Quotes & Sayings About Avant Garde

The avant-garde is to the left what jingoism is to the right. Both are a refuge in nonsense. — David Mamet

When I came to New York in 1949, there was already an entire fresh avant-garde film movement blooming in New York and California. It was a very, very exciting period! — Jonas Mekas

I think the avant-garde often hides itself in the highly incomprehensible because they are frustrated that the real world is so boring. — Bjarke Ingels

There is certainly a part of my filmmaking that harkens to a more simpler commercial kind of taste, but then with this there's certainly a kind of avant-garde, abstract, existential element to it. — J. C. Chandor

Futurism eventually got marred by its link to Fascism, but early on, it was totally avant-garde, and I wanted to dream a phantom link from the early futurists to the politically radical Italy of the 1970s, a time of fun, play, subversion - if also violence and mayhem. — Rachel Kushner

Edie was a gorgeous, avant-garde girl back in the day when that could be a full-time occupation, but in marriage she slowly became less wild. To Manny's great disappointment, though, her domestic skills didn't rise to the fore as her sexual and artistic ones receded. — Meg Wolitzer

We each took a fierce delight in introducing the other to some new idea or development, the next amazing artist or record album, always hustling to out-avant the other's garde. — Tom Robbins

I'm really attracted to music that sort of toes that line between pop and avant-garde, that pushes the envelope of what you can get in a pop song. — Patrick Stump

When I was a kid, the avant-garde to me was boring because it was just the flip side of being really successful. — Twyla Tharp

Why can't a tree be called Pluplusch? — Hugo Ball

Avant-garde music is sort of research music. You're glad someone's done it but you don't necessarily want to listen to it. — Brian Eno

You can't turn up at college in stilettos and say you're gonna be a filmmaker. In the college, they were teaching me avant-garde filmmaking, where I had to make films that were, like, an hour long about nothing. I just refused to do it. — M.I.A.

Men are definitely getting more avant-garde, experimenting with colours, patterns and fabrics. — Jasmine Guinness

I hate the terminology of 'costume' because my clothes are not costumes at all. I think they're high fashion, avant-garde, and more couture, definitely, and yes, some of my pieces are not particularly wearable, but I wouldn't say they're costumes, I'd say they're more couture. — Christian Siriano

No matter how much people in fashion think we're so cool and avant-garde, for most fashion people, creativity is quite taboo. — Riccardo Tisci

I've hardly had an avant-garde career ... If you're going to make a film, you have to try to make sure it comes out of a childlike passion, as if you're doing it for the first time. — Alan J. Pakula

Physicists are more like avant-garde composers, willing to bend traditional rules ... Mathematicians are more like classical composers. — Brian Greene

I was a student at Harvard, and that's where I learned about so-called avant-garde music. Jackson Pollock, abstract expressionism and painting were well known at this time. — Henry Flynt

I am neither in the past, nor avant-garde. My style follows life, — Coco Chanel

I've said it since the day he made the sacrifice to hit the campaign trail: Voters crave the anti-status-quo politician. Everything about Donald Trump's campaign, it's avant-garde. He is crushing it in the polls. — Sarah Palin

No one has ever been modern. Modernity has never begun. There has never been a modern world. The use of the past perfect tense is important here, for it is a matter of a retrospective sentiment, of a rereading of our history. I am not saying that we are entering a new era; on the contrary we no longer have to continue the headlong flight of the post-post-postmodernists; we are no longer obliged to cling to the avant-garde of the avant-garde; we no longer seek to be even cleverer, even more critical, even deeper into the 'era of suspicion'. No, instead we discover that we have never begun to enter the modern era. Hence the hint of the ludicrous that always accompanies postmodern thinkers; they claim to come after a time that has not even started! — Anonymous

Conformism is so hot on the heels of the mass-produced avant-garde that the 'ins' and the 'outs' change places with the speed of mach 3. — Igor Stravinsky

My dad was this sort of avant-garde guy who did all kinds of weird things. He was a true original and anybody who met him never forgot him. — Paul Thomas Anderson

Everyone knew what the night would bring lots of D and A plenty of T and A — Saira Viola

O masses, o masses! When will you assume the image and likeness of your avant-garde? — Andrei Platonov

In the common perception, there is something unseemly about young people getting rich. Getting rich is supposed to be the reward for hard work, preferably arriving when you are too old to enjoy it. And the spectacle of young millionaires who made their bundle not from business or crime but from avant-garde art is particularly offensive. The avant-garde is supposed to be the conscience of the culture, not its id. — Janet Malcolm

It is not necessary to be too avant-garde, because you risk not being understood. — Domenico Dolce

It's very schizophrenic because I like a lot of very straight pop, like Small Faces, Stones, Kinks; and on the other hand, I like a lot of avant garde things. — Andy Partridge

Last Saturday night I was in a club on the South Side of Chicago listening to live rock music and talking to a guitar playing veteran of the music scene in the city. He looked and talked like the musicians that I recall from my childhood; he was a thin, cigarette smoking, avant garde and interesting guy. We got to talking about a life in the relatively risky creative arts and he said, "Look, you could get that safe job and spend your whole life that way, but what are you waiting for? When you're ninety-six years old and have three days left? Is that when you decide to do what you love? — Jamie Freveletti

The burden of the past is only, I think, oppressive when you've got to go on the experience of the avant garde. — Jonathan Miller

I remember my mother taking me to see the Picasso show in the 1940s, and I was impressed by the life and vibrancy of it all. It was a bit too avant-garde for most Londoners at the time, but since then, the city has become a centre for modern culture. — Richard Rogers

I can imagine an utter hatred for the jazz avant-garde. — Matthew Shipp

Many people think of me as a modernist, as a radical in music, you know, someone who's always sort of at the avant-garde of musics, but I'm also quite a traditionalist. — Gunther Schuller

I'm not commercial, I'm not for Special K cereal and I'm not a Wheaties boy; I'm a little bit more avant-garde, a little bit more out there. — Johnny Weir

More than one branch of the avant-garde, claiming to break with the bourgeois vision and mode of production, remains tied to it in spite of its denials and ex-communications. We are far from having overcome bourgeois thought or practices, despite the socialist "intermission" between the Russian revolution and the collapse of the Berlin wall. The avant-garde has lost its radical nature. On the other hand, "bourgeois theatre" is sometimes subtle enough to flirt with the avant-garde or to make "intelligent boulevard theatre. — Patrice Pavis

I didn't have any set idea of what kind of filmmaker I wanted to be. I knew I wanted to tell stories that meant something to me, but I never said I was going to be the weird, avant-garde guy. — Richard Linklater

I really didn't know what to think about the veil. Deep down I was very religious but as a family we were very modern and avant-garde. I was born with religion. At the age of six I was already sure I was the last prophet. This was few years before the revolution. — Marjane Satrapi

Experiment - exercising to see the result. We planned Europa not as an experiment in this sense but as a work of art. Yet The Eye and the Ear was done as a consciously designed experiment. Not every avant-garde dealt with experiments and not every experiment equalled avant-garde. — Stefan Themerson

I like to take risks and do weird things and stuff that's not normal compared to other Hollywood movies. Not stuff that's totally avant garde and daring, but doing stuff that's in other languages and not using stars and using real people - things that they generally don't do in mainstream films. — Eli Roth

The avant-garde is now stranded in the past. — Mason Cooley

It's easy to make something avant garde. To do something in the traditional way is much more brave in the sense that you're - your technique is so much more exposed because there's not all this flashy stuff to distract the viewer. — Cary Fukunaga

I think that music is a very difficult art form in which to be avant-garde. When we sit down to listen to a piece of music, I think our implicit hope is that we're going to find it beautiful, or at least emotional, on some level. — Steven Soderbergh

Some of the most radical work is being done in the most commercially pop venues, and some of the most boring work is being done in avant-garde territory. — Harmony Korine

This basic problem of relevance-cum-subservience has been given an added twist in the modern world, where relevance has become not only hollow but fragile and short-lived. A wider range of choices, a deeper uncertainty of events, a more pressing need for new styles - all this makes for an accelerating turnover of issues, concerns and fads. Nothing tires like a trend or ages faster than a fashion. Today's bold headline is tomorrow's yellowing newsprint. Thus the relevance-hungry liberals achieve relevance, but their victory is Pyrrhic. It is precisely as they win that they lose. As they become relevant to one group or movement, they become irrelevant to another and find themselves rudely dismissed. Far from being in the avant-garde, Christian liberals trot smartly behind the times. Far from being genuinely new or radical, they catch up and announce their discoveries breathlessly, only to see the vanguard disappearing down the road on the trail of a different pursuit. — Os Guinness

The avant garde is so narcissistic. — Michael Graves

The heating systems composed works in the style of John Cage. — David Mitchell

We should all be involved in the avant-garde as long as we look toward the past. — Jose Andres

The Avant Gardener feeds flowers to his manure and charges prices he believes are not to be sniffed at — Dean Cavanagh

Avant garde has become a ubiquitous label, eclectically applied to any type of art that is anti-traditional in form. At its simplest, the term is sometimes taken to describe what is new at any given time: the leading edge of artistic experiment, which is continually outdated by the next step forward. — C. D. Innes

When I was coming up with the Hal Hartley films, I was cast as a no one. I had no name visibility. I was working at a downtown post-performance-art, avant garde theater company and doing a couple things on television. But I was a total unknown. — Martin Donovan

It was only through getting interested in more out-there and avant-garde forms that the musical suddenly seemed like such a wonderful genre to me. — Damien Chazelle

When you talk about avant-garde cuisine, the surprise factor is really important. For example, I love looking at blogs and the photos, but I'm not that keen on other people taking photos of my dishes. — Ferran Adria

The play takes place on a ramp, hanging from a ramp, below a ramp, and to the sides of a ramp. — Rosalyn Drexler

In almost every book I've written, there is a reference to a movie - legendary films, actors and actresses, and forgotten made-for-TV movies. The leaps poems make are not unlike the cuts in a film. The miniature and avant-garde prose poets have perhaps the most obvious ties to film, as a prose poem in its shape is not unlike a movie screen. — Denise Duhamel

The avant-garde and the beatniks share in the function of entertaining without endangering the good conscience of the men of good will. — Herbert Marcuse

I grew up mostly in Champaign, Illinois. My dad was at the University of East Illinois, so I was always around the music. One of my dad's buddies was the avant-garde composer John Cage, so I picked up on that weird classical and eclectic music. — Stuart Hamm

Apparently the Ministerium Tenebrae had decided to conquer the region using the unusual twin-pronged attack of zombies and avant-garde artwork. — Jonathan L. Howard

The idea of avant-garde art is a very suspicious thing to me, the idea that poetry is new and it keeps being new the way Chevrolets every year are new. — Robert Morgan

In narrative cinema, a certain terminology has already been established: 'film noir,' 'Western,' even 'Spaghetti Western.' When we say 'film noir' we know what we are talking about. But in non-narrative cinema, we are a little bit lost. So sometimes, the only way to make us understand what we are talking about is to use the term 'avant-garde.' — Jonas Mekas

There is a place for visionaries and the avant-garde in this world, but not at 9 o'clock on a network. — Bruno Heller

No genuinely avant-garde artist should ever be on the government dole. — Camille Paglia

To some degree, yeah, because I have to play a certain number of originals that might be considered avant-garde material. I realize though, that only a few people in the audience actually know what that music is, or understand it. — Archie Shepp

I think I give far more space and play to avant-garde writing than any other contemporary textbook author. I want students to be able to decide for themselves which aesthetics are closest to their own. Still, while I try not to be a nostalgist myself, I suppose I am drawn to those poignant moments in our lives, rendered clearly and artfully. — David Starkey

I'm trying to use people like Meredith Monk and Philip Glass and Terry Riley as the backing tracks for new pop songs. It's really hard trying to use the format and write a pop song on top of avant-garde music, so we'll see. It could be cool, or it could totally flop. — Autre Ne Veut

I'm not so in with the prescriptive avant-garde agenda. I can do that sort of thing, but I feel that I'm still interested enough in song structure. When I look at a lyric on the page, the lyric is alive to me, looking like soldiers in a field. I can move it around, and it's very black-and-white. — Scott Walker

I don't appreciate avant-garde, electronic music. It makes me feel quite ill. — Ravi Shankar

Alexander McQueen was one of the greatest fashion designers of his generation. His genius, sometimes provocative, admired and saluted by all, constantly opened new perspectives. Visionary and avant-garde, his creations took their inspiration from both tradition and timeless hyper-modernity. — Francois-Henri Pinault

Classicism becomes avant-garde when everyone else is doing their utmost to develop new stylistic forms. I think it's healthy to return to classical forms. — Michael Haneke

The spirit of adventure to embrace the new and the incredible belief in the power of invention attracted me to the Russian avant-garde. — Zaha Hadid

It is clear, for example, that many Americans did not like the idea of avant-garde art, especially in relation to women's fashion. Many people were particularly indignant about what seemed to them the deliberate obliteration of sexual attractiveness, which they identified with the tightwaisted dress and the hourglass figure. — Valerie Steele

Dance in this century has remained primarily a personal ritual operating, like most avant-garde art, as an idiosyncratic form rather than a tribal expression of religious powers or a corporate expression of societal values. — Jamake Highwater

Music is a continuum and the modern and avant-garde composers of today will be part of the standard repertoire 30 years from now. — Neville Marriner

I expect the hip-hop audience to be avant garde. I want them to be where I'm at or beyond where I'm at. — Nas

Israel is a wonderful place to be an artist - a place where imagination flourishes. Israeli culture is refreshingly avant garde - making films, music, performance art and visual art that continues to push the envelope, inspire and empower. — Ryan Kavanaugh

Jesus's teaching consistently attracted the irreligious while offending the Bible-believing, religious people of his day. However, in the main, our churches today do not have this effect. The kind of outsiders Jesus attracted are not attracted to contemporary churches, even our most avant-garde ones. We tend to draw conservative, buttoned-down, moralistic people. The licentious and liberated or the broken and marginal avoid church. That can only mean one thing. If the preaching of our ministers and the practice of our parishioners do not have the same effect on people that Jesus had, then we must not be declaring the same message that Jesus did. — Timothy Keller

That's a beautiful speech, but nobody's listening. Let's go. — Alfred Jarry

Hitchcock is the most-daring avant-garde film-maker in America today. — Andrew Sarris

On the surface the avant garde as a whole seems united primarily in terms of what they are against: the rejection of social institutions and established artistic conventions, or antagonism towards the public (as representative of the existing order). By contrast any positive programme tends to be claimed as exclusive property by isolated and even mutually antagonistic sub-groups. So modern art appears fragmented and sectarian, defined as much by manifestos as imaginative work. — C. D. Innes

There is nothing more profitable than the extreme avant garde. — Silvia Hartmann

My writing is called exotic or avant-garde because I write about rural places. Has it really come to this, that if you write about the country you are avant-garde? How did this happen? Modern agriculture and spaces are still so relevant. — Sarah Hall

It's hard / Keeping up with the avant-garde. — Phyllis McGinley

It's so easy for some people to get naked. They think they're so promiscuous and avant-garde and rebellious ... but year-round their souls are covered in winter clothing! My soul is promiscuous, now how's that for being a rebel without a cause? They are amateurs. — C. JoyBell C.

I didn't set out to do something different so much as do something that interested me. I wasn't trying to be avant-garde - that's being fashionable. You don't set out to revolutionize art, you make statements for yourself. — Arnold Newman

We live in an age where ... Christian bashing is a popular indoor sport; and films mocking Jesus Christ are considered avant-garde. — Pat Buchanan

Avant-garde is the one area of music that has never changed. It doesn't mean anything. — Jeff Tweedy

In my home country, there was a little shop with old books, but it was really in the countryside. You couldn't find English books. I found this very avant-garde American art book that had information about Georgia O'Keeffe. I was very much impressed by her. — Yayoi Kusama

Avant Garde is French for bullshit. — George Harrison

I love art, I love music. I can listen to Stockhausen and a very experimental, avant-garde approach, and I can listen to Beethoven and have a more classical, traditional approach. Why not be able to do that with film performance? — Nicolas Cage

I've always liked pop music. There was a bit of a misunderstanding with the avant-garde rock scene, because I think I was sort of swimming the wrong way, really. — Robert Wyatt

I've bought these peanuts before. They're round, cubical, pock-marked, seamed. Broken peanuts. A lot of dust at the bottom of the jar. But they taste good. Most of all I like the packages themselves. You were right, Jack. This is the last avant-garde. Bold new forms. The power to shock. — Don DeLillo

In my head, I actually think my songs are pop songs. I think, 'Damn, that's a pop song!' I can practice in front of the mirror with my hairbrush for as long as I want to. But when it finally comes out, it sounds avant-garde to people. — M.I.A.

In avant garde drama ... primitivism goes hand in hand with aesthetic experimentation designed to advance the technical progress of the art itself by exploring fundamental questions: What is a theatre? What is a play? What is an actor? What is a spectator? What is the relation between them all? What conditions serve this best? — C. D. Innes

Avant-garde architects have never been able to depend on the support of the establishment, since the customary patrons of this most conservative and slowly moving art form have historically been resistant to innovation and experiment. — Martin Filler

If you are writing without zest, without gusto, without love, without fun, you are only half a writer. It means you are so busy keeping one eye on the commercial market, or one ear peeled for the avant-garde coterie, that you are not being yourself. You don't even know yourself. For the first thing a writer should be is
excited. He should be a thing of fevers and enthusiasms. — Ray Bradbury

[ ... ] a familiar art historical narrative [ ... ] celebrates the triumph of the expressive individual over the collective, of innovation over tradition, and autonomy over interdependence. [ ... ] In fact, a common trope within the modernist tradition of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries involved the attempt to reconstruct or recover the lost ideal of an art that is integrated with, rather than alienated from, the social. By and large, however, the dominant model of avant-garde art during the modern period assumes that shared or collective values and systems of meaning are necessarily repressive and incapable of generating new insight or grounding creative praxis. — Grant H. Kester

It's interesting how people who were once fairly radical can become, later in life, kind of conservative, and not just in terms of politics - how, if you're an artist, you can start out being somewhat avant-garde and then end up doing landscapes. — Richard Prince

A major assumption that underlies this selection is that it is only within work that is progressive, experimental or avant-garde that staid, old-fashioned images and ideas about gender can be challenged and alternatives imagined. I have never seen a ballet performance that has not disappointed me. — Ramsay Burt

At 18, I moved to L.A. with my heavy metal band Avant Garde, which was very much influenced by Metallica. At 19, I got a job at Tower Records, and everything started to change very quickly. I started listening to the Velvet Underground, Pixies, early Nirvana, Sonic Youth, and also earlier music like the Beatles. — Rivers Cuomo

I notice young girls picking flowers off her gravestone; their clean hearts are soapstone. Their small sorrows are for children alone. And all of their stories will never be told. — Nicholaus Patnaude

Music is a language, and it's like a dictionary that has a lot of words, but if you limited yourself to a couple of definitions you would be illiterate. If one limits oneself to a peculiar definition like 'new music,' 'avant-garde,' or something like that, I think it's like cutting out half the dictionary. — Archie Shepp