magnetgrrl's review
1.0
I read this in a class on modernist aesthetics, and thought it was one of the most frustrating and inaccessible texts of the class - and we read a LOT of Adorno. Burger's major points are somewhat confused reworkings of Renato Poggioli's earlier text on the Avant-Garde (with the *same* title) as well as a reiteration of the major points of Adorno and Horkenheimer about society's consumption of culture and the difficulty/impossibility of producing art that can foment social change rather than be subsumed by the institution of art and the culture industry. His attempts to break out classifications between contemporary artistic movements seem like a desperate attempt to navigate the churning abyss where art and culture and criticism found themselves mired during the modernist period, but ultimately, they are more confusing than useful. His original points about the schizoid nature of modernism notwithstanding, this text provides little in the way of new thought. And what could be a crash course simplifying the main points of more older, more prolific theorists instead is a muddled and incomplete theoretic defense for the avant-garde that comes off sometimes more like a critcism, sometimes like an apology.
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