Lucy Sante
Publicists, Manifesto Pushers, Propagandists | What Happened to the Avant-Garde?
Alphonse Pierre, Becca Rothfeld, Dean Kissick, Eugene Lim, Frank Guan, Gabriel Kuri, hannah baer, Jamie Hood, Liza Batkin, Lucy Sante, Marta Figlerowicz, Melissa Anderson, Timo Andres
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...
That Moment Barely Survived
Lucy Sante
As soon as I understood the concept of an avant-garde, I wanted to be part of it. That was in the late 1960s, when the border between avant-garde and popular culture was at its most porous. At that point, the term referred less to revolutionary art than to art that flaunted a sense of historical progression. Many if not most of the ideas in play dated back to the 1910s,...
