Who Says Avant-Garde Is Dead?

Postmodernism Hasn’t Killed It Yet

William Sundwick

When art critic Clement Greenberg wrote in 1939 that the opposite of avant-garde was kitsch, he was referring to the struggle then between artists who had a burning desire to be creative and the exigencies of the commercial art world focused mostly on advertising and consumer products. Kitsch was defined as mass-produced commercial design (as well as academic art burdened by excessive rules).  Avant-Garde was the modernist response seeking to protect true aesthetic value from such crass commercialism. “True aesthetic value” itself was a modernist, absolutist, concept -- coinciding nicely with radical social philosophy.  Like Marxism, this aesthetic was characterized by a scientific determinism.

But Greenberg was far from the first to use the term “avant-garde.” It’s origins in the art world date from 1825 in France. It was used in an essay by a follower of Saint-Simonianism (the philosophical underpinning of a new aesthetic for the industrial revolution). The arts were to be the “advance guard” (French military usage) for the people, leading the way toward massive structural reform of society. Notable followers of Saint-Simonianism in Europe included the composers Hector Berlioz and Franz Liszt.

The next generation of the avant-garde reached its climax with artist Gustave Courbet, who extolled the destruction of the Vendome column during the Paris Commune of 1871. Courbet saw this as a revolutionary act, toppling a symbol of an imperial aesthetic (it was a monument to Napoleon at Austerlitz), to be replaced by a proletarian art with “true aesthetic value.” By this time, modernism was clearly established in art – rules and school credentials dominated who could exhibit their art and who couldn’t. However, the same scientific determinism which underlay the modernist aesthetic also led to impressionism, then cubism, still far too rules-based for the younger creative souls of the age.

It seemed there must be a “deeper truth” in art, much like the deep insights then emerging in psychoanalysis. Surrealism became the new avant-garde. But the tension with kitsch continued. Ordinary people were still barred from participation in “high art” – because of barriers to entry, academic, linguistic or cultural.

By the mid-20^th century, a new art philosophy began to emerge. It became known as “postmodernism” – characterized by acceptance of cultural relativity in standards for art. Even kitsch could be appreciated, if only for its humor! Mass availability of electronically reproduced art (and kitsch) on recordings, radio and television changed the aesthetic experience for the bulk of the population in advanced societies -- especially the United States. But artists still yearned for that creative satisfaction in their art. Many sought it not through their works, but through symbols. Bohemianism became fashionable. Even affluent young people in the 1960s and 1970s became what David Brooks would call “Bobos” (bourgeois Bohemians). Other conservative commentators on aesthetics have lamented the apparent “irrelevance” of the avant-garde in postmodern art. Avant-Garde has now become the “establishment” among the art cogniscenti.

This ferment in style and aesthetics has been playing out in popular music as well as high art. It’s now a question of separating avant-garde kitsch from real avant-garde – or, conversely, ordinary unredeemable kitsch from avant-kitsch. Punk Rock illustrates this postmodern dilemma of aesthetics.

As the popularity of rock-and-roll on radio and records increased through the 1950s and early 1960s, two countercultures in music seemed to emerge. Both were purists. One sought to return to “roots” (early Delta blues and country ballads), the other mainly sought to smash the stranglehold of pabulum-purveying record companies, expressing their creativity through an edgier, more experimental (yes, avant-garde) style. It is the latter group that started to call themselves “Punk.” They were urban, working class in sympathy, and shared a contempt for the commercially successful pop music of the time.

Some of these artists, like Lou Reed and his band Velvet Underground, managed by that modernist/postmodernist crossover icon, Andy Warhol, set out to create an idiom – the idiom of avant-kitsch. Reed expressed Warhol’s aura, but had an inner competitive drive to be successful in the music world himself.

Others, like David Thomas, a long-time Cleveland Punk personality with his two bands, Rocket from the Tombs, then Pere Ubu, seemed to be happy existing for four decades on the margins of the critical universe, never really entering the world of commercial pop music, except satirically.

Then, there was Iggy Pop from Ann Arbor, with his early proto-punk band The Stooges, and later as a solo performer, with backup musicians from previous Punk groups. He did reach “rock star” status himself – but has always explored the boundaries between art and kitsch in a serious way. He continues to ask questions about the Avant-Garde, even as he seems finally to have quit performing (usually shirtless).

But their music is their legacy. It survives. Art always survives. While popular tastes change, the impulse to transcend the rules, the drive for the Avant-Garde, continues generation after generation. Rules and credentials are meant to topple, like that Vendome column nearly 150 years ago. It is not the conventional we remember – it is the breakthrough art.

There will always be a vanguard. The Saint-Simonians were correct – artists will lead the people’s vanguard. Even in our now-maturing “postmodern” world, we ask ourselves: “What comes next?”

Pere Ubu

 “Avant-garage” Rock with a Rust Belt Sheen

William Sundwick

Cleveland has produced more than the Rock-and-Roll Hall of Fame. Emerging in the 1970s, beneath the radar of its pop music mainstream, was an avant-garde, experimental music scene, epitomized by David Thomas and Pere Ubu.

Starting as a music critic, Thomas decided to try his hand at producing the music he wrote about when he formed the band Rocket from the Tombs in 1974. It didn’t last long, but its members liked the project. Both Thomas and guitarist Peter Laughner decided to join up with four other Cleveland area friends to start a new project in 1975. It’s not clear why they chose the name “Pere Ubu” for the new band – after the main character in the avant garde play by Alfred Jarry, Ubu Roi. Jarry’s 1896 play is pre-dada, and was received by a skeptical audience who considered it to be childish, like a nursery rhyme trying to pass itself off as meaningful. Indeed, some reviewers have made similar comments about the music of Pere Ubu!

I disagree. The band has coined the term “avant-garage” to describe its style. Thomas says it is a joke, intended to fool journalists who are looking for a sound bite, a “genre” in which to place Pere Ubu. They began with a style clearly in the garage rock mold – but, over time, evolved into a much more openly experimental, or avant-garde, sound. They are still performing, with many personnel changes, 44 years later. They’re still in Cleveland, an archetypal midwestern Rust Belt city. It shows in their music. David Thomas is there, as always (except for a hiatus in the ‘80s, when he went solo, and the band disappeared for a while).

Thomas’ distinctive vocal style, a screechy, anxious, dreamily disconnected-from-reality muttering, is nothing, if not avant-garde. In addition, the varied instrumental back-ups have included EML synthesizer and theremin through the years, especially since the ‘90s. This is experimental rock, not mainstream – critics have called it both “art punk” and “post punk.” Pere Ubu’s style was influenced by French musique concrete of the ‘40s and ‘50s, where pre-recorded non-musical sounds are incorporated into a larger musical tapestry. Pere Ubu uses this technique with synthesizer and theremin to create backdrops like science fiction B-film soundtracks from the 1950s.

The evolution of Pere Ubu’s style can be illustrated with seven examples. Their first singles sound much like “Final Solution” – strictly garage rock. Its lyrics relate adolescent anxiety about social mal-adroitness and raging hormones. “D-d-don’t need a cure” … “need a final solution!” But the EML synthesizer, played in those early days by Allen Ravenstine, is clearly there.

The band’s first studio album was released in 1978, The Modern Dance. It greatly expands the themes of the first singles. David Thomas practices his distinctive vocals. “Nonalignment Pact” is lighter than some tracks on the album, and still sounds like garage rock of the post-punk years. “At night I can see the stars on fire/I can see the world in flames/And it’s all because of you/Or your thousand other names” followed by a long list of women’s names, then the chorus, “It’s all because of you/It’s all because of you girl!” “Sign my nonalignment pact/Nonalignment pact/It’s my Nonalignment pact.” All played to bouncy dance music. “Street Waves” develops Thomas’ screechy voice, with lyrics that evoke a kind of “dance anxiety” – the obvious thrill from the electronic music (synthesizer in full gear), tempered by insecurity about the nature of any liaisons made in a supercharged urban environment.

Still on that first album, “Humor Me” strikes a different tone. It may be a precursor of things to come. It’s a vocal protest of the garage rock origins of the band, while carrying over many of the backup band signatures – synthesizer, drums, guitar chords. But the lyrics tell a story of social alienation and sexual frustration in a very different way. The chorus is a plaintive reggae chant, “It’s a joke, mon!” – as if the real anxiety felt by the singer is merely a joke to the rest of the world. Perhaps a truer insight into Pere Ubu’s soul than their earlier work?

By the mid-90s, Pere Ubu had been through a dissolution, deaths of several early band members, David Thomas launching a solo career, then re-uniting the band with different personnel. In 1995, they released Ray Gun Suitcase, which explores new musical themes with a noticeable swing to experimental sound –  tracks with theremin, played by Robert Wheeler, recalling those old B-films. “Folly of Youth” captures the spirit well, especially with its YouTube video. It wants to be a “suitcase” and “hang around inside your Greyhound terminal.” Alienation comes up again in “My Friend Is a Stooge,” with a shout out to T.S. Eliot and “Hollow Men.” It also touches the role of mass media in society, “My friend is a stooge for the media priests. He does the weather map for Channel 3.” He may even be a dog, since he “Stares at the rug if I leave him alone. Lays around the house in misery. He toes the line for the company.”

The album closes with a track which is downright depressing. “Down by the River II” uses some new devices, like electric cello, to create a melancholy sound – is everything hopeless? “The house on fire. The treaty broken. I call for the law. The law’s a token.” Then, “Trip is the worst. I don’t mean maybe. I call for the captain. She cries like a baby. As bad as it gets, it’s gotten worse. I want to run. I had to learn to crawl first.”

But it’s not the end. Pere Ubu goes on. The final verse in “Down by the River II” leaves us suspended in time, “Bye-bye. Bye-bye, baby, my friend. It’s time to leave and I don’t know when.”