Avantgarde where art thou?

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AVANTGARDE where art thou?


TOp, JaCKeT & NeCKLaCe: VlaDiMiR KaRaleeV

PHOTOGRAPHY: toM FiScheR FotogRaFie STYLING: anna RÖhRig (BloSSoM ManageMent) HAIR & MAKE UP: aBRa KenneDY (BloSSoM ManageMent) MODEL: KaRina (PeaRl) TEXT: JUliane RUMP & DoRothee V. Winning PRODUCED BY: tWiSteD talentS


Cape: Michael Sontag


STYLE spins like a horse on a carousel. Multicolored trends sparkle past us and the newest hype lasts only as long as the next round. We’ve barely mopped the hurled peaches before the ride starts again. The long journey to the innovative transforms into a getaway, no stability, the possibility of endurance fades. Is this the end of Avantgarde?

Where she once attracted attention through provocative, self-reflexive, and anti-bourgeois artistic production, she wanders now in a relatively tolerant, pluralistic society where innovation is the expectation. It is, in fact, traditional. “Avantgarde” was originally a French military term used to describe the foremost part of an advancing army, the formation that first encounters the enemy. But where is the avantgarde to break through if there is no enemy line? What is she to conquer if the resistance agrees with her quest? Is she still able to shock or baffle in a time of superlatives and steady irony? Did not long ago the agile trend hunt down the steadfast Avantgarde? No, not at all. In an era jaded by provocation, contemporary Avantgarde shows itself in subdued fits. She slithers her way in smaller but no less ardent ranks, who, past all enemy trends, press on the boundaries of creativity. The rowdy troop of the early Avantgarde has become quiet and tactful, paving her way between the bumbling undiscplined ranks of todays trendsetters. Though she cannot always know at the outset where her undertaking will lead, “Avantgardists” will nonetheless, as the French writer Romain Gary remarks, “be there first.”


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