THE 8 MOST IMPORTANT AVANT-GARDE CHARACTERISTICS - ART - 2025

The avant-garde is characterized by going beyond its time; the exploration of new artistic techniques and materials that had not been explored before her time (Education, 2017).

The themes chosen within the avant-garde tried to encompass the use of new artistic techniques and methods that would help artists to produce better art.

In this way, many artists emphasized the design and planning of their works, beyond simple "artistic incidents", since rarely a sculptor or painter could be avant-garde without premeditation.

The avant-garde was branded as subversive, controversial and radical for questioning the guidelines proposed by classical art. In this way, all the limits of art as it was known until the end of the 19th century were transgressed (Education, 2017).

Among the avant-garde artists, Picasso stands out, due to the analytical questioning that he made to the use of visual perspective within the painting.

There are also the impressionists Monet and Van Gogh with a “crazy” proposal in the application of color. However, the greatest exponent of avant-garde was Duchamp, with his revolutionary dadaism or dada.

Fundamental characteristics of avant-garde

1- Radical and subversive

The term "Avant Garde" was first used by the French Henri de Saint-Simon in the early 19th century. He declared that the artists who worked in the service of the avant-garde were directed towards social progress and went further than the scientists and experts in other disciplines.

However, at the beginning of the 20th century, the term was characterized as a synonym for radicalism and implied that avant-garde artists had to question the status quo of art in order to go a step beyond it.

This is how the issues addressed by the avant-garde debated all the aesthetic dynamics, intellectual movements, conventions and methods of artistic production. For this reason, artists were classified as subversives (Harland, 2013).

2- Experimentation

The avant-garde artists were characterized by treating art in a different way, coming to explore numerous techniques.

Some of these techniques gave bloom to new artistic movements, such as the cubism promoted by Picasso. Others were unsuccessful and were never really implemented.

Experimentation in the avant-garde began years after the French Revolution passed. In this way, this movement is understood as the awakening of art at the beginning of the 20th century.

Traditional oil painting techniques were challenged, and art began to portray landscapes, shapes, and figures with a new romanticism. This is how impressionism was born as one of the great avant-garde schools (Johnson, 2017).

3- Color conventions

It can be said that the avant-garde movements turned the way color was used on its head. Suddenly, forests could be red and haystacks blue.

All this was due to the importance that some artists began to give to natural phenomena at specific moments, such as the incidence of the sun on the elements perceived by the artist's eyes.

This change in color conventions may be common today, but at the beginning of the 20th century, the public was scandalized by the violence with which art was being treated (Terraroli, 2006).

4- From the rational to the illogical

The avant-garde had numerous exponents and resulted in multiple artistic movements and schools, known today as avant-garde. Each avant-garde had its particular way of approaching art and dealt with different themes.

This is how we can see movements such as Fauvism, with an unnatural and dramatic color scheme, where its creators were known as "wild beasts", and movements such as Cubism, where the analysis of form prevailed, criticizing the conventional idea of ​​the linear perspective in favor of an emphasis on the use of two-dimensionality.

In this way, the avant-gardes scandalized the academics of the time, with exhibitions in Paris, New York, Munich, Dresden and Berlin.

In these latter places, German Expressionism was responsible for breaking the traditional schemes with a style of marked edges that are used to this day (Scheunemann, 2000).

5- Anarchism and innovation

The avant-garde movement par excellence is Dadaism, which dealt with themes that revolved around direct criticism of the visual arts and the proposal of an art that included an innovative mixture of anarchy and hyper-modernism.

Dadaism was highly controversial and challenging, rejecting all the fundamental pillars of classical art.

Dada turned garbage and objects found on the street into three-dimensional collages. In this way, the exponents of this current created a more conceptual art with which one could interact.

6- Concept art

The vanguards were mostly conceptual. From them emerges what is known today as performance art and happening.

Mainly, the Dada current is understood as the precursor of conceptual art that would come almost fifty years later with postmodernism.

Each trend of avant-garde was the successor to a new trend. This is how surrealism was born from Dadaism, and art increasingly takes on a more conceptual tinge, loaded with figures from the dreams of Salvador Dalí.

7- Geometry

This is a subject strongly treated by the avant-garde, since the concepts of figure and form were clearly debated.

This is how the De Stijil movement was born at the hands of the artist Piet Mondrian, and reality is interpreted from an abstraction of basic and experimental geometric figures.

Geometry was not only treated by painters, sculptors also questioned this aspect of art, giving rise to movements such as Futurism, where the form was represented from a spatial ideal of more sinuous forms and metallic textures.

8- Abstraction

Within the avant-garde, the abstraction of elements from classical art reached a point where it was unlikely to further simplify shapes and figures.

At the end of the 20th century, abstractionism dominated the art world and it was difficult for artists to create surprising new pieces.

At this time, Jackson Pollock created the technique of painting in action, giving a twist to the popular theme of abstractionism. The colors and strokes again had emotion and the message that was intended to be delivered was more powerful (Kordic, P, Martinique, & P, 2017).

References

1. EDUCATION, EO (2017). ENCYCLOPEDIA OF ART EDUCATION. Obtained from Avant-Garde Art: visual-arts-cork.com.
2. Education, M. o. (2017). Spain is Culture. Obtained from Modernism and Avant-garde movements: spainisculture.com.
3. Harland, M. (2013). Democratic Vanguardism. London: Lexington Books.
4. Johnson, G. (2017). Counter-Currents Publishing. Retrieved from Vanguardism, Vantardism, & Mainstreaming: counter-currents.com.
5. Kordic, A., P, S., Martinique, E., & P, N. (2017). Art History - Widewalls Editorial. Obtained from UNDERSTANDING THE SIGNIFICANCE OF AVANT-GARDE: widewalls.ch.
6. Scheunemann, D. (2000). European Avant-garde: New Perspectives. Atlanta - Amsterdam: American Comparative Literature Association.
7. Terraroli, V. (2006). 1900-1919: The Avant-garde Movements. Skira.