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

Peter Zusi

Visual Culture 2

Legenda

ModernCzechArtopen

Abstract.  The introduction raises the question whether ‘the avant-garde’ should be regarded as a coherent cultural phenomenon or whether it is simply a loose, catchall term for competing and conflicting programmes. The Czech theoretician Karel Teige (1900-1951) is presented as a thinker who made one of the most compelling cases for an integrated avant-garde ambition underlying the apparently contradictory ideals of rationalism and irrationalism, as well as for the ‘medial holism’ uniting various avant-garde practices (painting, literature, architecture, film, photography, typography, theatre). The introduction also situates this now lesser known figure within the wider context of the interwar avant-garde, both with figures with whom he collaborated directly (e.g., Le Corbusier, André Breton, Mosei Ginzburg) or to whom his theoretical writings can be productively compared (e.g., Walter Benjamin, Georg Lukács, Jan Mukařovský).

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