Breaking the Circles of Uncertainty

Abstract

This text asks if the notion of an avant-garde in art is viable today. It does this firstly with reference to recent (post-1967) theoretical and critical writing on avant-gardes in Europe in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries; and secondly, more indirectly, via questions in radical philosophy on the possibilities for radical social change. Perhaps to expect radical change today, or to foresee contemporary art as contributing to it, is forlorn, like waiting for Godot. Perhaps Beckett's violent gesture at the end of Waiting for Godot, when the characters walk on the spot, is as much as can be said, which is almost to refuse to say anything. And yet, while there is contemporary art, even at the margins, which engages on issues of social and environmental justice, and sees these as integral to each other, the effort to recover something of the hope once expressed by Courbet that art can change the world may yet be worthwhile.