Avant-garde Art
The Origins of the Phrase
Originally, avant-garde was a French military term for what would be called in English the vanguard of an army. However, its first application to art precedes by some decades the emergence of any distinctly avant-garde art movements. The coinage has generally been attributed to the French social theorist Henri de Saint-Simon. In his book
Opinions litteraires, philosophiques et industrielles (
Literary, Philosophical, and Industrial Opinions) (1825), published in the year of his death, Saint-Simon wrote: It is we artists who will serve you as avant-garde . . . the power of the artists is in fact most immediate and most rapid: when we wish to spread ideas among men, we inscribe them on marble or on canvas.What a magnificent destiny for the arts is that of exercising a positive power over society, a true priestly function, and of marching forcefully in the van[guard] of all the intellectual faculties.!
No doubt you know we re in the 21st century. And we re in the year 2021.
Well that, as it happens, marks the 21st year that artist Ender Martos has been living in Austin.
That, as it happens, was preceded by 21 years of him living in his native Venezuela.
Martos has taken advantage of this convergence of 21s to create a virtual exhibition that explores not only his artistic work, but also his life – and not only his life in the two 21-year spans he s enjoyed so far but also the life he aspires to live in the 21 years to come. Images of his work are accompanied by photographs of the artist as a child and a young man, videos of him in the present day at work and play in Austin, text and audio in which he shares his history and philosophies, and digital renderings of future works – it s art exhibit as biography.
Although it is only a little larger than a shoe box, the interlocking cubes in Robert Bruce Stevenson's acrylic sculpture "Optical Construction" appear to extend into infinity, while the perfectly positioned concentric circles in Tadasky's "C-182" seem to spin like the giant record the painting resembles.
"It's almost like you can't tell if you're receding into a tunnel or if you're looking at a pyramid and it's going out that way," said Curator Catherine Shotick, waving at the lemon-hued canvas of nesting cubes that is Richard Anuszkiewicz's "Soft Yellow." "He was really just playing with the basic geometric shapes and color contrast in getting this effect.
On the Town: Check out Moving Vision, art of ’60s, ’70s By: Lillie-Beth Brinkman The Journal Record February 22, 2021
Lillie-Beth Brinkman
In spite of the recent snowstorm and record-cold temperatures in Oklahoma last week, it is an exciting time to visit one of Oklahoma City’s museums. Three of them launched interesting and major exhibits in the last week that you won’t want to miss.
I have already written about Oklahoma Contemporary Arts Center’s “Ed Ruscha: OKLA” exhibit and will be writing more about the fascinating “Spiro and the Art of the Mississippian World” at the National Cowboy and Western Heritage Museum.