The Butterfly Effect of the Avant-Garde
Did the ‘Avant-Garde’ change the face of art forever? This investigation looks at the origins of Avant-Garde and the effect the ground breaking movement has had on contemporary culture.
Edouard Manet's famous, 'Déjeuner sur l'Herbe' ("Luncheon on the Grass") exibited at the first Salon des Refusés in 1863
The term Avant-Garde, meaning ‘Advanced Guard’ was first used in 15th century French Military. The phrase described an elite band of frontier soldiers sent to encounter the enemy with the aim of plotting the path for the larger army to follow.
This concept was first used in artist circles by French Realist Painter, Gustave Courbet (1819-1877), who in 1850 declared himself as the founder of the Avant-Garde movement. 1863 sparked the official declaration of the Avant-Garde when Courbet was rejected from the coveted Paris Salon. His revenge was simple; to open the, ‘Salon des Refusés’, an exhibition of rejected pieces, directly opposite the Salon.
The Avant-Garde itself was not a singular movement but a combination of movements that challenged contemporary culture; Impressionism, Cubism, Surrealism, Dadaism, Expressionism, Futurism etc. The term became widely used in creative cliques to describe experimental creativity or the shock of the new.
The Avant-Garde ended around 1950 when it was no longer shocking, but accepted. Did it all happen too quickly? French Nabi Painter, Pierre Bonnard (1867-1947) claimed, “There was so much more to extract from colour as a means of expression. But developments ran ahead, society was ready to accept Cubism and Surrealism before we reached what we had viewed as our aim.”
So how has the Avant-Garde affected art today? Society has been left to question, ‘What is art?’. Isn’t art the creativity of the mind? …but since the creativity of the mind is endless, can we really define art? It seems art no longer has definition. Is it this instability that forces us to question everything?
The Avant-Garde is surely a perfect example of the ‘Butterfly Effect’ theorized by American mathematician and meteorologist, Edward Norton Lorenz (1917-2008). The ‘Butterfly Effect’ is the Chaos Theory of how tiny or insignificant events can have significant effects. For example, if a butterfly flaps its wings in Brazil, does it create a hurricane in Texas? The same principal can be applied to the Avant-Garde movement. Courbet is the butterfly; Contemporary art is the hurricane.
Are there any boundaries left to explore or have we as a creative collective exhausted all possibilities? It remains to be seen but one thing is certain; The Avant-Garde has changed the face of art forever.
