An avant-garde man is like an enemy inside a city he is bent on destroying, against which he rebels; for like any system of govern...ment, an established form of expression is also a form of oppression. The avant-garde man is the opponent of an existing system.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
There is a certain kind of person who is so dominated by the desire to be loved for himself alone that he has constantly to test t...hose around him by tiresome behavior; what he says and does must be admired, not because it is intrinsically admirable, but because it is his remark, his act. Does not this explain a good deal of avant-garde art?LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Life is difficult for those who have the daring to first set out on an unknown road. The avant-garde always has a bad time of it.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Consider the relationship of Hollywood and Broadway. In the twenties, the two were sharply differentiated, movies being produced f...or the masses of the hinterland, theatre for an upper-class New York audience. The theatre was High Culture, mostly of the Academic variety (Theatre Guild) but with some spark of Avant-garde fire (the "little" or "experimental" theatre movement). The movies were definitely Mass Culture, mostly very bad but with some leaven of Avant-gardism (Griffiths, Stroheim) and Folk Art (Chaplin and other comedians). With the sound film, Broadway and Hollywood drew closer together. Plays are now produced mainly to sell the movie rights, with many being directly financed by the film companies. The merger has standardized the theatre to such an extent that even the early Theatre Guild seems vital in retrospect, while hardly a trace of the "experimental" theatre is left. And what have the movies gained? They are more sophisticated, the acting is subtler, the sets in better taste. But they too have become standardized: they are never as awful as they often were in the old days, but they are never as good either. They are better entertainment and worse art.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Like the international avant-garde, rock-and-roll is the creative product of a rebellious youth culture trying to reach a mass aud...ience. Its artists embrace technological innovation. Their lives and personal styles are often counterculture. Many rock groups have appropriated creative strategies of modern art history: Some stage acts can be seen as Neo-Dada performance, others have lifted ideas from the Surrealists, the Situationists, and other art groups. Although pop music has its individual stars like Elvis and Madonna, most rock musicians, like the international avant-garde, work collaboratively, in bands. But however much a rock-and-roll group may initially appeal to a specific youth subculture, its potential for vast global audiences is different from that of fine art, which remains within the arcane reaches of high culture.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
I never wanted to live an unembellished life, and I have never done it.... Living under such a compulsion has been like painting p...ictures of life, and I don't take kindly to suggestions that I might have been less egotistically employed had I become a trained nurse.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
I have always rebelled against the unadorned, the unbefitting, the unawakened, the unresisting, the undesirable, the unplanned, th...e unshapely, the uncommitted, the unattempted--all leading to the unintended. I believe in the unsubmissive, the unfaltering, the unassailable, the irresistible, the unbelievable--in other words, in an art of life.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »