The Conservative Avant-Garde

The avant-garde, regarded as “radical” or “new,” is conservative. To understand what and why this is, we must not only understand what “conservative” is, but also look at the historical circumstances of the epoch 1960s-present. The avant-garde is conservative in the “reduce, recycle, re-use” sense, not in the Tea Party sense. The avant-garde is a brand, a niche, a circulating stasis. Far from being the domain of youth, today’s avant-garde includes many older artists whose work has been around for decades. Today’s avant-garde is of superior quality but it is not innovative. When innovation is low, quality of execution is high; and vice-versa. The causes for this situation include the emergence of “restoration of behavior” and poststructuralism as dominant theories and the emergence of colleges and universities as primary training for artists.