Symbol and Symptom of Cuban Post-1959 Avant-garde

• Main Author: Ojeda, Danne
• Other Authors: Jan van Eyck Academie
• Format: Book Chapter
• Language: English
• Published: Jan van Eyck Academie 2018
• Subjects: DRNTU::Visual arts and music; Cuban Post-1959 Avant-garde; 1980s–90s Cuban Art; organic artist
• Online Access: https://hdl.handle.net/10356/88077; http://hdl.handle.net/10220/44921
• Institution: Nanyang Technological University

After reading Peter Bürger’s classic, Theory of the Avant-garde, where, upon analysing the purposes of this anti-artistic trend, he declares it, above all, an historical episode for the archives, one can hardly help looking back on avant-garde movements as, more than retro, démodé. This sensation of instability when dealing with the avant-garde is stressed every time one tries to appraise its allegedly disruptive and anti-aesthetic programme. Instead of undermining Art-as-an-institution, the avant-garde only solidified the foundations on which the former stood. Yet, a most valuable aspect of Bürger’s essay is precisely his historical focus when analysing the events that marked Art’s transition from a state of autonomy to one of “heteronomy”; a process in which the avant-garde played a decisive role. Honouring this historical approach, I intend to comment on some of the traits specific to Cuban avant-garde and its post-1959 saga, for it constitutes the background where some of the keys to the contemporary art movement, known as New Cuban Art, can be found. I hope that, given the sui generis quality of Cuban avant-garde post-1959 — which intends to add different data to the avant-garde historical development — we might eventually wave aside any reservations Bürger may have planted related to the obsolete condition of this phenomenon.