Editing Avant-garde (section)

== History ==
[[File:Overthrow of Autocracy.jpg|thumb| Political revolution has influenced both the topic and form in ''The Overthrow of the [[Autocracy]]'', a Soviet avant-garde painting circa the [[Russian Revolution]]]]
The French military term ''avant-garde'' (advanced guard) identified a [[reconnaissance|reconnaissance unit]] who scouted the terrain ahead of the main force of the army. In 19th-century French politics, the term ''avant-garde'' (vanguard) identified Left-wing [[political reform]]ists who agitated for [[radical politics|radical political change]] in French society. In the mid-19th century, as a cultural term, ''avant-garde'' identified a genre of art that advocated art-as-politics, art as an [[Aesthetics|aesthetic]] and political means for realising [[social change]] in a society. Since the 20th century, the art term ''avant-garde'' identifies a stratum of the [[Intelligentsia]] that comprises novelists and writers, artists and architects ''et al.'' whose creative perspectives, ideas, and experimental artworks challenge the cultural values of contemporary [[Bourgeoisie|bourgeois society]].<ref>{{cite book|title=Archispeak : An Illustrated Guide to Architectural Terms|author=Porter, Tom |date=2004|publisher=Taylor & Francis|isbn=0-415-30011-8|location=London|oclc=53144738}}</ref> 

In the U.S. of the 1960s, the post–WWII changes to American culture and society allowed avant-garde artists to produce works of art that addressed the matters of the day, usually in political and sociologic opposition to the cultural conformity inherent to [[popular culture]] and to [[consumerism]] as a way of life and as a [[worldview]].<ref>{{Cite book |last=Banes |first=Sally |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctv11smn4s |title=Greenwich Village 1963: Avant-Garde Performance and the Effervescent Body |date=1993 |publisher=Duke University Press |doi=10.2307/j.ctv11smn4s |jstor=j.ctv11smn4s |isbn=978-0-8223-1357-1 |access-date=11 October 2022 |archive-date=11 October 2022 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20221011045619/https://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctv11smn4s |url-status=live }}</ref>