel Varfolomeevich "Rock by the river". Album sheet "Mountain Bukhara".

Michael Larionov. "Head of a bull".

Yakulov, Georgy Bogdanovich "Constructive music hall"

Avant-garde (constructivism) in the architecture of Leningrad - a trend in Russian (Soviet) architecture in the second half of the 1920s and early 1930s (some objects were introduced before the end of the 1930s). Russian revolution, building a new ... ... Wikipedia

avant-garde- a, m. avant garde f. 1. military Part of the troops located ahead of the main forces. It is necessary to look, so that at first a strong corps .. in advance all the roads and passes were examined .. which corps is called the avant-garde. UV 1716 188. Enemy vanguard. JCF… … Historical dictionary gallicisms of the Russian language

This term has other meanings, see Vanguard. Poster for Dziga Vertov's film "A Man with a Movie Camera" Av ... Wikipedia

DVD cover of Avant-Garde: Experimental Cinema of the 1920s in the 1930s Avant-garde (French Avant garde, from French avant before and French gard guard, guard) is a direction in the development of cinema that arose as a counterweight to commercial cinema. Movie avant-garde ... ... Wikipedia

DVD cover of Avant-Garde: Experimental Cinema of the 1920s in the 1930s Avant-garde (French Avant garde, from French avant before and French gard guard, guard) is a direction in the development of cinema that arose as a counterweight to commercial cinema. Movie avant-garde ... ... Wikipedia

- (French avant garde, literally: avant ahead; guard garde): Wiktionary has an entry for "avant-garde" ... Wikipedia

Avant-garde (fr. avant garde, literally: avant in front; garde guards): Vanguard (military affairs) military term Avant-garde (art) term in art Avant-garde (cinema) direction in the development of cinema Avant-garde substyle of metal Avant-garde ... Wikipedia

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VANGUARD (French avant garde advanced detachment) is a category that in modern aesthetics and art history means the totality of diverse innovative movements and trends in art of the 1st half. 20th century In Russia, he first used it (in a negative ... ... Philosophical Encyclopedia

Books

• The Art of the Book in Russia in the 1910s-1930s. Masters of the Left. Materials for the catalog, S. V. Khachaturov. The readers are offered the first attempt at a systematic catalog of publications designed by artists of the so-called `avant-garde` (or `left`) movements of the 1910s-1930s. Collected material...
• The art of the book in Russia 1910-1930, S. V. Khachaturov. The readers are offered the first attempt at a systematic catalog of publications designed by artists of the so-called "avant-garde" (or "left") movements of the 1910-1930s. Collected…