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Iconoclasm and Creation of the Avant-Garde

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Abstract

The notion of modern(ist) art was closely related to progress, change, and novelty and was as such antithetical to everything that was normative, generally valued, and institutionally affirmed. In historical accounts modernist art represented a radical rupture within art historical canon and its value system against which it proposed a new ontology of art. In order to retain the condition of modernity and adapt to changing ideas art has had constantly to reinvigorate itself and renounce any kind of stability and the rule. It is not surprising though that iconoclastic attitude was intrinsic to modernist movement and the avant-garde, in fact, as Dario Gamboni has noted in his comprehensive study on modern iconoclasm, at the turn of the century, modernity was inevitably linked to iconoclasm (Gamboni, The Destruction of Art: Iconoclasm and Vandalism since the French Revolution. London: Reaktion Books, 1997, 257).

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Gnamuš, N. (2021). Iconoclasm and Creation of the Avant-Garde. In: Purgar, K. (eds) The Palgrave Handbook of Image Studies. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-71830-5_10

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