HIGH CULTURE/LOW CULTURE

1. AVANT GARDE

- innovation in the arts pioneers

- losing it's "currency"

- losing it's meaning/name

2. MARCEL DUCHAMP

- 1917, Fountain

- Mona Lisa

- avant garde trying to do something different and shocking

- upset the establishment

3.'FAUVES', wild beasts

- all self taught painters

- attack on order, critics and art...rip up the rules

4. EXPERIMENTAL, CHALLENGE CONVENTIONS

- innovation

- experimentation

- originality

- creative genius

= impossible in institutional framework

5. HENRY WALLIS

- CHATTERTON

- 19 year old, writes genius poem to save the world

- not understood so commits suicide

6. REALISM

7. ART FOR ARTS SAKE

- WHISTLER, NOCTURNE IN BLACK AND GOLD, THE FALLING ROCKET (1875)

= caused a hell of a fuss John Ruskin said he's been paid a lot for chucking a can of paint in the viewers face

- no politics

- no engagement with the world

- beacon of aesthetic beauty

- separation between artist and viewer

8. TWO APPROACHES TO AVANT GARDE

* ART FOR ARTS SAKE

* SOCIAL CHANGE PROGRESSION

9. CLIVE BELL (critic)

- Cezanne = fave painter

- SIGNIFICANT FORM

combinations of lines and colours, which when organised give the power to move someone aesthetically

- make careers off interpreting art that no one understands

- self perpetuating between critic and artist

- CLEMENT GREENBURG

- the avant garde = american painting in 20th century (e.g. POLLOCK 1950) everything else = kitsch

- CHRIS BURDEN, 'SHOOT' (1971)

- friend shoots him in arm in gallery, being shot for your art political gesture about Vietnam

10. AVANT GARDE IN RUSSIA

- CONSTRUCTIVISM...SOCIALIST RUSSIA

STALIN BANS A-G

- avant garde seen as major problem...run the risk of being elitist

- members of left wing tendency to rely on ACADEMIC TECHNIQUES in order to appeal to public

- CAN YOU BE A-G AND STILL BE INNOVATIVE AND CREATIVE?

IF YOU APPEAL TO THE PUBLIC ARE YOU LESS IMPORTANT?

11. WHAT IS KITSCH?

- seeks qualities of true art but fails for various reasons

- THOMAS KINKADE 

- richest living artists "painter of light"

- turns work into mugs, posters, tshirts

 - goes on QVC

- CARL ANDRE "EQUIVALENT VIII'

- THE TURNER PRIZE

- K FOUNDATION 1994