1 ✥✥✥✥✥✥✥✥✥✥✥✥✥✥✥✥✥✥✥✥✥✥✥✥✥✥✥✥✥✥✥✥✥✥✥✥✥✥✥✥ Theories of the avant-garde ✥✥✥✥✥✥✥✥✥✥✥✥✥✥✥✥✥✥✥✥✥✥✥✥✥✥✥✥✥✥✥✥✥✥✥✥✥✥✥✥It has been said that the degree to which a revolution isdeveloping qualitatively different social conditions andrelationships may perhaps be indicated by the devel-opment of a different language: the rupture with thecontinuum of domination must also be a rupture withthe vocabulary of domination.Herbert Marcuse 1 Introduction In his Theory of the Avant-Garde(1974) Peter Bürger sets himself thetaskof producing a definition of the progressive artistic move-ments of the early twentieth century that will both distinguishthem from earlier avant-garde phenomena as well as from othercontemporaryartistic movements of the modernist period such asaestheticism. 2 Although Bürger’s model offers what purports tobe a general definition of the historical avant-garde it is clear thatfor the most part his theoretical descriptions and analyses areoriented specifically towards dada and surrealism, his examplesbeing drawn almost exclusively from these movements and inparticular from the plastic arts rather than from literary texts.Notably absent from Bürger’s analysis of the movements of theavant-garde, for example, is one of the seminal phenomena ofearly twentieth-century literature, film and art, namely Germanexpressionism.Bürger adds a suggestivenote tothe effect thatone 1 An Essay on Liberation (Boston: Beacon, 1969), 33. 2 Peter Bürger, Theorie der Avantgarde, (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1974). Here I referwherever possible to the English translation by Michael Shaw, (Minneapolis:University of Minnesota Press, 1984). Unless otherwise noted, all other transla-tions throughout are my own. 1 © Cambridge University Presswww.cambridge.org Cambridge University Press0521648696 - Theorizing the Avant-Garde: Modernism, Expressionism, and theProblem of PostmodernityRichard MurphyExcerpt More information

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might, within certain limitations, discover a number of essentialavant-garde features in expressionism, such as its critique of theinstitutionalizedcharacter of art and its characteristic rejection notsimply of previous movements but of the tradition of art in itsentirety. 3 Yet having noted that these similarities remain to beworked out concretely in future analyses Bürger himself skirts thecentralproblemof expressionism and its relationshipto theavant-garde.In the light of the current debates on postmodernism there hasbeen renewed interest both in modernism and the avant-gardeand, more particularly, in the nature of their mutual relationship.Postmodernism has frequently been seen for example as a phe-nomenon which is neither totally new nor a movement constitut-ing a radically innovative stylistic breakthrough, but rather as theattempt to reconfigure in contemporary terms some of the ques-tions already faced by modernism and the avant-garde. 4 In thissense, any definition of postmodernism must inevitably dependupon a prior understanding of those earlier phenomena. Post-modernism might then be thought of as a change of ‘‘dominant’’within modernism, 5 or as a realignment of a constellation ofmeaning mapped out in the shifting relations between the refer-ence-points denoted by modernism, the contemporary and theavant-garde.Given this configuration of terms, the issues dealt with byBürger’s bookbecome especially important in helping to establishthe various distinctions and interdependencies operating be-tween modernism and the avant-garde. The omission of expres-sionismfrom Bürger’s discussion is then all themore surprising inview of its importance as a crucial space in which the avant-gardeconfronts modernism and in which the differences between the 3 Bürger, Theory of the Avant-Garde, 109, note 4. 4 See for example Andreas Huyssen, After the Great Divide: Modernism, MassCulture, Postmodernism (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1986) 168. 5 Brian McHale employs the Formalist concept of the ‘‘dominant’’ (derived fromTynjanov and Jakobson) in order to describe the transition from modernism topostmodernism. McHale sees a shift from a period dominated by epistemologi-cal issues to one concerned more with ontological matters (such as the confronta-tion between different realities). See McHale’s article ‘‘Change of Dominant fromModernist to Postmodernist Writing,’’ Approaching Postmodernism, ed. HansBertens and Douwe Fokkema (Philadelphia and Amsterdam: John Benjamins,1986), 53–78, and also his book Postmodernist Fiction (London: Methuen, 1987)where this idea forms the central thesis. Theories of the avant-garde2 © Cambridge University Presswww.cambridge.org Cambridge University Press0521648696 - Theorizing the Avant-Garde: Modernism, Expressionism, and theProblem of PostmodernityRichard MurphyExcerpt More information

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two are negotiated. For although expressionism has been labeledthe ‘‘historical modernist movement par excellence,’’ 6 besides itsmodernist characteristics – such as its shift from transparent,realist representations of a common world, towards abstraction,obscurity, and the investigation of subjectivity and the uncon-scious 7 – it also shares many of those keyfeatures, in particular therevolutionary, counter-discursive and anti-institutional func-tions, by which Bürger defines the historical avant-garde.This overlap is itself significant. For the various contradictoryimpulses within expressionism illustrate that the avant-garde is amuch more ambiguous and heterogeneous phenomenon thanBürger – with his narrow focus on dada and surrealism – wouldsometimes have us believe. More typically the avant-garde servesas the political and revolutionary cutting-edge of the broadermovement of modernism, from which it frequently appears to betrying with difficulty to free itself. Modernism and the avant-garde often seem to be locked into a dialectical relationship inwhich the avant-garde questions the blind spots and unreflectedpresuppositions of modernism, while modernism itself reacts tothis critique, at least in its later stages, by attempting to take intoaccount its own poetics some of the spectacular failures andsuccesses of the historical avant-garde.The current debates on postmodernism and its relation to mod-ernism and the avant-garde have not only renewed interest inearly twentieth-century art then, but have provided both freshperspectives with which to re-read the texts of this period, as wellas new questions and theoretical strategies with which to ap-proach their characteristic problematics. The goal in re-readingexpressionism through Bürger’s Theory of the Avant-Garde and inthe light of the recent discussion on the modern (and postmodern)period is thus twofold.Firstly, it is important to interrogate Bürger’s influential workand to develop his argumentation by testing it against a broaderrange of avant-garde and modernist phenomena than Bürger’sown examples providein order to discover the extent to which the 6 For example by David Bathrickand Andreas Huyssen, ‘‘Modernism and theExperience of Modernity,’’ Modernity and the Text: Revisions of German Modernism,ed. Huyssen and Bathrick(New York: Columbia University Press, 1989), 8. 7 See Walter Sokel’s definition of expressionism in terms of modernism in his bookThe Writer in Extremis (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1959), 18. Introduction3 © Cambridge University Presswww.cambridge.org Cambridge University Press0521648696 - Theorizing the Avant-Garde: Modernism, Expressionism, and theProblem of PostmodernityRichard MurphyExcerpt More information

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various methodological categories which make up his theory arecapable of distinguishing between the contemporaneous phe-nomena within the modernist period. For example, to what de-gree does expressionism fulfill the avant-garde’s role of produc-ing a fundamental re-thinking of the artist’s social practice,together with a full-scale interrogation of the social and institu-tional conditions of art? To what extent does it remain caughtwithin modernism’s predilection for aesthetic autonomy and itsdrive for purely technical and formal progress?Secondly, by re-reading the texts of expressionism in the con-text of some of the new questions which have been thrown uprecently by the postmodernism debate as well as by the relateddiscussion surrounding Bürger’s theoretical model, it is possibleto observe the extent of the ‘‘epistemic’’ or ‘‘paradigmatic’’ shiftwhich has taken place between the progressive movements of theearly twentieth century and the contemporary culture of post-modernity. Re-examining expressionism in this light forces us toreconsider both the degree of real innovation brought about bypostmodernism, as well as allowing us to appreciate the extent towhich the expressionist avant-garde preempts postmodernism indeconstructing and re-writing the established images and con-structions of the world – the anticipatory effect that JochenSchulte-Sasse has called a ‘‘postmodern transformation ofmodernism.’’ 8 In this respect my investigation into expressionism and itsrelationshiptomodernism and the avant-gardeis also intendedasa contribution towards the ongoingdebate on modernism and thepostmodern by undertaking precisely the kind of concrete analy-sis of individual texts that has become rather rare in the dis-cussion. It has become a pressing obligation to focus in detailagain upon some of the important literary texts which subtend thetheoretical categories employed in this discussion, since theirspecificity has frequently been lost from view at the level ofgeneralization on which much of the theoretical debate has beenconducted.German expressionism is itself notoriously difficult to define,and one hesitates even to use the term ‘‘movement’’ in connectionwith this multi-faceted phenomenon, given that term’s implica- 8 Jochen Schulte-Sasse, ‘‘Carl Einstein; or, the Postmodern Transformation ofModernism,’’ Modernity and the Text, ed. Huyssen and Bathrick. Theories of the avant-garde4 © Cambridge University Presswww.cambridge.org Cambridge University Press0521648696 - Theorizing the Avant-Garde: Modernism, Expressionism, and theProblem of PostmodernityRichard MurphyExcerpt More information

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tion of a cooperative endeavor or single-minded tendency. Theexpressionist generation was such a broad and varied group ofwriters and artists, that it is unlikely to yield to any single defini-tion or generalization. Since conventional categorizations of suchliterary movements frequently have the tendency to obscure dif-ferences by reducing a diverse and varied phenomenon to theterms of a broad homogeneity, it would seem more appropriate todescribe the position of expressionism by locating it insteadthrough its relations to the reference-points of modernism and theavant-garde. The central principles and functions that these cate-gories embody would then figure as the points between which ismapped out the area occupied by the art of expressionism.Given that Theory of the Avant-Garde tends to confine the hetero-geneity of the avant-garde within certain narrow limits, expres-sionism as a diverse and multidisciplinary cultural event is per-haps the ideal example with which to test Bürger’s theses. At thesame time Bürger’s criteria concerning the avant-garde bring tothe existing scholarship on expressionism important alternativesto those traditional approaches to the movement which havefrequently obscured its radical and oppositional characteristics.Let us now examine in detail some of the central categories ofBürger’s model (in particular the notions of montageand aestheticautonomy), and propose certain revisions to Bürger’s theorywhich will be important in describing some of the essential fea-tures of German expressionism in the chapters ahead. Bürger’s Theory of the Avant-Garde: ideology-critique,affirmative culture and the institution of art Previous studies of the avant-garde such as Matei Calinescu’sFaces of Modernity have frequently defined it merely as a later,more radical and more ‘‘advanced’’ phase of modernism, distin-guished by its ideological and overtly political orientation fromthe more formal, aesthetically purist and ‘‘subtly traditional’’character of mainstream modernism. 9 Bürger’s study is unique intrying to define the nature of the avant-garde not only by relatingit to the literary-historical context but with regard to certainchanges in the perception of the social functions of art. 9 Matei Calinescu, Faces of Modernity: Avant-Garde, Decadence, Kitsch (1977;Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1987), 96, 149. Introduction5 © Cambridge University Presswww.cambridge.org Cambridge University Press0521648696 - Theorizing the Avant-Garde: Modernism, Expressionism, and theProblem of PostmodernityRichard MurphyExcerpt More information

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Bürger sees the development of art within bourgeois society ascharacterized by its historical shift towards increasing aestheticautonomy, a condition he defines with Habermas as the ‘‘inde-pendence of works of art from extra-aesthetic uses.’’ 10 This pro-cess of liberating art from all practical demands external to itculminates in the movement of aestheticism or ‘‘l’art pour l’art.’’Nineteenth-century aestheticism figures as a radical attempt first-ly to turn art in upon itself, and secondly – as with modernism’scharacteristic interest in issues such as the poetics of silence andthe crisis of language – to concern itself largely with the mediumitself. It is consequently through the excesses of aestheticism, itsextremes of hermeticism and aesthetic self-centeredness, that ‘‘theother side of autonomy, art’s lackof social impact also becomesrecognizable.’’ 11 And it is in response to this recognition that the‘‘historical avant-garde’’ emerges as a movement defined by itsopposition to this shift towards hermeticism.To extend Bürger’s argument, one could say that it is not theemergence of the phenomenon of aestheticism in itself that sud-denly and miraculously reveals the practice of autonomy andwhich consequently calls down upon itself the wrath of the avant-garde. Art’s claim to autonomyhad existed in bourgeois society inGermany for example at least since Kant and Schiller. If we lookbeyond the narrow confines of the immanent theory of the devel-opment of art – from which Bürger uncharacteristically appears tobe arguing at this point – we can see that the crucial moment ofchange to which the avant-garde responds is not only the ex-tremism of the aestheticist movement and its characteristic ges-ture of turning its backon the real world. Rather, it is the fact thatthe aestheticist movement should take this course at this particu-lar historical juncture, in other words, at the beginning of twenti-eth-century ‘‘modernity,’’ and in a period of unprecedented andmomentous economic and technological revolution in society.Aestheticism’s characteristic reaction of retreating into hiberna-tion and hermeticism is all the more shocking since it contrastswiththe kind of artistic response one might have expected, namely 10 ‘‘(Die) Selbständigkeit der Kunstwerke gegenüber kunstexternen Verwen-dungsansprüchen.’’ Jürgen Habermas, ‘‘Bewußtmachende oder rettendeKritik,’’ Zur Aktualität Walter Benjamins, ed. Siegfried Unseld (Frankfurt: Suhr-kamp, 1972). Quoted by Bürger, Theorie der Avantgarde, 46 note 13; Theory of theAvant-Garde, 110, note 13. I have used my own translation in this case. 11 Bürger, Theory of the Avant-Garde, 22. Theories of the avant-garde6 © Cambridge University Presswww.cambridge.org Cambridge University Press0521648696 - Theorizing the Avant-Garde: Modernism, Expressionism, and theProblem of PostmodernityRichard MurphyExcerpt More information

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a more socially oriented response in art, or at least the attempt toformulate these new socio-historical experiences in contemporaryaesthetic terms. The historical significance of aestheticism for theemergence of the avant-garde lies then in the conjunction ofhistorical factors: the extreme turmoil of contemporary societycombined with the crassness of aestheticism’s blankrejection ofany need toreact to it. It is this response that begins to raise doubtsconcerning the legitimacy of such autonomous art forms, and soultimately mobilizes the avant-garde.According to Bürger, it is the particular character of the avant-garde’s response to aestheticism that is important. For with thehistorical avant-garde movements the social sub-system of artenters a new stage of development. Dada, the most radical move-ment within the European avant-garde no longer criticizes theindividual aesthetic fashions and schools that preceded it, butcriticizes art as an institution: in other words with the historicalavant-garde art enters the stage of ‘‘self-criticism.’’ 12 In order to 12 Bürger, Theory of the Avant-Garde, 22. Although dada’s ‘‘self-criticism’’ of theinstitution of art is indeed very powerful, Bürger is quite wrong in assumingthat dada is not equally concerned to attackits ‘‘rival’’ movements, including itsmost immediate predecessor, expressionism. Indeed, this onslaught on expres-sionism is an essential feature of much of the early writing of both the Zürichand Berlin phases of dada, and expressionist idealism forms a favorite target fordada’s familiar vitriolic attacks. The first dada manifesto (1918) for exampletakes as its starting point its own distance from expressionism’s ‘‘pretense ofintensification’’ (‘‘Vorwand der Verinnerlichung’’) which allegedly stifled anyprogressive tendencies and served merely to hide the expressionists’ ownbourgeois leanings. See Richard Huelsenbeck, ed., Dada. Eine literarischeDokumentation (Hamburg: Rowohlt, 1984), 31–33. Similarly, in Raoul Haus-mann’s text ‘‘The Return to Objectivity in Art’’ (‘‘Rückkehr zur Gegenständlich-keit in der Kunst’’) Expressionism is described as ‘‘the culture of hypocriticalstupidity ’’ (‘‘die Kultur der verlogener Dummheit,’’ Huelsenbeck, Dada, 115).Meanwhile Richard Huelsenbeck’s various ironic attacks in ‘‘En avant Dada’’(1920) describe expressionism’s critical response to modernity as merely ‘‘thatsentimental resistance to the times’’ (‘‘jener sentimentale Widerstand gegen dieZeit’’) and illustrate its alleged naivity – thereby tarring the entire movementwith the same brush – by citing Leonhard Frank’s ‘‘Der Mensch ist gut’’ (dada,118–119). In the context of our discussion it is interesting to note that dada’sproponents see themselves in an explicitly avant-garde role, ‘‘gathered togetherto provide propaganda for a form of art from which they lookforward to therealizationof new ideals’’ (‘‘zur Propagandaeiner Kunst gesammelt, von der siedie Verwirklichung neuer Ideale erwarten,’’ Dada, 120). Consequently, dadasees itself as having given up any remnants of the ‘‘l’art pour l’art Charakter’’and having changed its goal: ‘‘instead of continuing to create art, Dada hassought out an enemy . . . The movement, the stuggle was uppermost’’ (‘‘anstattweiterKunst zu machen, hat sich Dada einen Gegner gesucht . . . Die Bewegung,der Kampf wurde betont,’’ Dada, 120). Introduction7 © Cambridge University Presswww.cambridge.org Cambridge University Press0521648696 - Theorizing the Avant-Garde: Modernism, Expressionism, and theProblem of PostmodernityRichard MurphyExcerpt More information

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appreciate the full significance for the avant-garde of this devel-opment towards ‘‘self-criticism’’ it is important to understandhere exactly what Bürger means by the term and how it relates toother analytical approaches in progressive art, in particular to‘‘ideology-critique.’’Bürger takes as the starting point for his discussion of ‘‘self-criticism’’ firstly Marx’s analysis of religion as ideology and of thetwofold character of such ideology; and secondly Marcuse’s ap-plication of this analysis to the field of art. 13 From Marx’s analysisBürger draws the following conclusions for his own model: 1. Religion is an illusion. Man projects into heaven what he would like tosee realized on earth. To the extent that man believes in God who is nomore than an objectification of human qualities, he succumbs to anillusion. 2. But religion also contains an element of truth. It is ‘‘an expres-sion of real wretchedness’’ (for the realization of humanity in heaven ismerely a creation of the mind and denounces the lackof real humanity inhuman society). And it is ‘‘a protest against real wretchedness’’ for evenin their alienated form, religious ideals are a standard of what ought tobe. (7) The social function of religion, like art, is therefore characterizedabove all by its twofold character, that is, by what we can call its‘‘duplicity’’: it permits the experience of an ‘‘illusory happiness’’but to the extent that it alleviates misery through illusion, it makesless pressing (and thus less likely) the possibility of any genuinechange leading to the establishment of ‘‘true happiness.’’Herbert Marcuse’s famous essay ‘‘On the AffirmativeCharacterof Culture’’ (1937) precedes Bürger both in adopting Marx’smethod of analyzing the duplicitous character of religion and inreapplying it to the similarly ambiguous ideological function ofart in society. 14 Marcuse maintains that, like religion, art has thepositive function of preserving society’s unfulfilled ideals and‘‘forgotten truths.’’ 15 It thus contains an important critical el-ement: it protests against the deficiencies of a reality in whichthese ideals have disappeared. But on the other hand, in as far asart serves to compensate in the realm of aesthetic illusion 13 Karl Marx, Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right (Cambridge: Cambridge Uni-versity Press, 1970). Herbert Marcuse, ‘‘The Affirmative Character of Culture,’’Negations, trans. J. Shapiro (Boston: Beacon, 1968), 88–133. 14 Marcuse, ‘‘The Affirmative Character of Culture,’’ 120–122. 15 Bürger, Theory of the Avant-Garde, 11. Theories of the avant-garde8 © Cambridge University Presswww.cambridge.org Cambridge University Press0521648696 - Theorizing the Avant-Garde: Modernism, Expressionism, and theProblem of PostmodernityRichard MurphyExcerpt More information

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(‘‘Schein’’) for these real-life deficiencies, it simultaneously subli-mates and defuses this protest. Paradoxically then in preservinglife’s unfulfilled ideals art may take on a quietist and ‘‘affirmativecharacter’’ in as far as it serves merely to stabilize and legitimizethat reality against which it protests.In both of these analytical models the practice of ‘‘ideology-critique’’ lays bare the grain of truth contained within the illusioncreated by religion and art, while simultaneously demonstratingthe ideological constraints on implementing this truth which areimposed by these institutions themselves. If the emergence of theavant-garde marks art’s entry into the ‘‘stage of self-criticism,’’ italso signifies the beginning of a similar form of ‘‘ideology-cri-tique’’ through which artisticpractice is turned against art itself asan institutional formation. It means that art’s critical power nolonger operates merely in an ‘‘immanent’’ fashion, that is, as thekind of criticism that remains enclosed within the social institu-tion (such as when one type of religion criticizes another) andwithin which it would consequently be blind to the institutionalrestraints operating upon it. In as far as it analyzes the overallfunctioning of the institution itself – and especially its social andideological effects rather than the individual elements of the sys-tem – self-criticism operates as a form of ideology-critique per-formed from within the limits of the institution, yet directedagainst its institutional functions. What this self-criticism means inpractical terms for the ‘‘historical’’ avant-garde of the early twen-tieth century is that, unlike previous avant-garde movements, itssubversive or revolutionary character is demonstrated by the waythat it turns its attention increasingly to the institutional frame-workthrough which art is produced and received, and to the‘‘dominant social discourses’’ which emerge in art through theseinstitutional mediations.As we have seen, the institutionalization of art reaches a crucialstage where those seemingly perennial conditions of art, namelyautonomy and the absence of social consequence, are valorized asgoalsin their own right, in particular bythe movementof aestheti-cism. The ‘‘historical’’ avant-garde’s critical response to this situ-ation takes two forms.Firstly, it deconstructs the claim that these ‘‘universal’’ prin-ciples of autonomy constitute the inevitable conditions of thepossibility of art. Similar to the way in which the avant-gardeIntroduction9 © Cambridge University Presswww.cambridge.org Cambridge University Press0521648696 - Theorizing the Avant-Garde: Modernism, Expressionism, and theProblem of PostmodernityRichard MurphyExcerpt More information

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reveals that even realism or mimetic representation – longthought of as perennial and unchanging criteria of value in theAristotelian tradition – are actually merely a set of culturally-privileged codes which have simply attained a special institu-tional status, so it also exposes the notion of autonomy as anarbitrary value which is institutionally imposed upon art.Secondly, the self-critical response of the avant-garde leads toan awareness of the fact that with the progressive detachment ofthe ‘‘sub-system’’ of art from the practice of life – a separation thatis part of a more general process of what Max Weber calls thedifferentiation or ‘‘rationalization’’ in modern society – art’s du-plicitous or ‘‘affirmative’’ function is reinforced. Although auton-omy offers a degree of independence and critical distance fromsociety, art simultaneously suffers from this isolation. For anysocial or political content is instantly neutralized when the workof art is received as a purely ‘‘imaginative’’ product, an aestheticillusion that need not be taken seriously.In connection with this self-critical impulse of the avant-gardethe concept of the ‘‘institution of art’’ becomes one of the keynotions used by Bürger to analyze the social administration of theaesthetic sphere. He uses this term torefer both to the ‘‘productiveand distributive apparatus’’ of art but also more particularly tothe ‘‘ideas about art that prevail at a given time and that deter-mine the reception of works.’’ 16 Bürger further defines the institu-tion of art in a later article as that set of social conditions whichdetermine the particular functions of art in a given historicalperiod, and he emphasizes further that although alternative con-ceptions of art may exist, the institution of art at any given time isalways predisposed towards the dominance of one conception ofart in particular. 17 Thus, the term describes both the attitudestaken up towards art in society as well as the ideological andinstitutional limitations imposed upon art’s possible effects.The importance of the institution of art may be measured by thevehemence of the avant-garde’s attacks upon it. These attacks alsoillustrate the degree to which the more progressive artists and 16 Bürger, Theory of the Avant-Garde, 22. 17 Peter Bürger, ‘‘Institution Kunst als literatursoziologische Kategorie. Skizzeeine Theorie des historischen Wandels der gesellschaftlichen Funktion derLiteratur,’’ Vermittlung – Rezeption – Funktion (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1979),173–174; 177. Theories of the avant-garde10 © Cambridge University Presswww.cambridge.org Cambridge University Press0521648696 - Theorizing the Avant-Garde: Modernism, Expressionism, and theProblem of PostmodernityRichard MurphyExcerpt More information