Avant-garde Quotes - page 2

In the past fifteen years, Marxist approaches towards literature have enjoyed increasing vogue. To be conscious of the social context of art seems to automatically entail a leftist orientation. But a theory is possible that is both avant-garde and capitalist. Marxism was one of Rousseau's nineteenth-century progeny, energized by faith in the perfectabilty of man. Its belief that economic forces are the primary dynamic force in history is Romantic naturism in disguise. ... Marxism is the bleakest of anxiety-formations against the power of cthonian mothers. (Camille Paglia)
Gautier says, "Baudelaire abhorred philanthropy, progressivists, utilitarians, humanitarians and utopianists.” In other words, Baudelaire condemned Rousseausism in all its forms. Today, Rousseausism has so triumphed that the arts and the avant-garde are synonymous with liberalism, an error enforced by literature teachers, with their humanist bias. I follow the Decadents in trying to drive Rousseauist benevolence out of the discourse in art and literature. The Decadents satirized the liberal faith in progress with sizzling prophecies of catastrophe and cultural collapse. View quote
Camille Paglia
It's high time for the art world to admit that the avant-garde is dead. It was killed by my hero, Andy Warhol, who incorporated into his art all the gaudy commercial imagery of capitalism (like Campbell's soup cans) that most artists had stubbornly scorned. View quote
Camille Paglia
As far as I'm concerned, some of the best literature of the last hundred years has come out of the genre tradition and of course the best of it challenges expectations just as the best of literary fiction challenges those expectations. But it's not that genre fiction is any more a constraint than mimetic fiction. So I see myself very much as a genre writer. I love the fantastic genres. I see what I'm doing as a development of them but very much a part of them. I never feel that I'm leaving them behind. I try and be as experimental and avant-garde and stretching as I can be but I don't see that as turning my back on the genre at all. Genre has always been able to encompass that. View quote
China Miéville
Surrealism was a genuine addition to the repertoire of avant-garde arts, its novelty attested by the ability to produce shock, incomprehension, or what amounted to the same thing, a sometimes, embarrassed laughter, even among the older avant-garde. View quote
Eric Hobsbawm
In the early eighties, savvy Japanese had been scouring Melrose for old leather jackets and jukeboxes, and nervous tourists would drive by to look at the punks with green mohawks; now the funny hairstyles looked as if they'd been done at the Beverly Center. Like a government-subsidized avant-garde, Sullivan had thought as he'd tooled his old van down the crowded avenue, affluent disenfranchisement is just galvanic twitching in a dead frog's leg. View quote
Tim Powers
Object to the Hollywood film and you're an intellectual snob, object to the avant-garde films and you're a Philistine. But, while in Hollywood, one must often be a snob; in avant-garde circles one must often be a Philistine. View quote
Pauline Kael
I regard criticism as an art, and if in this country and in this age it is practiced with honesty, it is no more remunerative than the work of an avant-garde film artist. My dear anonymous letter writers, if you think it is so easy to be a critic, so difficult to be a poet or a painter or film experimenter, may I suggest you try both? You may discover why there are so few critics, so many poets. View quote
Pauline Kael
The spirit of adventure to embrace the new and the incredible belief in the power of invention attracted me to the Russian avant-garde. View quote
Zaha Hadid
Books of the avant-garde either establish themselves as books of lasting value, or they slip from the rear guard into the discard, and I believe the writers I mentioned have not proven trivial. View quote
Robertson Davies
Avant-garde music is sort of research music. You're glad someone's done it but you don't necessarily want to listen to it. (Brian Eno)
The whole concept of the avant-garde in art is meaningless. I can see what it means when applied to sport, for instance. But to apply it to art would be to accept the idea of progress in art; and though progress has an obvious place in technology - more perfect machines, capable of carrying out their functions better and more accurately - how can anyone be more advanced in art? How could Thomas Mann be said to be better than Shakespeare? View quote
Andrei Tarkovsky
I was a student at Harvard, and that's where I learned about so-called avant-garde music. Jackson Pollock, abstract expressionism and painting were well known at this time. View quote
Henry Flynt
Avant-garde theatre, with its distrust of the individual (that bourgeois invention), tends to go beyond [character] and the psychological approach in search of a syntax of types and characters which are "deconstructed and post-individual. View quote
Patrice Pavis
Futurism eventually got marred by its link to Fascism, but early on, it was totally avant-garde, and I wanted to dream a phantom link from the early futurists to the politically radical Italy of the 1970s, a time of fun, play, subversion - if also violence and mayhem. View quote
Rachel Kushner
When you talk about avant-garde cuisine, the surprise factor is really important. For example, I love looking at blogs and the photos, but I'm not that keen on other people taking photos of my dishes. View quote
Ferran Adria
We're avant-garde. It doesn't mean we have to be unhygienic. View quote
Frances McDormand
I've hardly had an avant-garde career... If you're going to make a film, you have to try to make sure it comes out of a childlike passion, as if you're doing it for the first time. View quote
Alan J. Pakula
To some degree, yeah, because I have to play a certain number of originals that might be considered avant-garde material. I realize though, that only a few people in the audience actually know what that music is, or understand it. View quote
Archie Shepp
I hate the terminology of 'costume' because my clothes are not costumes at all. I think they're high fashion, avant-garde, and more couture, definitely, and yes, some of my pieces are not particularly wearable, but I wouldn't say they're costumes, I'd say they're more couture. View quote
Christian Siriano
In narrative cinema, a certain terminology has already been established: 'film noir,' 'Western,' even 'Spaghetti Western.' When we say 'film noir' we know what we are talking about. But in non-narrative cinema, we are a little bit lost. So sometimes, the only way to make us understand what we are talking about is to use the term 'avant-garde.' (Jonas Mekas)
Avant-garde architects have never been able to depend on the support of the establishment, since the customary patrons of this most conservative and slowly moving art form have historically been resistant to innovation and experiment. View quote
Martin Filler
I can imagine an utter hatred for the jazz avant-garde. View quote
Matthew Shipp
There's a fine line between what would characterize you as a troglodyte and what would characterize you as a brilliant, avant-garde, forward-thinking genius. There's some middle ground. View quote
Michael Eisner
My dad was this sort of avant-garde guy who did all kinds of weird things. He was a true original and anybody who met him never forgot him. View quote
Paul Thomas Anderson