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Ilaria Riccioni
Free University of Bozen
Why is art for social understanding important? Can we grasp deep connections among social and institutional elements from observing art tendencies? Is it possible to shape a structure of western development reading it from avant-garde adventure within the first twenty years of the Nineties?
This paper originates from the attempt to give such questions an adequate answer, that might become a first step towards sociology of the avant-gardes.
This paper is based on a specific conceptual framework that is the relative autonomy of artistic activity. As such, it implies a critique of both the approaches of historical materialism and of neo-idealistic intuitionism. Artistic activity is conceived neither as totally determined nor as completely free. It is a historically conditioned activity. For this reason I submit three major types of historical context that can be usefully considered:
1) a tradition-bound context.
2) a relatively developed industrial context.
3) a fully developed and economically dynamic context.
At first we shall consider each avant-garde expression within its own social and political context.
Avant-garde social action can be analyzed through three stages of attitude and role within the society of belonging, to be seen in a close relation with politics and social development (Poggioli: 1967; Bürger: 1974; Willett: 1978; Riccioni: 2003; Ferrarotti: 2005)
A first stage of avant-garde art can be identified with a total revolutionary intent, such as the futurist movement in Italy, as well as Futurism in Soviet Union, Surrealism in France, Vorticism in United Kingdom. Collaboration between arts and politics would then turn out to be political aim with the tools of art. This paper will go through the main historic avant-garde movements in order to construct a frame from which also contemporary art can receive a new light.