Disobedient Objects

Studies in World Art, Book 118

It is understandable that, in current circumstances, major arts institutions should try to ally themselves with the more anarchic, contrarian elements in contemporary culture. Perhaps this is especially true of those dealing with the contemporary visual arts, committed as these still are to the myth of avant-gardism.

One problem that immediately presents itself, of course, is that this myth is not itself contemporary - it is rooted in the very earliest years of the century before ours, and first blossomed before the outbreak of World War I. The myth has become so diversified in the course of more than a century of growth that what is indisputably avant-garde today has become very difficult to define. One man’s avant-garde can easily be his neighbor’s idea of ho-hum, follow-my-leader conservatism.

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