...more recent posts
'Avante-Garde', 'Schmavant-Garde'
`Avant-Garde' Artists Come in From the Cold (War) By STEPHEN KINZER ELLESLEY, Mass. (For NYT) —
"Although the 1950's are
often described as somnolent years in the United
States, they were also a time of artistic ferment,
when dissonant music and abstract painting burst into the
public consciousness.
But in recent years some scholars and curators have come
to believe that this ferment was not really so radical, and
that although these artists considered themselves consummate outsiders, their work often
served to promote rather than subvert mainstream values.
The case is made at the Davis Museum and Cultural Center at Wellesley College here in an
exhibition called "Cold War Modern: The Domesticated Avant-Garde." The show, which
runs through June 17, links artistic innovators not to a tiny adventurous audience but to the
mass culture of the times."