Lev Kreft
The Avant-Garde is Mainstream

Marcel Duchamp: Marcel Duchamp author d'une table, 1997

Lately I have heard the sentence 'The avant-garde has now become the mainstream' so many times, that I have become rather suspicious. We could trace its origins back to the sixties and today it represents a repetition (tragedy of farce?), as it was written down by the great canonist of modernistic criticism Clement Greenberg in his essay Avant-Garde Attitudes (1968) - and yet already this essay is a continuation of the famous 1939 essay Avant-Garde and Kitsch. His evaluation of the current artistic movements (which we today normally call the neo-avant-garde) was that they no longer have a proper opponent in academic art, because the avant-garde has completely predominated the artistic scene. And because the avant-garde remained on the scene with itself, it also applies solely to itself, therefore plain novelties and spectacularity stepped in place of qualitative criteria.
One can comprehend that something must be told twice, especially if there is a period of forty years in between. But when dealing with reiteration and not merely repetition one has a feeling that some sort of a forced neurosis is calling a solution in the form of a diagnosis for help. And the constant talk about the mainstream avant-garde has already become a sort of neurosis.
At first glance the statement is a completely normal ascertainment, which almost should not be discussed. The historical avant-garde appeared at the beginning of the 20th Century and was well finished at the latest in the mid thirties. It finished by the way, as many other things in that period. Following the peak of radical modernism in the sixties, which supposedly achieved a level of unchangeable eternity of the end of history, an artistic movement appeared which was also called the avant-garde. Whatever it was it was rightfully called the neo-avant-garde, especially because it had chosen historical avant-garde as its tradition and because it went into oblivion in the same way (only a bit faster). At the latest at the beginning of the eighties it was already announced that the sixties have finished, and that the attempts to jump into the sky in the name of utopic beliefs of any kind do not hold any ground even in art - hence trans-avant-garde, which is a phenomenon which is (to put it bluntly) a bit over the moon. This was also one of the reasons why the new wave of attachment to the historical avant-garde could not have an avant name, but a retro name. The fact that at the end it arrived at the mainstream avant-garde is a completely logical step, for at every step from the historical concept of the avant-garde something went amiss, and that, which was dismissed at first was its politicality - its political politicality as well as its aesthetic politicality.
The political politicality of the avant-garde was utopic, extreme and subversive. The avant-garde was undoubtedly a political phenomenon, for it appeared publicly, it made its appearance with political means, and it appeared in groups - political parties. In his Ph.D. dissertation Miklavž Prosenc defined the Dada group from Zürich as the following:
1. The members of the group were immigrants and have therefore found themselves in an extreme situation.
2. As regards the nationalities, origins and professions the group was a heterogeneous group.
3. It was not comprised only of writers but also of (fine art) artists.
4. The group's main preoccupation was how to fill a cabaret programme, which changed often and was comprised of individual acts.
5. The behaviour of the members was 'extremist', for they found themselves in an extraordinary situation, caused by the war and the disintegration of the generally adopted rules.
6. The productions of the members of the group (to the extent in which they were preserved in writing, whether in the form of poems or prose text) can be hardly defined as literature, and not only because they did not want to write 'literature' and did not want to be 'artists', but because they a priori placed themselves in opposition to any type of 'art' and with their actions they were stating a revolt against art and literature.(1)

This was an a priori action against art, and if this was truly the case this could by no means by an artistic programme, on the contrary, the avant-garde did not need an artistic programme, for (as stated by Tristan Tzara(2)) art and culture of the West did not have to be demolished - they fell to pieces by themselves. It was merely necessary to draw attention to the fact that this has happened and trigger the consequences. Amongst the consequences of the fall of art and culture (which were based on their own autonomy and which founded this autonomy in the inherently artistically-cultural superior aim) the destruction of the autonomy and the transformation to non-artistic and non-cultural goals was necessary.
Historical avant-garde is a politicisation, it enters the sphere of politicality as an extreme political party. This is also the mistake which was made by Peter Bürger in his otherwise excellent and influential book (Theory of the Avant-Garde) - he defined the historical avant-garde as a left wing movement, which was in the 'historical interest' of the working classes, instead of placing his money on political extremism as Miklavž Prosenc did. Of course, one could say that the Zürich Dada is an extreme case, however, it is not that extreme for the pre-war futurism not to be it's equal in this sense, let alone the post-war movements in the Soviet Russia or the defeated Germany.
Where does the political extreme of the avant-gardes lay? In the fact that they take politics as an (anti) aesthetic event, process and procession, in which the boarder between the artificial and real is lost, as well as the boarder between the artificial and natural - a curved space, in which various ways of existence of reality, also artistic meet, and in which it becomes evident that the essence of every reality lies in its appearance, that nothing is hidden behind the appearance - except for the appearance itself, which is hidden, even though it is obvious, behind the strange idea that behind it lies a hidden and unclear essence.(3)
And where lies the aesthetic politicality of the historical avant-garde? By all means in its anti-aestheticism and anti-artism, and at the same time also in the retaliatory efflux of both anti-postures into life, as stated also by Peter Bürger. One should differ between anti-aestheticism and anti-artism. As defined also by the Prague school (which differentiates between the non-standardised and standardised aesthetics and between various functions of all linguistic phenomena, including art) anti-aestheticism is in opposition to the aesthetic function as a dominant and hegemonistic function in art, which subordinates all the other and possible artistic functions.(4) We are therefore dealing with an assault upon the structuralisation of the meaning values of the artistic work, which is comprised of various meanings, yet under the domination of the aesthetic function and in light of the value dictated by its dominant meaning.
The anti-artistiness is intended for a special position, which is attributed to art and works of art - this social position of art and artistic works is (of course) a social expression of an internal structure of art and works of art, which are, in the sense of a 'pure aesthetic judgement of taste', organised as an absolute monarchy.(5) A certain excellency belongs to art, an excellency out of this world and therefore total autonomy holds true for it, which means we are not permitted to use the normal life standards for it - and because it is completely autonomous and independent from the everyday usefulness, morality or politicality it can play the role of the saviour in current conflicts. The domination of the aesthetic function as a function of 'absolute disinterest' and the total autonomy of art of course had a social-political function - with these mechanisms art became the social and political capital of the elite, which thought of themselves as the aristocrats of the spirit. The aesthetic politicality of the avant-garde directly and knowingly attacks and demolishes the position of the aristocrats of the spirit, who applied themselves with the salvation role in the human progress and placed themselves in the function of the arbiter of all spiritual matters. It this fact it is political as much as it is political in its political politicality.
That is why these two components (the political and aesthetic politicality) should not be taken as two components which just happened to meet at the avant-garde. It is true that we know of a whole line of political politicalities, which have nothing to do with the aesthetic politicality, and also the other way round a sufficient number of aesthetic politicalities could be found (at least within radical modernism), even though without the group party appearances and so clearly defined extremisms as at the historic avant-garde. Therefore, nor one nor the other, but both together are typical for the historical avant-garde in itself, and both together operate subversively. This subversion is not a result of political and aesthetic extremism, but the consequence of the tension, which the togetherness of the political and aesthetic politicality cause in the political.
In a well organised civil society the state and the society are appropriately divided as are politics and culture; this is also the case with the well defined Marxist base and superstructure. Aesthetics has its privileged place in autonomy, the political has its privileged place in politics; chosen and elected specialists deal with one and the other. The subversion of the simultaneous political and aesthetic politicality, which are both marked with extremism or with the prefix of anti-politicality and anti-aestheticism, is found in the fact that it impugns and shows this division as unbearable.
Hegel states the following: 'The actual idea, the spirit, which divides itself into two idea spheres of its notion, the family and civil society, as on its finiteness, to be from its ideal for itself an infinite actual ghost, therefore assigns these two spheres the material of this final actuality, individuals as a mass so that the assignment is seen by the individual as mediated through circumstances, self-will and the own choice of their determination.'(6)
Our everyday conception (we could easily also say ideology) is that we have a society that is independent from the state and a state which was created by the society so that its conflicts and differences could be set straight in an easier manner. Society therefore elects a state according to its own image. Hegel is believed to be an idealist and this belief is to what the ghost that can be found in his state-legal philosophy is normally ascribed to: the play is entered by a state-making Spirit which is divided into family and civil society in such a way that the subjectivation of people from personalities into subjects seems mediated 'through circumstances, self-will and own choice of determination'. When Marx started toying with this point stated by Hegel, he tried to translate it into prose and turn this prose around in such a way so that we would reach the true image of things: people who form a family and a civil society become individuals (subjects) in this community - and from here onwards they create the state for themselves. However, in opposition to the usual prose Hegel is here a materialist and Marx and idealist, for the Hegelian image of subjectivisation of the individuals into subjects complies with the actual state of affairs, while the Marxist (with the exception of Marx' later works) complies with the ideological image of 'realism'.
For even though it seems and it most probably also is logical, that at first individuals exist and only then their community, it is still 'true' that in the modern era the political subjects are produced by the state and not the other way round, that the civil society always remains that pre-political background, from which the state recruits human beings into politicality.
What Marx does with politicality is not to turn Hegel upside down but he denounces the situation in which we stand on our heads, with the demand that things should be oriented into the right direction - society should take hold of the state and abolish it, and thus leave the political and enter the actual, human emancipation.
Because of its link between aesthetic and political politicality (the assault of the autonomy of art with anti-art, political party extremism with public political appearances) the historical avant-garde has a different effect: the division on the state and the civil society, from which a politicality seperated from aestheticism is born, as well as the process of subjectivising people into subjects is put under a question mark. The position of the avant-garde is not a position of the authentic and natural society in opposition to the corruption of politics and the state, but also the position of politicality against the state. This is a civil society movement, which does not want to be a movement of the civil society, but a political party with an anti-aesthetic and anti-state programme. Peter Bürger is correct when he states that the historical avant-garde stands on the social positions of the proletariat - except to the extent, that it itself stands on the social positions of the proletariat, while no one has seen the proletariat on these positions as yet.
If we take into account the three ways of representation about which Scott Lash speaks in his Sociology of Postmodernism, we can place the avant-garde in a position where it is at the same distance from the centre of modernism as well as postmodernism. The starting paradigm of representation as a process, in which the image of reality starts as an image of a subject (in which reality is 'given') is aesthetic realism. Lash ascertains that aesthetic realism 'is possible only on the basis of three previous types of differentiations' in which the cultural field 'must be divided from the social', the aesthetic field from the theoretical, and 'the division of secular culture from religious' is also a necessary precondition.(7) However, the most important precondition in order for this three fold differentiation to work at all is that it remains invisible and unproblematic. Between the signifier, the signified and the referent there should be no disharmony, the way from a thing-in-itself through the subject-for-us to the image of the object or sign for the object is smooth and does not have any hurdles or problems. With modernism and postmodernism the situation changes and the realistic lightness of representation is turned into an issue, however, this takes place at two different ends: 'The difference is in the fact that modernism understands representations as some sort of a problem, while postmodernism makes an issue out of reality itself.'(8) Modernism abolishes the belief into a single image of the world, i.e. an image which through a convention is believed to be 'realistic', a similar image and an appropriate picture, and researches the alternative methods of representation. At this it does not question what should be represented in the representation - there are only numerous ways of depicting and the realistic way of depiction loses its absolute validity. Postmodernism starts the way at its starting point: that, which we believe to be an unproblematic process of presentation and depiction, and which experiences various ways of presentation and depiction in realism, is also in itself merely a convention. 'The real world', the world of concrete facts which should be represented and commented upon in a right way is not the beginning or the cause of various procedures of depicting and marking the world but a result and a consequence of these procedures.
The avant-garde with its historic procedures of abolishing art in life and a simultaneous revolt that it wants to make in life itself, does in fact use both approaches, the modernistic and postmodernistic, but both only to a certain extent. In realism art is an autonomous sphere in the sense of a sphere, therefore it depicts reality; in modernism art is absolutely autonomous, for it is art itself that is the only true reality which gives the character of reality and with this the human reality to all other spheres - this is where the idea of the religion of art lies in; for the avant-garde in its radical phase art as either a reflection or the only right world is what should be left behind, deserted or demolished, so that no two stones stay together. Reality is somewhere else, in life, which is shown on one side as modernity of a new industrial revolution (big city life, the factory rhythm, electric power, the car chaos and flying, etc.), while on the other hand, as a bad infinity of constant new failures and increasingly fast changing and starting anew from scratch, which should be finished. For the avant-garde the slogan that art should be left for life does not mean that we should return to the direct and unproblematic reality, on the contrary: the most problematic is reality itself, which should be overthrown and turned around. Life, into which it would wish to enter is something which as such, does not yet exist, and that is why the avant-garde is utopic. Finally, the conflict between the Bolshevik central committee and the Russian avant-garde originated from this. After the conflict the communist party took over the leading role amongst the proletariat and later on it took over the leading role in the new socialist culture. The party ascertained that the heroic age is over, and that the time has come for everybody to return to their natural chores: the party should rule, the society should change and produce. Artists should produce works of art and at this follow the political plans of the leaders of the revolutionary transformation - especially due to the fact that the world revolution did not seem to appear, and the Soviet Russia was alone and surrounded by enemies. If everybody would not take care of their chores, the land of hope for the entire humanity would fail, that is why discipline with the division of work was of utmost importance. The avant-gardists attacked especially the division of work (through which they were forced to be 'societal') into the differentiation of chores, which took away any autonomous function within the politicality. The central committee designated art and especially the avant-garde a place in representing the world within the frames of artistic autonomy, which accepted the party representation of the world as 'reality'. From all of the artistic elite of the time only the avant-garde accepted the party representation of the world as 'reality', but at the same time it was the only movement that did not accept the division into the political and social sphere, which within the social sphere defined the position of the artistic autonomy to all artistic activities and tendencies including the avant-garde. The dispute between the modernists and the party was about the freedom of artistic expression, the dispute between the avant-garde and the party regarded the freely accessible and equal for all revolutionary politicality. The modernists did not need to be differentiated they only needed to be subordinated, for differentiation was already their natural environment - the avant-gardists did not need to be subordinated, they only needed to be differentiated, i.e. placed back - into art.
To a certain extent the neo-avant-garde by itself de-politicised the historical avant-garde. This was mainly performed through the fact that it made the avant-garde it's own tradition and thus institutionalised it. However, the neo-avant-garde had it's own politicality in which the division on the (dirty) politicality and savour sociality was already dominant. The manner of the struggle of town guerrillas and terrorism, and the manner of the struggle with the retreat into the new spirituality, showed (in two extreme ways) that the neo-avant-garde which belonged to such movements according to its own ideologies and often also with its striving and public appearances, presented emancipation as an abolishment of the political within the social.(9)
All of the realistically existing ideological systems representing the correctly organised reality pushed the historical avant-garde back into artistic autonomy. This means that alongside Nazism and Stalinism, which both used also extreme violence this was also done by fascism and liberalism, which were less violent - although not always. In its stronghold there is therefore also something much more dangerous than wrong slogans, i.e. the approach itself, which does not fit any of the political systems of modernistic control of the societal. In the position of the historical avant-garde lurks a view which reveals that society is a handy product of that political structure which created also artistic autonomy as a pleasant organised residence from which art is not supposed to enter the dirty and dangerous world. And it is not a fact that the state should be abolished so the society could come to the power, rather one has to operate politically in order for the society to be abolished. In the relation to the postmodern indifference the avant-garde political stand is unpleasant because it can not declare the autonomy of art and society as some sort of simulacra, which seemed to be reality, but now we have seen through them. Representations in fact do have political power and this is why the avant-gardists demand that art should meet life and not the deduction that these representations are something weak, which could be deducted from the ascertainment that representations do not show 'reality'. The German ideologists must be mistaken when they think that one can learn how to swim by forgetting gravity - and in a similar manner the postmodernists imagine that we will forever step out of the representation combats and enter the end of history by forgetting 'reality'.
In the neo-avant-garde and in postmodernism the historical politicality of the avant-garde was de-politicised and one could almost say nationalised, and in this way the 20th Century avant-garde could enter the cultural institutions, which take care of the artistic values of the past. The historical avant-garde really did not make it, as stated by Bürger, and in the beginning of the 1930's it was defeated, however, from this defeat the way did not lead into institutions but into oblivion. The institutionalisation of the avant-gardes could be dealt with only when the historical avant-garde became a thing of the past. And it became a thing of the past when it was generally accepted, that the sell by date of its concept of aesthetisation of politics and politisation of aesthetics, was long overdue.

When we say today that the 'avant-garde became mainstream' we do not think only that the historical avant-garde has become a part of the great art collection of the past, where it found its place next to modernism as well as within modernism, even to an extent where the division between the avant-garde and modernism becomes invisible.(10) It is aimed at the fact that the world can not be changed with works of art, however shocking and exciting these works of art may be. And at this the arm is critically waved over two types of 'political' art, which are the most profiled at this moment in time. The first type is art, which serves the community and its needs to create self-images and images for others (today this is usually called identity and it belongs alongside the 'Indian', 'post-colonial' and other necessary for the construction of one's identity likeness) as well as all of that that could be seen at the Manifesta and in ŠKUC: sentimental Hollywood mourning image or the self-image of Bosnia during the war and after it, which supposedly represents engaged art. The other type of 'political' art is that, which literally or in a figurative meaning of the word acts as a wholesome designer of barricades and weapons, with which the anti-capitalist movement from Seattle to Quebec is attacking global capitalism.
This type is romantically pathetic, such as for example the Democracy exhibition, set up last year at the Royal College of Art in London, which the Art Monthly critic JJ Charlesworth recognised as an artistic parallel to the Labour day demonstrations and the soiling of Churchill's statue, and already with the first sentence rejected it as cheap fashion: 'Social conscience and political engagement in art is back in the mainstream.'(11) Thus he brings the critical analysis to the conclusion, that with this mainstream politisation of art we have only gained a therapeutic self-expression of people within a society with no alternative and artistic autonomy without any art.
Of course, this is exactly what the historical avant-garde claimed to hold true for the concept of autonomy and the concept of society. That, which was politically subversive, for certain was not serving the artistic ideals (which are not from this world) neither the transition into a social movement which would serve the correct political ideals.
Today's art is not subversive? Art can not even be subversive. Today's avant-garde is not aesthetically digestible? The avant-garde can not at all be aesthetically digestible. Political subversion is always aesthetically indigestible and socially useless.
Whoever is looking for it in the mainstream, will never find it.

1. Miklavž Prosenc, Die Dadaisten in Zürich, H. Bouvier u. CO. Verlag, Bonn, 1967, pp. 5-6.
2. Georges Hugnet, L'aventure Dada (1916-1922), Paris, 1957, p. 7 of the Tzara foreword to the book: 'Dada a essayé non pas autant de détrouire l'art et littérature, que l'idée qu'on s'en était faite'; Quoted by Miklavž Prosenc, p. 66.
3. This is also described in my study 'Jedermann sein eigner Fussball', Estetika in poslanstvo, Znanstveno in publicistično središče, Ljubljana, 1994, pp. 75 - 79.
4. Jan Mukarovski, Struktura pesničkog jezika (The structure of poetry language), Zavod za udžbenike i nastavna sredstva, Belgrade, 1985 (especially the studies on the aesthetics of language and poetic language), and Jan Mukarovski, Struktura, funkcija, znak, vrednost (Structure, function, sign, value), Nolit, Belgrade, 1987 (especially 'Pesničko delo kao skup vrednosti' ('A work of poetry as a total of values'), pp. 238-244).
5. Theodor Lipps, 'O formi estetske apercepcije' (On the form of aesthetic aperception), Filozofija na maturi 1/2-2000, pp. 14-19; 'What we see, is thus taken exactly as a double subordination and not merely a single, on each and every occasion. Also the relation between the elements and the whole is already a subordination… and … the whole is once more subordinated to one single element and within it the remaining elements become factors. I normally define this double subordination as ‚monarchic' subordination.' (1902).
6. Georg Wilhelm Frierich Hegel, Basic lines of legal philosophy or Natural law and civics in a draft outline, &262; quoted from the Slovene translation in Karl Marx - Friedrich Engels, Collected works I. 'The critic of Hegel's state law' (manuscript from 1843), Cankarjeva Založba, Ljubljana, 1969, p. 59.
7. Scott Lash, Sociology of Postmodernism (Slovene translation), Znanstveno in publicistično središče, Ljubljana, 1993, p. 16.
8. Ibid., p. 22.
9. This is also why ustvarjanje antipolitike (creating anti-politics) by Tonči Kuzmanić can also be read as a criticism of the 'social movements' in the 1960's and 'civil rights movements' of the 1980's, even though it directly speaks only about what 'was pushed out if not completely destroyed by the society and social sciences with their intensive, almost colonial brutal development, i.e. from the standing point of the politics and political' (Tonči Kuzmanić, Ustvarjanje antipolitike, Znanstveno in publicistično središče, Ljubljana, 1996, p. 9).
10. That is the review of 20th Century art, which was set as an installation for the opening of Tate Modern in London last year: the entire 20th Century is compromised and synthesised as an entity, from which the avant-garde as a special entity or at least an autonomous part can not be seen any more.
11. JJ Charlesworth, 'Mayday! May Day!', Art Monthly, London, May 2000 No. 236, p. 13.

Lev Kreft: philospher and sociologist, lecturer of aesthetics at the Faculty of Arts in Ljubljana, President of the Slovenian Society of Aesthetics, President of the Peace Institute Board, Ljubljana.