Click cover to enlarge

 Open access under:
CC BY-NC 4.0

Part of the book: The Integrity of the Avant-Garde

Peter Zusi

Visual Culture 2

Legenda

ModernCzechArtopen

Abstract.  The interwar avant-garde has traditionally been understood as a radical undermining of Realism, whether in its traditional 19th-century form or in the shape of Soviet Socialist Realism. While the clashes between proponents of ‘Realisms’ (of different stripes) and ‘modernisms’ usually seem irreconcilable, this chapter develops perspectives on these debates that underscore how much these two camps share. First is the commitment to art as cognitive tool for understanding the present (implicit in avantgarde claims to address a ‘deeper’ realism), and the second is a rejection of ‘historicisms’ as a misunderstanding the true nature of the present. Teige and Georg Lukács’s reflections on realism and the historical novel are compared with an eye to the analogies rather than incompatibilities between their positions.

Full text.  This contribution is published as Open Access and can be downloaded as a PDF, or viewed as a PDF in your web browser, here:

Link to full text as PDF