The COVID-19 crisis is generating far-reaching outcomes for culture

Photo courtesy of Jakub Kornhauser

Obviously, we can add different prefixes to the term and hence talk about neo-avant-garde or post-avant-garde, but this does not change the fact that being an avant-garde artist means acting against the established schemes and conventions, seeking new means of expression, and avoiding work that is aimed at proving evidence to the already established theses. In this sense, avant-garde is anarchistic, revolutionary and heterogeneous.

At our centre we examine many different faces of the avant-garde movement, including the precursory ones as well as those from the more contemporary times. We analyse avant-garde as it developed in Western Europe, but also in Central and Eastern Europe. In regards to the latter, we mainly search for works that are harder to reach. Thus, we translate (into Polish) different manifestos and literary texts, we republish forgotten works of art, organise exhibitions, discussions and conferences. We do all of this to show the many different aspects of avant-garde. Clearly, the more we dig, the more we find. Such was, for example, the case with our discovery of Romanian Surrealism or Serbian and Hungarian concrete poetry. These experiences convince us of the great value of Central European avant-garde vis-à-vis its Western European cousins.

At the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic we saw some films showing empty public spaces and inscriptions such as “4.33 playing in an empty mall” or “This is the time of Cage”. At the same time, there are also many who are afraid of avant-garde art. In your view, is this artistic trend still capable of expressing truth both about beauty and the problems of today’s world?

Broadly speaking, some of the avant-garde artists were openly against engagement in daily activities and opted for the penetration of the irrational side of life. This, of course, does not mean that the avant-garde suffers from some Peter Pan syndrome, lacking seriousness and solely focusing on the mimesis. Conversely, avant-garde artists rebelled against the established forms to – more precisely and more painfully – diagnose the problems of modernity. Thus, Marcel Duchamp’s Bicycle Wheel or Fountain were not just boyish pranks, but actual criticism of bourgeois life and metaphysical utopia with their plethora of pompous slogans such as “beauty” which lost their meaning and appeal in the trenches of the First World War. The surrealists did not expect others to recognise their dreams and subconscious as more important than reality. They were doing their art and believing the end of civilisation was based on social inequality and the alienation of social groups. The avant-garde movements were always focused on delivering new social and political projects, not limiting their work solely to aesthetic ideas and values. The artists wanted their audience to realise what was missing in their lives.

On other levels and with different results, they were trying to point out to different paths of evacuation. The renunciation of “creatures of habit”, as André Breton would have put it, was one of the most important paths. Others included solutions as the immersion of modern technologies or adherence to local beliefs or traditions. All of them, speaking against the elitism of old classics, were creating an illusion of universal access to art. The paradox of the avant-garde is that it has created a different type of elitism, one that, with time, has become painfully classical.

But this unpredictability of the future effects of art characterises the artists themselves. Like Edward Hopper whose paintings of lonely people in deserted American cities became so poignantly relevant at the time of pandemics. Yet these paintings are very realistic and not some kind of experiment.

This is true indeed, however Hopper’s minimalism of presentation does put him among the avant-garde artists. Quite similarly were the works of such proto-Surrealists as Giorgio de Chirico and the Surrealist René Magritte. In their works deformation takes place at a different level – not through shapes or colours, but the construction of the painting. The immobile, as if frozen, reality acts here against nature, undermining the assumption of fluid and linear movement. Details are very important; a small object – a fruit, the interior of a room – gains an additional dimension, revealing their secret identities which are ignored by people on a daily basis. Just like the pandemic which alienates us from our normal rhythm, even though it does not misshape our surroundings. And yet, it still makes us rearrange and build anew our relations with objects which are next to us; those that are behind our windows or in our homes.

Why was André Breton such an important person in the history of avant-garde?

Breton was the leader of an international group of artists who, in the 1920s, created the centre of the Surrealist movement in Paris. Naturally, like any leader, he was despotic and convinced of the accuracy of his judgements. This, in turn, led to a removal of some artists from the group. In the first place, however, he is the author of the movement’s doctrine. In his numerous Surrealist manifestations, which have not lost their linguistic mastery and revolutionary bellicosity, Breton proclaimed a new reality. One that exists somewhere between being awake and dreaming. It is here where the artists claim the complete liberation of man from all social norm and etiquette restraints. It was here where the flag of imagination was to proudly wave. Today, when we read Breton’s manifestos, which he wrote in the 1920s or 1930s, we notice their prophetic power. We read about the automation of objects and the objectification of subjects, non-Euclidean geometry, simulacra and civic disobedience as a meaning of life. We can find echoes of these ideas in the works of prominent postmodern philosophers such as Jean Baudrillard, Zygmunt Bauman, Jean-François Lyotard, and Arjun Appadurai. In contrast to conventional wisdom, this shows how innovative the avant-garde movement was.

While Western European and Russian avant-garde movements are quite well-known, those that developed in Central and Eastern Europe are barely known at all. Could you outline a map of the most interesting phenomena which have developed in this region, along with the names of the artists who are worth discovering?

To answer this question, let me first state that we are talking about a very diverse network of trends which developed in Central and Eastern Europe after the outbreak of the Great Avant-Garde in the early 20th century. Thus, it would be quite difficult to compare, for example, Serbian Zenitism, whose main ideologue Ljubomir Micić was inspired by Balkan folklore and the Messianic depth of Pan-Slavism with Czech Poetism, which, through the works of Karel Teige, praised everyday life, ordinariness and a conviction that everyone is an artist. In the 1920s, 1930s, and even 1940s, many excellent artistic works, theories, and ideas were created in this part of Europe, breaking borders between different fields of art. These movements included Romanian picto-poetry, Hungarian image-architecture and the works of the Czech Group 42.

However, it was the post-war avant-garde which became the driving force for international conceptualism and now has the most to offer. I am talking here about the performative ideas of the Slovenian group OHO whose members included artists like Tomaž Šalamun and Franci Zagoričnik. They are known for combining reflection into material reality with inspiration on what is hidden within the subconscious. Hence, their plaster casts of a telephone, decorated match boxes, and strange and irrational poetic works. Other examples include the Czech poet, Jiří Kolář, who used texts and images from various different sources to create poems from strings and razors, and the Serbian artist, Miroljub Todorović, who is known for his poetry of gestures and computer poetry.

Many artists are now losing their job as a result of COVID-19 and are faced with an uncertain future. However, I am not sure if we can say the same about art as such. The avant-garde art came out of the turmoil of the First and Second World Wars…

Looking at the history of art and its development, we see that all large moments of turmoil became a driving force for new artistic movements, trends and ideas. In the early 20th century, avant-garde artists also profited from the demise of certain intellectual traditions. Their response to the failure of earlier narratives, which thought that life on earth was harmonious and rational, was of a new belief in the power of the subconscious, accidents and the irrational. This however did not translate into a complete resignation from references to reality. Conversely, Cubists, Dadaists and Surrealists, not to mention dozens of other local avant-garde groups, were using a deformed image of the world at war, showing the end of the old order and presenting a vision of something new. New in the sense of widespread access to art and the wide range of artistic interest (i.e. grand narratives were replaced by the fragmentation and subjectivism of messages). In so doing, the artists were using some unknown – or little known – techniques, such as collage. Today, one hundred years later, we are witnessing something similar. The crisis caused by the COVID-19 pandemic is generating far-reaching outcomes. These include greater access to culture in the form of “virtual” visits to art galleries, where collectively we can see, – although from a distance, artistic works. It is too early to tell whether this trend will permanently change our perception of reality. Yet the truth is that art reacts quickly to changes, which, on the one hand, takes the form of commentary to the new situation and, on the other hand, is a radical refusal of its context.

Given these changes that are now taking place, both in the sphere of art and other areas, how do you see the future of a united Europe? Would it take the form of greater integration or rather progressing isolationism?

Naturally, I would not like to see a reverse from the integration processes that have already taken place in Europe, but I also have a feeling that a vision of a super-state without borders might be a utopia. What I have in mind are not economic or defence issues. Rather I am thinking about the conviction that is common among European bureaucrats who claim that there are no differences between individual parts of the community. In my view, it is the differences, the local traditions, religions and languages – all these rims of the bureaucratic standardisation – that are the greatest value of Europe. Their cultivation enriches the repertoire of the means which can be used in the public sphere, as long as they are not used for the purpose of building chauvinistic bastions by the national know-it-alls. In other words, I imagine the European Union as a federation of culturally and politically diverse member states. I can even imagine an end of the Schengen myth of fluid borders, but it would be difficult for me to come to terms with a Europe which is an area for rivalry at every level and in almost every aspect of life.

Translated by Iwona Reichardt

Jakub Kornhauser is a Polish poet, essayist, translator and literary critic. He is the co-founder of the Centre for Avant-Garde Studies at the Jagiellonian University in Kraków, Poland.

Grzegorz Nurek is a Polish journalist specialising in cultural affairs.

Art, Avant-Garde, Central European art