‘The Avant-garde in Crisis’ (Online Group Video Session)

Image Header: Naum Gubo’s Linear Construction in Space No. 24

Featured image: Aleksander Rodchenko Collage

On 24th March 2020, the Exploding Appendix Avant-garde Art Practice and Research Group will be holding an interactive video chat from 19:30 – 22:30. This will involve the opportunity to share random thoughts, ideas and any projects we are working on. There will be a general theme which we will use to guide the discussion. This one will be on ‘Periods of Crises and the History of the Avant-garde‘ (See below). If you would like to get involved please message me at explodingappendix@gmail.com.

In their 1920 Realistic Manifesto Naum Gubo and Antoine Pevsner wrote,

The blossoming of a new culture and a new civilization with their unprecedented-in-history surge of the masses towards the possession of the riches of Nature, a surge which binds the people into one union, and last, not least, the war and the revolution (those purifying torrents of the coming epoch), have made us face the fact of new forms of life, already born and active.

What does Art carry into this unfolding epoch of human history?

Does it possess the means necessary for the construction of the new Great Style?

Or does it suppose that the new epoch may not have a new style? Or does it suppose that the new life can accept a new creation which is constructed on the foundations of the old?

From: https://391.org/manifestos/1920-realist-manifesto-naum-gabo-antoine-pevsner/

In a period of rapid technological development, war and revolution, artists were drawn to examine the role of art and question how they responded to the challenges of their time. The story of the avant-garde could be seen as a story of artists responding to periods of crises. From the origin of the term, emerging out of the French Revolution, to the movements of Futurism, Constructivism, Dadaism and Surrealism emerging in the 20th century, avant-garde art responded to the crises of its time and offered a rally-cry for a new world.

In our own period of crises and upheavals it seems useful to reflect on this period and the art that emerged from it. How has art historically responded to periods of crisis? How should we respond today?