Bürger Peter. Theory of the Avant-Garde

Manchester University Press, 1984. — 135 p.Peter Bürger’s Theory of the Avant-Garde (1974) is an essential contribution to the reflexion of the contradictory tendencies at work within modern art. Bürger characterizes the avant-garde movements of the first half of the twentieth century as an attack on the institution of art, guided by the aim to merge art and life praxis. According to Bürger, this avant-garde intention manifests itself primarily in the form of the production of “inorganic” artworks. Bürger maintains that avant-gardes have failed in their aspirations, yet nonetheless grants them the role of a fundamental break in the development of modern art. In Bürger’s view, the avant-gardes’ historical importance resides in the fact that they have made recognizable the normative frame of art as an institution and its decisive influence on the social import of artworks. The overarching function of art as an institution in bourgeois society is determined by the principle of autonomy: as art detaches itself from life praxis, it opposes itself to society yet also surrenders its ability to act on it. After avant-gardes, Bürger assumes, aesthetic theory cannot take the autonomy of art for granted, but has to analyse the function each individual artwork performs in bourgeois society precisely by virtue of its autonomy. What made the book famous was its sharp critique of the post-war neo-avant-gardes who according to Bürger institutionalized avant-garde strategies and thereby divested them of their original critical substance.