In the arts and in literature, the term avant-garde identifies a genre of art, an experimental work of art, and the experimental artist who created the work of art, which usually is aesthetically innovative, whilst initially being ideologically unacceptable to the artistic establishment of the time. The military metaphor of an advance guard identifies the artists and writers whose innovations in style, form, and subject-matter challenge the artistic and aesthetic validity of the established forms of art and the literary traditions of their time; thus how the artists who created the anti-novel and Surrealism were ahead of their times.
Joseph Cornell was an American visual artist and film-maker, one of the pioneers and most celebrated exponents of assemblage. Influenced by the Surrealists, he was also an avant-garde experimental filmmaker. He was largely self-taught in his artistic efforts, and improvised his own original style incorporating cast-off and discarded artifacts. He lived most of his life in relative physical isolation, caring for his mother and his disabled brother at home, but remained aware of and in contact with other contemporary artists.
Bohemianism is a social and cultural movement that has, at its core, a way of life away from society's conventional norms and expectations. The term originates from the French bohème and spread to the English-speaking world. It was used to describe mid-19th-century non-traditional lifestyles, especially of artists, writers, journalists, musicians, and actors in major European cities.
David Michael Wojnarowicz ( VOY-nə-ROH-vitch was an American painter, photographer, writer, filmmaker, performance artist, songwriter/recording artist, and AIDS activist prominent in the East Village art scene. He incorporated personal narratives influenced by his struggle with AIDS as well as his political activism in his art until his death from the disease in 1992.
Pleasantville is a 1998 American teen fantasy comedy-drama film written, co-produced, and directed by Gary Ross. It stars Tobey Maguire, Jeff Daniels, Joan Allen, William H. Macy, J. T. Walsh, and Reese Witherspoon, with Don Knotts, Paul Walker, Marley Shelton and Jane Kaczmarek in supporting roles. The story centers on two siblings who wind up trapped in a 1950s TV show, set in a small Midwest town, where residents are seemingly perfect.
"Bartleby, the Scrivener: A Story of Wall Street" is a short story by the American writer Herman Melville, first serialized anonymously in two parts in the November and December 1853 issues of Putnam's Magazine and reprinted with minor textual alterations in his The Piazza Tales in 1856. In the story, a Wall Street lawyer hires a new clerk who, after an initial bout of hard work, refuses to make copies or do any other task required of him, refusing with the words "I would prefer not to."
Searching for Bobby Fischer, released in the United Kingdom as Innocent Moves, is a 1993 American drama film written and directed by Steven Zaillian in his directorial debut. Starring Max Pomeranc in his film debut, Joe Mantegna, Joan Allen, Ben Kingsley, and Laurence Fishburne, it is based on the life of prodigy chess player Joshua Waitzkin, played by Pomeranc, and adapted from the book of the same name by Joshua's father, Fred Waitzkin. The film was nominated for Best Cinematography in the 66th Academy Awards.
The New York School was an informal group of American poets, painters, dancers, and musicians active in the 1950s and 1960s in New York City. They often drew inspiration from surrealism and the contemporary avant-garde art movements, in particular action painting, abstract expressionism, jazz, improvisational theater, experimental music, and the interaction of friends in the New York City art world's vanguard circle.
Matthew Barney is an American contemporary artist and film director who works in the fields of sculpture, film, photography and drawing. His works explore connections among geography, biology, geology and mythology as well as themes of conflict and failure. His early pieces were sculptural installations combined with performance and video. Between 1994 and 2002, he created The Cremaster Cycle, a series of five films described by Jonathan Jones in The Guardian as "one of the most imaginative and brilliant achievements in the history of avant-garde cinema." He is also known for his projects Drawing Restraint 9 (2005), River of Fundament (2014) and Redoubt (2018).
Vija Celmins is a Latvian American visual artist best known for photo-realistic paintings and drawings of natural environments and phenomena such as the ocean, spider webs, star fields, and rocks. Her earlier work included pop sculptures and monochromatic representational paintings. Based in New York City, she has been the subject of over forty solo exhibitions since 1965, and major retrospectives at the Museum of Modern Art, Whitney Museum of American Art, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, Institute of Contemporary Arts, London and the Centre Pompidou, Paris.
Edwin Parker "Cy" Twombly Jr. was an American painter, sculptor and photographer.
Cynthia Morris Sherman is an American artist whose work consists primarily of photographic self-portraits, depicting herself in many different contexts and as various imagined characters.
Marley Eve Shelton is an American actress. She is best known for her roles as Wendy Peffercorn in David Mickey Evans's coming-of-age comedy The Sandlot (1993), the Customer in Frank Miller and Robert Rodriguez's neo-noir anthology film Sin City (2005), Dr. Dakota Block in Rodriguez and Quentin Tarantino's double-feature film Grindhouse (2007), and Sheriff Deputy Judy Hicks in two installments of Wes Craven's Scream franchise (2011–2022). Her other notable films include Pleasantville (1998), Never Been Kissed (1999), Sugar & Spice (2001), Valentine (2001), Bubble Boy (2001), and Rampage (2018).
Jonathan Nossiter is an American filmmaker.
Jim Goldberg is an American artist and photographer, whose work reflects long-term, in-depth collaborations with neglected, ignored, or otherwise outside-the-mainstream populations.
Maria Lassnig was an Austrian artist known for her painted self-portraits and her theory of "body awareness". She was the first female artist to win the Grand Austrian State Prize in 1988 and was awarded the Austrian Decoration for Science and Art in 2005. Lassnig lived and taught in Vienna from 1980 until her death.
Women in Trouble is a 2009 American sex comedy film written, produced, and directed by Sebastian Gutierrez and starring Carla Gugino, Connie Britton, Emmanuelle Chriqui, Marley Shelton, Adrianne Palicki, Simon Baker, and Josh Brolin. It was shot in 10 days for $50,000.
Rashid Johnson is an American artist who produces conceptual post-black art. Johnson first received critical attention in 2001 at the age of 24, when his work was included in Freestyle (2001) curated by Thelma Golden at the Studio Museum in Harlem. He studied at Columbia College Chicago and the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and his work has been exhibited around the world.
Jikken Kōbō was one of the first avant-garde artist collectives active in postwar Japan. It was founded in Tokyo in 1951 by a group of artists working in various media. Until its disbandment in 1957, a total of fourteen members participated in the group. Members were typically in their twenties and hailed from different backgrounds – the group included not just visual artists and musicians, but also a printmaker, a lighting designer, an engineer, and others. The art critic Shūzō Takiguchi was the key mentor and promoter of the group.
