The Demise of the Avant Garde
Notes on the Sociology of Recent American Art
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 7730839 |
|---|---|
| Authors | James S Ackerman (corresponding author) |
| Year | 1969 |
| Volume | 11 |
| Issue | 4 |
| Pages | 371-384 |
| Publication date | 1969-10-01 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Comparative Studies in Society and History (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0010-4175 • E-ISSN: 1475-2999 |
| Publisher | Cambridge University Press (CUP) (PUBLISHER) |
| DOI | 10.1017/s0010417500005430 |
| OpenAlex | W2024526228 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 6 |
| References cited | 2 |
In a closed and stable society, innovation is likely to be rather feared than welcomed; in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, it was sometimes used as a synonym for ‘revolution’; in an open society like our own, innovation is considered a virtue. In discussing the present condition of art, I want to strip innovation of its value connotations and to consider the search for the new as an historical condition of modern art, but not one that makes it either better or worse than the more stable arts of the past. I suggest a biological metaphor as a guide: in the evolution of species, innovation is not necessarily advantageous. If the conditions of the environment are stable, it is likely that mutants in a species will be selectively eliminated. Conversely, in a changing environment, the appearance of new characters better adjusted to the new conditions will improve the adaptation of the species and be favored by the selective process
Adaptation (eye) · Aesthetics · Art · Art history · Avant garde · Biology · Demise · Environmental ethics · Epistemology · Metaphor · Political science · Sociology · Synonym (taxonomy) · The arts · Value (mathematics) · Virtue · Visual arts · Art History and Market Analysis · Computer Science · Ecology · History · Law · Philosophy
| Unique citing works | 6 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 0,17 |
| Citation span | 1990 - 2022 (33) |
| Citation velocity | historical |
| Highly cited | No |
| Citation types | Neutral: 4 |