Exquisite Encounters with the Avant-Gardes

Abstract

When René Magritte envisioned the Treachery of Images, he could never have imagined that one day his pipe that was not a pipe but a painting would become a pipe that is not a pipe but an art print, even a pipe that is not a pipe but one of a set of six salad plates available for 96 dollars from the MoMA gift shop.¹ This kind of mechanical reproduction of avant-garde iconography is telling, not only as it reveals how much the initiated few are willing to spend to ensure that their salads are more Warhol than Waldorf, but also because it reveals the extent to which the “aura” of the original artwork, as identified by Walter Benjamin, has truly “withered” (1999, p. 215). Rather than “hitting the spectator like a bullet” (Benjamin 1999, p. 231), the visual vocabulary of the historical avant-garde is today commodified, repackaged, and sold at an exorbitant price. So, in an age in which, according to T. J. Clark, modernity and capitalist commodification have prevailed (2001), scholars, curators, and artists may be forgiven for asking if avant-garde practice is still possible.