Theory of the avant-garde af Peter Bürger (Bog)

Sprog: Engelsk

Forlag: University of Minnesota Press

Udgivelsesår: 1992

Titel: Theory of the avant-garde

Forfatter: Peter Bürger

Genre: Faglitteratur

Sammendrag: Peter Bürger's Theory of the Avant-Garde sets before English-language readers for the first time a fully elaborated theory of the institutionalization of art. He argues that the social history of literature and art cannot be explained by making simple, direct links between the contents of individual works and social history. Rather, the key to the whole, is the social status of art, its function and prestige in society, that provides the connection between the individual art work and history. Bürger's concept of the institution of art establishes a framework within which a work of art is both social and received.

The French and German literary and visual avant-garde of the 1920s provide the test of Bürger's theory. Focusing on the role of the artistic manifesto and, particularly, on the collage as an art form, he shows how avant-garde movements questioned the autonomous, self-referential status of art in bourgeois society and thus represented a radical break with the aestheticism of high modernism. Bürger attacks metaphysical aesthetics and argues instead for a materialistic aesthetic theory for today, one that is rooted in the reality of the social sphere. His theory calls into question an individual concept of art derived from Romantic notions of organic unity. As such, Bürger's arguments should have a major impact on Anglo-American literary theory and its view of historical avant-garde movements like Futurism, Dadaism, and Surrealism, and will be of interest to scholars and students of literature, the visual arts, and the sociology of culture in general.

Type: Paperback