Art and its Negations

Abstract

Why do art’s traditions of negation persist? What continues to drive negation in art is the very ‘asociality’ of art under capitalism, the fact that for art to remain art (rather than transform itself wholly into design, fashion or social theory) it must experience itself as being ‘out of joint’, both with its place in the world and within its own traditions. For without this drive to ‘autonomy’ (the emergence of art as something other than the conditions which call it into being) art would simply cease to exist as a tradition of aesthetic and intellectual achievement and, more importantly, as a means of resistance to the heteronomy of capitalist exchange. This is why this tradition of negation continues to produce work of value and quality, despite the demise of the original avant‐garde and the dispersal and assimilation of modernism, and despite art’s constant submission to the demands of entertainment and commerce and institutional legitimisation and approbation. This article examines these questions, in the light of legacy of the avant‐garde, neo‐avant‐garde and contemporary practice.