The notion of vanguard in perspective: a historiographic analysis

Abstract

In this paper we propose to analyze the notion of artistic vanguard, its scope and limits, within the framework of the debate on modernity and postmodernity. For this, the position of diferent authors will be taken. The centrality of avant-garde art was to have questioned the traditional modes of production, circulation and reception of art and to have postulated the capacity of art as an agent of radical transformation of society. The work is structured in a series of sections in which they develop how diferent authors (art historians, critics, semiologists) have understood and understand the avant-gardes. In particular, we will take the contributions of Edoardo Sanguineti and Oscar Steimberg on the one hand and Peter Bürger and Hal Foster on the other. They delineate, from diferent perspectives, the avant-garde concept, providing contributions and reflections on them. An analysis is then proposed from the confrontation between the authors, starting from the idea that Sanguineti and Bürger propose a more negative trend argumentation with respect to the vanguards product of the "romantic" vision that they have over them. Steimberg and Foster, on the other hand, although they recognize their limits, can analyze the avant-garde critically, revaluing them.