I. Work is outside of regular art system-galleries,etc but is still judged by the rules of those systems

II. What are those systems?

III. Avant-garde from Wikipedia

Avant-garde in French means front guard, advance guard, or vanguard. People often use the term to refer to people or works that are novel or experimental, particularly with respect to art, culture and politics. The vanguard, a small troop of highly skilled soldiers, explores the terrain ahead of a large advancing army and plots a course for the army to follow. This concept is applied to the work done by small bands of intellectuals and artists as they open pathways through new cultural or political terrain, for society to follow. Because of the implication of specialization of the avant-garde in military terms, some people feel the expression implies elitism when used to describe cultural movements. The term also refers to the promotion of social progress and reform, the aims of its various movements presented in public declarations called manifestos. Over time, avant-garde became associated with movements concerned with art for art's sake, focusing primarily on expanding the frontiers of aesthetic experience, rather than with wider social reform. (Interesting that Kester would choose this term when he is trying to talk about art that is not for art’s sake)

Avant-garde pushes the boundaries of what is accepted as the norm within definitions of art/culture/reality. It is the sharp edge, where things arise.

The origin of the application of this French term to art can be fixed at May 17, 1863, the opening of the Salon des Refusés in Paris, organized by painters whose work was rejected for the annual Paris Salon of officially sanctioned academic art. Salons des Refusés was held in 1874, 1875, and 1886.

By some assessments, avant-garde art includes street art, for example graffiti and any other movement which pushes forward the accepted boundaries; defining art in the future. It should be noted that avant-garde is not only a style of art, such as surrealism or cubism, rather this term is generally applied toward the present moment.

For instance: Where Marcel Duchamp's urinal may have been avant-garde at the time, today if someone created it again it would not be avant-garde because it has already been done. Avant-garde is therefore temporal and relates to the process of art's unfolding in time. It can be applied to the forerunners of any new movements. However, Duchamp and his work, remain avant-garde because he pushed art forward, creating a new dialogue and definition with itself.

From Merriam Webster:

Main Entry: 1avant-garde

Pronunciation: "ä-"vän(t)-'gärd, "a-, "[a']-; &-'vänt-"; "a-"vOn-', "a-"von(t)-'

Function: noun

Etymology: French, vanguard

: An intelligentsia that develops new or experimental concepts especially in the arts

IV. Kestler decides to compare two works of art: Rachel Whiteread’s House and Loraine Leeson’s work: West Meets East. He does this to compare the avant-garde discourse with the dialogical approach

V. HOUSE: Was reviewed and was memorialized through the production of a catalog, was polarizing, open to various ideas of interpretation. These interpretations were taken from various “critics” (Elitism) who could interpret the work in light of history, aesthetics, and “bestowed meaning”.

VI. PROBLEM(?): people in the neighborhood were not consulted, their interpretation was not seen as valuable or meaningful. In fact, their inability to “understand” the work made it even more successful in the eyes of the art world-emperor’s new clothes syndrome. Focus was really on the art. The site was secondary to the object. http://www.artistsineastlondon.org/08_house/04text.htm

VII. West Meets East: Created in collaboration with Bengali girls from the bow district to represent the challenge of participating in both cultures simultaneously. Artist is a facilitator rather than a creator. It is about process rather than object

VIII. THE BIG QUESTION!!! What is the aesthetic significance of the process of the collaborative process?

a. How do we judge a work of art in which discussion & collaboration are

the key elements of the work instead of formal aesthetic qualities

IX. Kester proposes to show how we can use modern art theory to talk about turn dialogical art as an aesthetic experience. (Why is dialogical art not avant-garde in the traditional sense?* review)

X. Art for art’s sake=ambiguous-beyond interpretation in some ways, elitist, no purpose but to further the idea of art

Kant: Good art is beautiful, beautiful art imitates nature; the pleasure we get from art has nothing to do with what is depicted; art is visceral (instinctual vs rational, i.e. we feel the pleasure); beauty is universal among human beings; KANT IS BASICALLY AT THE ROOT OF MODERNIST AESTHETICS—utopian idea of art for arts’s sake where beauty is agreed on by all and there is no other purpose behind the beauty.

XI. Art is always trying to escape being made into a commodity for consumption by the masses and usurped of power by appropriation for the evil marketplace-story of Millais

XII. Comparison between art for mass consumption and prostitutes (fallen women)

XIII. Significant form: (Clive Bell (1881-1964) "relations and combinations of lines and colours" *Clive Bell was married at one time to Virgina Woolf’s sister-Vanessa Stephen-all part of the Bloomsbury group

XIV. Paradox=art is universal but until the average person has the leisure time to “educate” themselves they will never be elevated to the point where they can understand what truly great art is. No one can ever perceive art as purely and directly as the artist to others it is like the shadows in Plato’s cave

XV. Greenberg (1909-94)-1940s and 1950s-idea that each artform is distinct-why art schools were like they were for so long-painting dept., sculpture dept., distinct areas.

XVI. ARTIST AS HERO

XVII. Artist as enigma

XVIII. Even though art was made to be hard to interpret, it eventually is interpreted for the masses through the critics (mediators) then it is consumed and appropriated

XIX. Michael Fried (currently employed at John Hopkins U.) Greenberg’s (more or less) apprentice-disliked minimalists like Robert Morris, Donald Judd because they manipulated not only the materials but also the light and space (Physical context) HE LIKES BIG RED METAL SCULPTURES J

So if I ask you the question

What is art for KANT, BELL/FRY, GREENBERG, and FRIED can you answer it?