Avant-Garde Community and the Individual Talent

The Case of Language Poetry

The term avant-garde, we sometimes forget, was originally a military metaphor: it referred to the front flank of the army, the forerunners in battle who paved the way for the rest (see Calinescu 98-99). The avant-garde is thus, by definition, ahead of its time. But not in an evolutionary sense, for the avant-garde is also invariably […]

Dada Without Duchamp Duchamp Without Dada

AVANT-GARDE TRADITION AND THE INDIVIDUAL TALENT

Stanford Humanities Review, 7.1 (1999): 48-78Trans into Portugese, in “Leituras do ciclo, ed. Ana Luiza Andrade, MariaLucia de Barros Camargo, Raul Antelo (Santa Catarina: Editora Grifos, 199),pp. 23-44.

At a Dada exhibition in Dusseldorf, I was impressed that though Schwitters and Picabia and the others had all become artists with the passing of time, Duchamp’s work remained […]