Unpacking the Avant-Garde

Avant-garde is a term that gets thrown around a little carelessly. It’s often dumped onto anything described as simply “thinking outside the box.” There’s plenty of good work to be done in that realm. We need creatives to reject mainstream thought. We need creatives to ask hard questions. But in order to think outside the box, one still has to consider the box, and some creative work is so far beyond this consideration that the box isn’t in the frame at all. No real reference point or relativity to leave you a handhold. We need this too: art and ideas that feel like they’re so outside our state that they may as well have been created by aliens, out there. Ideas that don’t just push us out of comfort, but also provoke us, sometimes wildly. Rile us up. Make us angry or confused. So what makes something truly avant-garde? There’s not really a definition, but there are a few key elements at hand. 

Thinking Beyond the Fray

Avant-garde is technically a term from the French military, referring to a historical tactical reconnaissance unit that would scout ahead of the main troop’s location. In terms of creative work, it makes sense this way too: the avant-garde is a kind of art that reaches beyond the philosophical space where most of us are, secretly infiltrating the space outside our current fight. The avant-garde reports back: there’s nothing to the north; don’t take the river road; we’ve seen this terrain. It brings us knowledge of the beyond.

Working for Movement or Change

Avant-garde also has a political association, referring originally to a nineteenth-century French movement in which leftist political figures agitated society, pushing for radical change. And because all art is political, in my opinion, all art is also a statement or a movement. Avant-garde art is something that can be highly radical, shifting our focus into a new frame. 

Unconcerned with Contemporary Critique

A lot of work, especially writing, engages in an argument. This is the basic reflection or rejection of culture, reinforcing or refusing to accept the status quo. Again, we need this kind of thought. Engaging with argument is how we write and rewrite our participation in a society. But avant-garde work doesn’t engage with critique; it’s unconcerned. It doesn’t speculate; it states. It’s beyond current criticism, reaching for another conversation entirely.

Avant-garde is less importantly a title we give to ideas, art, or movements, and more an opening in the way we should be looking at these things ourselves, without the anchors of our current societal hangups and our constant need for cultural relativity. Avant-garde isn’t something we should put on a pedestal or give extra credit to. Instead, it should be what we revere because it pushes us to see beyond our rooted perspectives. Forces us to consider alternatives we might never see otherwise. Makes us sit with our discomfort even if for a moment. That is where the magic happens: right there.