Avant-garde describes a group, as of writers and artists, considered ahead of their times, i.e. regarded as preeminent in the invention and application of new techniques in a given field.

The term was originally used by the French military to refer to a small reconnoitre group that scouted ahead of the main force.

It also became associated with left-wing French radicals in the nineteenth century who were agitating for political reform. At some point in the middle of that century the term was linked to art through the idea that art is an instrument for social change.

Only toward the end of the nineteenth century did l’art d’avant-garde begin to break away from its identification with Left-wing social causes to become more aligned with cultural and artistic issues.

 This trend toward increased emphasis on aesthetic issues has continued to the present. Avant-garde today generally refers to groups of intellectuals, writers and artists, including architects, who voice ideas and experiment with artistic approaches that challenge current cultural values.

Avant-garde ideas, especially if they embrace social issues, often are gradually assimilated by the societies they confront. The radicals of yesterday become mainstream, creating the environment for a new generation of radicals to emerge.

Although the avant-garde has a strong tradition in the US in the areas of art and literature, in architecture the so-called avant-garde has recently tended to look to the past or to other cultures for validation and imagery.

In an editorial in Progressive Architecture (1993), Thomas Fisher also berates the lack of vitality of the current avant-garde in the US, reminding the architectural profession that, in spite of the influence of avant-garde Modernist architects escaping the fascism of Europe in the 1930s, the architects of the early Modern avant-garde had a very specific social, as well as artistic, agenda.

Thomas Fisher's Paper:
https://usmodernist.org/PA/PA-1994-01.pdf

In order that it be a positive, creative force for change, Fisher argues for broadening the focus of the avant-garde beyond the concerns of aesthetics and style to the original, and toward a more inclusive concept of the avant-garde.

 

Book Reference :

Archispeak An Illustrated Guide to Architectural Terms by Porter Tom.
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