Archive for October 27th, 2008
Obviously today everyone has an idea what avant-garde is.
Some of us prefer avant-garde designed wall clocks, some of us furnish rooms with avant-garde designed furniture. Of course, this is well known stream in art and its most outstanding plenipotentiaries are such famous names as Filonov, Kandinski, Malevich, Rodchenko and more. Since the avant-garde was conceived in Russia at the end of the 19th century, the term “avant-garde” have started widely used to define attempts to forge new dimensions to our aesthetic and even political definitions of reality. Now the term ”avant-garde” refers to architects, designers, artists, writers, musicians, whose techniques and ideas are in advance of those generally known or accepted. As regards avant-garde design it has traditionally made up only a small percentage of manufactured goods, yet its influence on the history of design has been enormous.

The Wassily Chair, also known as the Model B3 chair, designed by Marcel Breuer in 1925-26.
For mach of the 20 century avant-garde designers have remained outside the industrial mainstream owing to the limited appeal of their work and it has taken sometimes many years widely held tastes and attitudes to catch up. Marcel Breuer’s pioneering tubular metal furniture from the late 1920-s and early 1930-s, for instance, was not nearly as widely accepted in its own day as it was in the 1960-s and 1970-s.
The work of avant-garde is frequently given the adjective “New” – New Art, Art Nouveau, New wave – to describe its forward-looking agenda.