avant garde

avant garde

Gustave Courbet (portrait by Nadar)

I have studied the art of the masters and the art of the moderns, avant garde any preconceived system and without prejudice. I have no more wanted to imitate the former than to copy the latter; nor have I thought of achieving the idle aim of art for arts sake. No! I have simply wanted to draw from a thorough knowledge of tradition the reasoned and free sense of my own individuality. To know in order to do: such has been my thought. To be able to translate the customs, ideas, and appearance of my time as I see them — in a word, to create a living art — this has been my aim. Gustave Courbet, preface to Worlds Fair catalogue, 1855.

The Stone Breakers (1850) - Gustave Courbet

Courbet depicted the harshness in life, and in so doing, challenged contemporary academic ideas art, which brought him criticism that he avant garde adopted a cult of ugliness. [Apr 2006]

Anarchism had a large influence on French Symbolism of the late 19th century, such as that of Stéphane Mallarmé, who was quoting as saying Je ne sais pas dautre bombe, quun livre. (I know of no bomb other than the book.) Its ideas infiltrated cafes and cabarets of turn of the century Paris.

Related: avant-garde - anarchism - government - French theory

Proudhon and his children (1865) Gustave Courbet

The painter Gustave Courbet was friends with Proudhon and supported the latters views on change. Proudhon was avant-garde in politics, Courbet in the visual arts. One of Proudhons most avant garde and prophetic exposés was To be GOVERNED is & which is reproduced on this page.

To be GOVERNED is to be watched, inspected, spied upon, directed, law-driven, numbered, regulated, enrolled, indoctrinated, preached at, controlled, checked, valued, censured, commanded, by creatures have neither the right nor the wisdom nor the virtue to do so. To be GOVERNED is to be at every operation, at every transaction noted, registered, counted, taxed, stamped, measured, numbered, assessed, licensed, authorized, admonished, prevented, forbidden, reformed, corrected, punished. It is, under pretext of public utility, and in the name of the general interest, to be place[d] under contribution, drilled, fleeced, exploited, monopolized, extorted from, squeezed, hoaxed, robbed; then, at the slightest resistance, the first word of complaint, to be repressed, fined, vilified, harassed, hunted down, abused, avant garde disarmed, bound, choked, imprisoned, judged, condemned, shot, deported, sacrificed, sold, betrayed; and to crown all, mocked, ridiculed, derided, outraged, dishonored. That is government; that is its justice; that is avant garde morality. (P.-J. Proudhon, General Idea of the Revolution in the Nineteenth Century, translated by John Beverly Robinson (London: Freedom Press, 1923), pp. 293-294.)

 

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Post je objavljen 17.01.2008. u 08:36 sati.