{"id":90936,"date":"2024-08-08T05:00:54","date_gmt":"2024-08-08T09:00:54","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=90936"},"modified":"2024-08-07T21:27:04","modified_gmt":"2024-08-08T01:27:04","slug":"the-future-was-then-the-avant-garde-is-so-passe","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2024\/08\/08\/the-future-was-then-the-avant-garde-is-so-passe\/","title":{"rendered":"“The future was then” – the Avant-Garde<\/em> is so pass\u00e9<\/em>"},"content":{"rendered":"

Ted Gioia<\/a> shares some observations on the Avant-Garde<\/em> in modern culture, where the bourgeoisie<\/em> seem to have become immune — or at least inured — to all the \u00e9pater<\/em>-ie:<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Some time back, I was invited to attend a concert by an up-and-coming avant-garde<\/em> band. These musicians were hellbent on disruption and mayhem, proving their transgressive credentials at every turn.<\/p>\n

My companion that evening was a well-known jazz musician and, at the end of the concert, he turned to me and said:<\/p>\n

“The future was then.”<\/p>\n

I laughed, because this was so true. The performance we had just experienced wanted to be cutting-edge and futuristic, but every note played reflected a notion of the avant-garde<\/em> as it existed sixty years ago.<\/p>\n

The future was then.<\/p>\n

I thought of that concert recently when a magazine convened a group of artists and intellectuals<\/a> and asked them a troubling question:<\/p>\n

What happened to the avant-garde<\/em>?<\/p>\n

Few people paid attention to their hand-wringing. I didn’t even hear about this online colloquium until months had passed \u2014 and I try to stay on top of precisely these kinds of issues. Nobody I know mentioned it, and I stumbled upon it purely by chance.<\/p>\n

But that only proves that there really is a crisis in the avant-garde<\/em>. It’s a crisis of neglect. Of disinterest.<\/p>\n

People once got worked up about cutting edge art and transgressive culture. They loved it or hated it, but they always had strong feelings. Nowadays they hardly notice.<\/p>\n

Perhaps they are just deadened to it from over-exposure.<\/p>\n

You can put up the strangest statue in the town square nowadays \u2014 let’s say Albert Einstein getting swallowed by a monster snail<\/a> \u2014 and people just walk by it. They’ve seen it all before.<\/p>\n

You have too.<\/p>\n

Artists can make the most bizarre music, destroying instruments, shouting obscenities, and creating all sorts of noise. But \u2014 yawn! \u2014 somebody’s great-grandpa was doing all that three generations ago.\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Ted Gioia shares some observations on the Avant-Garde in modern culture, where the bourgeoisie seem to have become immune — or at least inured — to all the \u00e9pater-ie: Some time back, I was invited to attend a concert by an up-and-coming avant-garde band. These musicians were hellbent on disruption and mayhem, proving their transgressive […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[28,13],"tags":[102,262,200],"class_list":["post-90936","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-media","category-usa","tag-art","tag-culture","tag-music"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-nEI","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/90936","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=90936"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/90936\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":90939,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/90936\/revisions\/90939"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=90936"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=90936"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=90936"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}