The term “avant-garde” today is used by art historians as a general trend of new currents that emerged in world art at the turn of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. It is separated from the concept of “modernism” by a very thin line.
The term originated from the French avant-garde, which means “vanguard”. For the first time this term in relation to artistic movements was used quite a long time ago – it was introduced into the conceptual range by the French journalist, critic and the first historian of Impressionism, Theodore Duret back in 1885.
However, at the time the term did not take root, and, in fact, in the midst of the development of various artistic movements, united today by the concept of “avant-garde,” this word was practically never used.
The term “avant-garde” returned to the terminology of art connoisseurs in the 1950s, again from the mouth of the French constructivist painter Michel Soefort, a historian of abstractionism who denoted the breaking Russian art of the early twentieth century as “avant-garde.
Historians point out that the definition of “avant-garde” was then more associated with the political ideas preached by the utopians and anarchists. The radicalism of these political currents was clearly expressed in the artistic environment. Alexander Benois, in his article devoted to the opening of the exhibition of the Union of Russian Artists in 1910, singled out several artists who worked in Moscow, headed by Mikhail Larionov, calling their art avant-garde. Benois believed that this group of artists was too defiant in their rejection of the accepted classical dogmas in painting and he and his comrades-in-arms classified themselves as “centrists”. But the term “avant-garde” did not soon establish itself: creative associations of artists did not use it in any way – and if so, critics did not use it either.
Be that as it may, in fact the term “avant-garde” at the time of its “second birth” and active use was already a retrospective concept, which was adopted only after the latest artistic movements that appeared in the early twentieth century had reached the peak of their popularity and for the most part became a historical fact.