Serge Fauchereau's 'Avant-gardes du 20e siècle' Deconstructs the Avant-Garde

In his book 'Avant-gardes du 20e siècle. Arts et littérature. 1905-1930' (Flammarion, 2010), French scholar Serge Fauchereau offers a critical reexamination of the avant-garde movements of the early 20th century. The work spans 1905 to 1930, a period he identifies as the golden age of avant-gardism, bookended by the Fauves' revelation in France and the founding of Die Brücke in Germany in 1905, and the 1930 publication of the Second Surrealist Manifesto and the onset of the Great Depression. Fauchereau argues that the avant-garde is a dated concept, rooted in a 19th-century notion of progress inapplicable to art. He rejects the idea that innovators are inherently superior, stating that the best artist is one who creates the best art object with an idea. The book emphasizes cross-border and cross-disciplinary exchanges, including the role of popular culture, and highlights figures like Virginia Woolf, Marcel Proust, and Paul Claudel as avant-garde, alongside secondary figures often overlooked. Fauchereau also addresses the significant presence of women in avant-garde movements, particularly in Russia and Brazil, citing Tarsila do Amaral, Marina Tsvetaeva, and Liubov Popova. He notes that the period was marked by a rational exploration of the irrational, comparing it to the Renaissance in its spirit of discovery. The book includes a third well-known works, a third lesser-known, and a third unknown pieces, with translations of poems from various languages.