View source for Avant-garde

Literally "advance-guard", i.e. the scouts that march in advance of a military formation and reconnoitre the enemy or secure new ground.

In literature and the arts, groups "of artists and authors who deliberately undertake, in [[Ezra Pound]]'s phrase, to "make it new". By violating the accepted conventions and proprieties, not only of art but of social discourse, they set out to create ever-new artistic forms and styles and to introduce hitherto neglected, and sometimes forbidden, subject matter" (Abrams 168). 

Particularly associated with the period of Modernism, the umbrella term "avant-garde" covers very different artistic movements whose common denominator is the opposition to the artistic mainstream, the taste of the general audience or bourgeois culture. Often, avant-garde movements published manifestos (a term borrowed from political writing), i.e. declarations of their aims and principles. Examples include the the [[Futurist Manifesto]] (1909) by [[Filippo Tommaso Marinetti]] and the [[Dada Manifesto]] (1918) by [[Tristan Tzara]].

== Avant-garde Movements (Small Selection) ==
* [[Cubism]]
* [[Dadaism]]
* [[Futurism]]
* [[Imagism]]
* [[Vorticism]]

== Sources ==
* Abrams, M. H. ''A Glossary of Literary Terms''. 7th Edition. Orlando: Harcourt Brace, 1999.