Includes bibliographical references and index.

Preface -- I. Rewriting the Theory of the Avant-Garde -- Dietrich SCHEUNEMANN: On Photography and Painting. Prolegomena to a New Theory of the Avant-Garde -- Stephen C. FOSTER: Dada and the Constitution of Culture: (Re-)Conceptualising the Avant-Garde -- Bernd KIEFER: Crucial Moments, Crucial Points: Walter Benjamin and the Recognition of Modernity in the Light of the Avant-Garde -- II. Innovations and Manifestations of the Avant-Garde -- Ian REVIE: Apollinaire and Cubist Innovation: Resetting the Frontiers, Changing the Paradigm -- Dietrich SCHEUNEMANN: Cubist Painting, Automatic Writing and the Poetry of Gertrude Stein -- H. Martin PUCHNER: Screeching Voices: Avant-Garde Manifestos in the Cabaret -- David MACRAE: Painterly Concepts and Filmic Objects: The Interaction of Expression and Reproduction in Early Avant-Garde Film -- Mara de GENNARO: The World "Outside of Fiction": Georges Bataille and Surrealist Photography and Sculpture -- John E. BOWLT: Inside Out: Pavel Filonov and the Anatomy of Fantasy -- Edward LINTZ: Difficiles Nuage: Gertrude Stein, OuLiPo and the Grammar of the Avant-Garde -- III. Avant-Garde in Context -- Klaus BEEKMAN: The Selection of Avant-Garde Poetry for Anthologies -- Katherine SWARBRICK: Avant-Garde Productions and Psychoanalytic Theory. The Story of an Encounter -- Ben HIGHMORE: Awkward Moments: Avant-Gardism and the Dialectics of Everyday Life -- Table of Illustrations -- Abstracts.

This collection of critical essays is designed to lay the foundations for a new theory of the European avant-garde. It starts from the assumption that not one all-embracing intention of all avant-garde movements - i.e. the intention of "reintegrating art into the practice of life" (Peter Bürger) - but the challenge of new cultural technologies, in particular photography and cinema, constitutes the main driving force of the formation and further development of the avant-garde. This approach permits to establish a theoretical framework that takes into account the diversity of artistic aims and directions of the various art movements and encourages a wide and open exploration of the multifaceted and often contradictory nature of the great variety of avant-gardist innovations. Following the theoretical foundation of the new approach, individual contributions concentrate on a diverse range of avant-gardist concepts, trends and manifestations from cubist painting and the literary work of Apollinaire and Gertrude Stein to the screeching voices of futurism, dadaist photomontage and film, surrealist photographs and sculptures and neo-avant-gardist theories as developed by the French group OuLiPo. The volume closes with new insights gained from placing the avant-garde in the contexts of literary institutions and psychoanalytical and sociological concepts. The main body of the volume is based on presentations and discussions of a three-day research seminar held at Yale University, New Haven, in February 2000. The research group formed on this occasion will continue with its efforts to elaborate a new theory of the avant-garde in the coming years.

Description based on print version record.