Avant-Garde and Kitsch is the title of a 1939 essay by Clement Greenberg, first published in the Partisan Review, in which he claimed that avant-garde and modernist art was a means to resist the 'dumbing down' of culture caused by consumerism. Clement Greenberg ( January 16, 1909 - May 7, 1994) was an influential American Partisan Review was an American political and literary quarterly published from 1934 to 2003, though it suspended publication between October 1936 Avant-garde (avɑ̃gaʁd in French) means "advance guard" or "vanguard Modernism describes an array of Cultural movements rooted in the changes in Western society in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century The term "dumb-down" was coined by Ken E Smith of Colorado according to the Oxford English Dictionary, which has the official definition of the term as used by Mr Consumerism is the equation of personal Happiness with the purchase of material possessions and consumption. Greenberg termed this 'kitsch', a word that his essay popularized. Kitsch /kɪtʃ/ is a term of German or Yiddish origin that has been used to categorize art that is considered an inferior tasteless copy of an existing
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Key ideas
Greenberg believed that the avant-garde arose in order to defend aesthetic standards from the decline of taste involved in consumer society, and seeing kitsch and art as opposites. Avant-garde (avɑ̃gaʁd in French) means "advance guard" or "vanguard Aesthetics or esthetics ( also spelled æsthetics) is commonly known as the study of sensory or sensori-emotional values sometimes called Taste in the general sense is the same as Preference. Taste is also a sociological concept in that it is not just personal but subject to Social pressures Consumerism is the equation of personal Happiness with the purchase of material possessions and consumption. He outlined this in his essay "Avant-Garde and Kitsch". One of his more controversial claims was that kitsch was equivalent to Academic art: "All kitsch is academic, and conversely, all that is academic is kitsch. Academic art is a style of Painting and Sculpture produced under the influence of European academies or universities " He argued this based on the fact that Academic art, such as that in the 19th century, was heavily centered in rules and formulations that were taught and tried to make art into something learnable and easily expressible. The 19th century of the Common Era began on January 1, 1801 and ended on December 31, 1900, according to the Gregorian calendar He later came to withdraw from his position of equating the two, as it became heavily criticized.
See also
Sources
- Greenberg, Clement. The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction (Das Kunstwerk im Zeitalter seiner technischen Reproduzierbarkeit is a 1936 essay by German cultural critic Art and Culture, Beacon Press, 1961
- Greenberg, Clement. Homemade Esthetics: Observations on Art and Taste. Oxford University Press, 1999.
- Rubenfeld, Florence. Clement Greenberg: A Life. Scribner, 1997.
External links
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