It was the objective of historical avant-gardes of the 1920s and 1930s to eliminate art as an institution. At the same time, the role of art was to be changed, as the concept of the avant-garde was closely associated with the idea of complete social change.
Anti-Fascist Art of the Berlin Dada
Dadaists openly opposed the German government as well as Aestheticism of bourgeois art. John Heartfield, a prominent figure of the Berlin Dada movement, became an active participant of the anti-Fascist opposition and his collaboration with communist publications, for which he produced photomontages, was a systematic campaign of critique against the government. Obvious anti-Fascist character of Heartfield’s image was a reaction to the political domination of the National Socialism and the rise of militarism in Germany.
Avant-Garde's Opposition to Capitalism
The main idea of the art historian Peter Bürger’s theory was that the historical avant-garde movements wanted to reintegrate art into life after they became separated by the development of market economy. The role of art was to grow beyond mere imitation of life pictured on a two dimensional surface.
The technique of photomontage was particularly well suited for the critical dimension of Heartfield’s work. Photomontage was regarded as an ideal technique for forming modern consciousness. In the view of the avant-garde, capitalist ideology of the bourgeois society manipulated perception into superficiality in order to generate people’s compliance with the requirements of the capitalist system.
Art for Art's Sake or Art for Social Change?
Bürger argues that the function of the avant-garde art was to sublate art practice into the praxis of life, thus negating the main principle of Aestheticism. Aestheticism had made purity in terms of form and content its essential premise. As an advocate for Aestheticism, Clement Greenberg argued for "art for art’s sake" where subject matter or content is to be avoided completely if the work of art is to command any aesthetic merit.
John Heartfield's Politicized Art of Photomontage
The content in Heartfield’s images such as The Meaning of the Hitler Salute on the other hand, was clearly intended to have an impact on the audience and was quite the opposite to the perceived social functionlessness of the aesthetic Bürger refers to. Although we could say that Heartfield’s work followed the idea of reintegrating art and life, it diverted from the Dada experimentation towards a more politicized practice where the priority was the critique of the political status quo.
Heartfield had to adapt his practice under the changed socio-political circumstances in Germany if his work was to be a significant contribution to the social transformation. Bürger claims that the complete fusion of art and life would mean the impossibility of distinguishing art’s social purpose. While committed to the idea of art’s role in social transformation, Heartfield maintained a distance between art and life in order for his work to preserve a critical capacity that would have been lost in a more experimental practice.
Sources:
Edwards, Steve and Wood, Paul (ed.), Art of the Avant-Gardes, New Haven and London: Yale University Press in association with The Open University, 2004
Gaiger, Jason (ed.), Frameworks of Modern Art, New Haven and London: Yale University Press in association with The Open University, 2003
Gaiger, Jason and Wood, Paul (ed.), Art of the Twentieth Century: A Reader, New Haven and London: Yale University Press in association with The Open University, 2003
Harrison, Charles and Wood, Paul (ed.), Art in Theory 1900-2000: An Anthology of Changing Ideas, Blackwell Publishing, 2003
Perry, Gill and Wood, Paul (ed.), Themes in Contemporary Art, New Haven and London: Yale University Press in association with The Open University, 2004
Wood, Paul (ed.), Varieties of Modernism, New Haven and London: Yale University Press in association with The Open University, 2004
Zuzana Minarikova - I live in London and work in publishing in Bloomsbury which is an exciting part of London, full of museums, galleries, bookshops and ...
