Avant Gardism

Originally a French term, meaning in English, vanguard or advance guard (the part of an army that goes forward ahead of the rest). Applied to art, means that which is in the forefront, is innovatory, which introduces and explores new forms and in some cases new subject matter. In this sense the term first appeared in France in the first half of the nineteenth century and is usually credited to the influential thinker Henri de Saint-Simon, one of the forerunners of socialism. He believed in the social power of the arts and saw artists, alongside scientists and industrialists, as the leaders of a new society. In 1825 he wrote: 'We artists will serve you as an avant-garde¿ the power of the arts is most immediate: when we want to spread new ideas we inscribe them on marble or canvas¿ What a magnificent destiny for the arts is that of exercising a positive power over society, a true priestly function and of marching in the van [i.e. vanguard] of all the intellectual faculties!' Avant-garde art can be said to begin in the 1850s with the Realism of Gustave Courbet, who was strongly influenced by early socialist ideas. This was followed by the successive movements of modern art, and the term avant-garde is more or less synonymous with modern. Some avant-grade movements such as Cubism for example have focused mainly on innovations of form, others such as Futurism, De Stijl orSurrealism have had strong social programmes. The notion of the avant-garde enshrines the idea that art should be judged primarily on the quality and originality of the artists vision and ideas.  (definition from tate glossary) This is a recent advertising for Playstation 3, even though i do not like this advert i feel it represents avant guard quite well. The term avant gard seems to mean something completely new, at the forefront of design, which i feel fits well with this image. The advert goes against traditional conventions by using a man as the eye-candy, to grab the consumers attention rather than a woman, even though the playstation 3 is a product mainly targeted towards men. At first glance you would have no idea that the advert was promoting playstation 3, it is just a shocking controversial advert made to get attention, so people would talk about it and the word of mouth about playstation would spread, which would be a completely new way of advertising used by other companies like cadburies, creating advertising of no relevance to the product itself to confuse the audience and get people talking about it, creating hype around the product. This is a piece of Design by Alexander Rodchenko, this style of art was at the forefront of graphic design, using geometric shapes similar the those of El Lissitzky's bolsheviks posters, the poster communicates to people encouraging them to read, trying to create a social change changing peoples opinions that education is for the rich. The use of a woman within the advert was a big change in advertising, before this women were only rportrayed as the weaker gender being used as an object to make the male figure look better, however in this poster the woman is seen shouting out to everyone trying to promote education, she is seen as strong and powerful, maybe sparking an end to sexism in advertising. The poster is also very innovative because of the use of new technology within the advert, using photography and photo montage was something that had rarely book seen before in graphic design.