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.
Performance art is an artwork or art exhibition created through actions executed by the artist or other participants. It may be witnessed live or through documentation, spontaneously developed or written, and is traditionally presented to a public in a fine art context in an interdisciplinary mode. Also known as artistic action, it has been developed through the years as a genre of its own in which art is presented live. It had an important and fundamental role in 20th century avant-garde art.
Tadeusz Kantor was a Polish painter, assemblage and Happenings artist, set designer and theatre director. Kantor is renowned for his revolutionary theatrical performances in Poland and abroad. Laureate of Witkacy Prize – Critics' Circle Award (1989).
Experimental theatre, inspired largely by Wagner's concept of Gesamtkunstwerk, began in Western theatre in the late 19th century with Alfred Jarry and his Ubu plays as a rejection of both the age in particular and, in general, the dominant ways of writing and producing plays. The term has shifted over time as the mainstream theatre world has adopted many forms that were once considered radical.
Scenography is a practice of crafting stage environments or atmospheres. In the contemporary English usage, scenography can be defined as the combination of technological and material stagecrafts to represent, enact, and produce a sense of place in performance. While inclusive of the techniques of scenic design and set design, scenography is a holistic approach to the study and practice of all aspects of design in performance.
Vkhutemas was the Russian state art and technical school founded in 1920 in Moscow, replacing the Moscow Svomas.
The Auditorium Theatre is a music and performance venue located in the Auditorium Building at 50 E. Ida B. Wells Drive in Chicago, Illinois. Inspired by the Richardsonian Romanesque Style of architect Henry Hobson Richardson, the building was designed by Dankmar Adler and Louis Sullivan and completed in 1889. The Chicago Symphony Orchestra performed in the theatre until 1904 as well as the Chicago Grand Opera Company and its successors the Chicago Opera Association and Chicago Civic Opera until its relocation to the Civic Opera House in 1929. The theater was home to the Joffrey Ballet from 1998 until 2020. It currently hosts a variety of concerts, musicals, performances, and events. Since the 1940s, it has been owned by Roosevelt University and since the 1960s it has been refurbished and managed by an independent non-profit arts organization.
Katarzyna Kobro was a Polish avant-garde sculptor and a prominent representative of the Constructivist movement in Poland. A pioneer of innovative multi-dimensional abstract sculpture, she rejected Aestheticism and advocated for the integration of spatial rhythm and scientific advances into visual art.
The Bouffes du Nord is a theatre at 37 bis, boulevard de la Chapelle, in the 10th arrondissement of Paris located near the Gare du Nord. It has been listed since 1993 as a monument historique by the French Ministry of Culture.
Lajos Kassák was a Hungarian poet, novelist, painter, essayist, editor, theoretician of the avant-garde, and occasional translator. He was among the first genuine working-class writers in Hungarian literature.
Dimanche (Sunday), also known as Dimanche - Le Journal d'un Seul Jour is an artist's book by the French artist Yves Klein. Taking the form of a 4-page Sunday broadsheet, the piece was published on Sunday 27 November 1960 and sold on newsstands throughout Paris for one day only, as well as being handed out at a press conference held by Klein at the Galerie Rive Droite at 11.00am on the same day.
Flávio de Rezende Carvalho (1899–1973) was a Brazilian architect and artist.
Leonhard Lapin, also known under the pseudonym Albert Trapeež, was an Estonian architect, artist, architecture historian, and poet.
The Slovenian Youth Theatre or Mladinsko Theatre was founded in Ljubljana in 1955 as the first professional theater for children and youth in Slovenia. It is situated in the Baraga Seminary, which was built by architect Jože Plečnik in the center of Ljubljana. In the 1980s, it became a center of theatrical research and politically-engaged theater. It is known for a wide range of innovative poetics of different directors and an ensemble energy, a Peter Brook-like approach to acting with a laboratory for theatre research for actors, directors, choreographers and musicians to research, develop, and create.
Mieko Shiomi is a Japanese artist, composer, and performer who played a key role in the development of Fluxus. A co-founder of the seminal postwar Japanese experimental music collective Group Ongaku, she is known for her investigations of the nature and limits of sound, music, and auditory experiences. Her work has been widely circulated as Fluxus editions, featured in concert halls, museums, galleries, and non-traditional spaces, as well as being re-performed by other musicians and artists numerous times. She is best known for her work of the 1960s and early 1970s, especially Spatial Poem, Water Music, Endless Box, and the various instructions in Events & Games, all of which were produced as Fluxus editions. Now in her eighties, she continues to produce new work.
Hybrid Artworks is an interdisciplinary research and performance art cooperative originally based in Hull, UK. It was established in 1995 and produced pieces of performance art, video installation theatre, texts and essays.
WOW Café Theater is a feminist theater space and collective in East Village in New York City. In the mid-1980s, WOW Cafe Theater was central to the avant garde theatre and performance art scene in the East Village, New York City. Among the artists who have presented at the space are Peggy Shaw, Lois Weaver, Patricia Ione LLoyd, Lisa Kron, Holly Hughes, Deb Margolin, Dancenoise, Carmelita Tropicana, Eileen Myles, Split Britches, Seren Divine, Johnny Science, and The Five Lesbian Brothers.
Karl Johansson was a Latvian-Soviet avant-garde artist.
The Sōgetsu Art Center (SAC) was a Tokyo-based experimental art space. The center was established in 1958 and its activities ceased in 1971. It was founded by Sōfū Teshigahara, creator of the Sōgetsu-ryū (草月流), a school of ikebana, that he founded in 1927. It was directed by Teshigahara's son, Hiroshi Teshigahara.
Dorita Hannah is a New Zealand architect, independent academic, visual artist and designer. She has had an architectural practice, taught at various institutions in New Zealand and internationally, and has published articles and book chapters including Event-Space: Theatre Architecture and the Historical Avant-Garde (2018).
