Frank Guan
Publicists, Manifesto Pushers, Propagandists | What Happened to the Avant-Garde?
Frank Guan
It’s commonplace to note that sociopolitical upheaval and artistic experimentation often flourish side by side. But today — despite an alleged “polycrisis” — new modes of cultural production don’t seem to be emerging. Three years after the start of the Covid-19 pandemic and the subsequent George Floyd rebellion, the arts seem stagnant and stubbornly centralized: franchise fare dominates at the box office; literary output is hampered by monopolized publishers; even...
Half Truth and Half Fantasy
Frank Guan
As Baudelaire was quick to note, “avant-garde” was originally a military metaphor — an idiom from the battlefield transposed into the discourse of bohemians longing for some sense of urgency. It’s worth noting, too, that although later avant-gardists rushed to claim him for their own, the poet himself stated that only losers (“minds hardly militant, but made for discipline, in other words conformity, domestic minds, Belgian minds, who can only...
