Was (is) there an American Avantgarde? Theoretical Reflections on Innovation and Tradition in Avantgarde and Modernism

Abstract

This article considers the role of the avantgarde in American modernism. It suggests to distinguish modernism and avantgarde with respect to the function of innovation and tradition. Both the modern and the avantgarde author are stylistically innovative, but for the modern author innovation strengthens the traditional concept of the autonomous, self-sufficient work of art, whereas for the avantgarde writer radical innovation functions as a disruptive force which supposedly leads to a re-unification of art and life. The avantgarde movements - especially dadaism, futurism, and surrealism - came into existence as an answer to specific European conditions in art and society and did not play any larger role in the United States. The expatriate American authors Ezra Pound and Gertrude Stein are not avantgarde authors, but essentially modern writers. After modernism had succeeded in America as the epitome of high art' an American neo-avantgarde developed during the 1950s and 1960s which revived the disruptive techniques of the European historical avantgarde in an effort to close the gap between art and life. What is called postmodernism today is not an avantgarde movement anymore. It lacks both the negation of the past and the Utopian impulse essential for any avantgarde.