Avant garde (sometimes avant-garde) is a French phrase, one of many French phrases used by English speakers. It is often used to refer to people or actions that are novel or experimental, particularly with respect to the arts and culture.

Avant garde corresponds with the English word vanguard. Both are derived from the widespread military practice of deploying an Advanced Guard, a small troop of highly-skilled soldiers which would explore terrain ahead of a large advancing army and plot the course the army would follow. The concept was adopted as a metaphor for the work done by small bands of intellectuals and artists as they open pathways through new cultural or political terrain, for the mass of society to follow.

The official birthday of the Avant Garde is May 17, 1863, the opening of the Salon des Refusés, in Paris, organized by painters who had been refused at the annual Salon of officially sanctioned "academic" art. Later Salon des Refusés were held in 1874, 1875 and 1886. By 1881, the French government withdrew its support from the official Salons, which continued anyway.

The avant garde was originally identified with the promotion of social progress: seeing the group or individual so described as the pioneer of a social reform movement. Over time the term has also come to be associated with movements concerned with "art for art's sake", concerned primarily with expanding the frontiers of aesthetic experience, rather than with wider social reform. The concept of an elite band of pioneers has also been seen by many as politically incorrect or elitist.

By some assessments, avant garde art would include street art, for example GraffitiArt.

Surrealism claims to have transcended the "avant-garde".

 

                                                        CONSTRUCTIVISM

http://www.worldhistory.com/wiki/C/COBRA-(avant-garde-movement).htm

http://www.worldhistory.com/wiki/C/Cubism.htm

 

COBRA was a post-World War II European avant-garde movement (the name is derived from the initials of the members' home cities: Copenhagen, Brussels, Amsterdam).

COBRA was formed from an amalgamation of the Dutch group Reflex, the Danish group Host and the Belgian Revolutionary Surrealist Group.

There is a COBRA Museum in Amstelveen, Netherlands, displaying works by Karel Appel and other international avant-garde art

The group held two large expositions, one at the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam (1949) and the other at the Palais des Beaux-Arts in Liège (1951). The primary focus of the group consisted of semiabstract paintings with brilliant color, violent brushwork, and distorted human figures inspired by primitive and folk art and similar to American Action Painting. Cobra was a milestone in the development of European Abstract Expressionism

http://www.worldhistory.com/wiki/C/Constructivism.htm

• In education, constructivism is a learning theory which holds that knowledge is not transmitted unchanged from teacher to student, but instead that learning is an active process of learning. Constructivists teach techninques that place emphasis on the role of learning activities in a good curriculum. See constructivism (pedagogical).

• In philosophy, constructivism is a criticism directed against medieval realism and classical rationalism. See constructivist epistemology.

• In mathematics, constructivism rejects any mathematical existence proof that fails to "construct" the object whose existence is asserted. See constructivism (mathematics).

• In art and architecture, constructivism was an artistic movement in Russia from 1914 onward in favour of "pure" art with no social function which used designs influenced by, and materials used in, industry. It was founded by Vladimir Tatlin, with later prominent constructivists including Antoine Pevsner and Naum Gabo. Kasimir Malevich also made pieces that could be called constructivist, though he is better known for his earlier suprematism. The movement was an important influence on new graphic design techniques championed by El Lissitzky.

• In political science and international relations theory, constructivism rejects standard realist and liberal views on international relations and argues that state interests stem from identities and international norms, rather than from the effects of international anarchy. Constructivist theory also focuses on how language and rhetoric are used to construct reality. Alexander Wendt has written multiple articles on constructivism.

 

 

                                                                          CUBISM

Cubism was an avant-garde art movement that revolutionised European painting and sculpture in the early 20th century. The essence of cubism is that instead of viewing subjects from a single, fixed angle, the artist breaks them up into a multiplicity of facets, so that several different aspects/faces of the subject can be seen simultaneously.

It began in 1906 with two artists -- Georges Braque (French) and Pablo Picasso (Spanish) -- who were living in the Montmartre Quarter of Paris, France. They met in 1907, and worked together closely until World War I broke out in 1914.

The term "cubism" was first used by the French art critic Louis Vauxcelles in 1908. ("bizarre cubiques" = cubes). Afterwards the term was in wide use but the two creators of cubism refrained from using it for a long time.

Picasso and Braque were great innovative artists in search of new ways to express space and form in painting. They were influenced by Paul Cezanne, African tribal art and Iberian sculpture. First they worked alongside one another (1906-1909 pre-cubism) and then started to work hand in hand to further advance their concepts into what was later termed analytical cubism (autumn 1909 - winter 1911/1912), a style in which densely patterned near-monochrome surfaces of incomplete directional lines and modelled forms constantly play against one another.

The second phase of Cubism was called synthetic cubism. These works of art were composed of distinct superimposed parts - painted or often pasted onto the canvas.

The Cubism movement, born in the art community of Montmartre and then greatly expanded by the gathering of artists in Montparnasse, was promoted by art dealer Henry Kahnweiler. It became popular so quickly that by 1910 critics were referring to a "Cubist school" of artists influenced by Braque and Picasso. However, many other artists who thought of themselves as 'cubists' went in directions very different from Braque and Picasso, who themselves went through several distinct phases before 1920. Best known cubist artists were

There were also critics (Andre Salamon, Guillaume Apollinaire), poets (Max Jacob, Pierre Reverdy, Gertrude Stein) and following Jacques Lipchitz, other sculptors such as Raymond Duchamp-Villon and Elie Nadelman who were soon drawn into the sphere of cubism. Robert Delaunay practiced what he called Orphic Cubism which became an offshoot group known as the Puteaux Group.

Cubism had a major impact on artists of the first decades of the 20th century and it gave rise to development of new trends in art like: futurism, constructivism and expressionism. It remains one of the most famous art forms today.

Pigeons have been trained to correctly distinguish between cubist and impressionist paintings; see discrimination abilities of pigeons for details