Synopses & Reviews
Convinced that all aspects of modern culture have been affected by avant-garde art, Poggioli explores the relationship between the avant-garde and civilization. Historical parallels and modern examples from all the arts are used to show how the avant-garde is both symptom and cause of many major extra-aesthetic trends of our time, and that the contemporary avant-garde is the sole and authentic one.
Table of Contents
THE CONCEPT OF THE AVANT-GARDE Prologue
Terminological ups-and-downs
The two avant-gardes
A novel concept, a novel fact
THE CONCEPT OF A MOVEMENT Schools and movements
The dialectic of movements
Activism
Antagonism
ROMANTICISM AND THE AVANT-GARDE Popularity and unpopularity
Romanticism as a precedent
Down-with-the-past
Anticipations
AGONISM AND FUTURISM Nihilism
Agonism
Futurism
Decadence
FASHION, TASTE, AND THE PUBLIC Fashion, avant-garde, and stereotype
Intelligentsia and elite
The intellectual elite
The avant-garde and politics
THE STATE OF ALIENATION Art and society
Psychological and social alienation
Econoimic and cultural alienation
Stylistic and aesthetic alienation
TECHNOLOGY AND THE AVANT-GARDE Experimentalism
Scientificism
Humorism
Nominalistic proof
AVANT-GARDE CRITICISM Prerequisites
The problem of obscurity
Judgment and prejudgment
Criticism, right and left
AESTHETICS AND POETICS Dehumanization
Cerebralism and voluntarism
Metaphysics of the metaphor
The mystique of purity
HISTORY AND THEORY Historical parallels
Modernity and modernism
The overcoming of the avant-garde
Epilogue
Bibliography
Index