Q: What is Avant-garde and modern in art? Explain through examples of Art.

In terms of art, Avant-garde is traditionally used to describe any artist, group or style, which is
considered to be significantly ahead of the majority in its technique, subject matter, or
application. The term was reportedly first applied to visual art in the early 19th century by the
French political writer Henri de Saint-Simon, who declared that artists served as the avant-garde
in the general movement of social progress, ahead of scientists and other classes. However, since
the beginning of the 20th century, the term has retained a connotation of radicalism, and carries
the implication that for artists to be truly avant-garde they must challenge the artistic status, that
is, its aesthetics, its intellectual or artistic conventions, or its methods of
production to the point of being almost subversive. Using this interpretation,
Dada (1916-24) is probably the ultimate example of avant-garde visual art,
since it challenged most of the fundamentals of Western civilization.

The Italian Renaissance was probably the single

most avant-garde era in the history of painting and
sculpture. Figures from the Biblical Holy Family
were represented in an entirely natural manner, a
radical departure from Byzantine, even Gothic,
artworks. In addition, nudity became not only
acceptable, but the noblest type of figurative imagery. Witness
Masaccio's Expulsion from the Garden of Eden (1426, Brancaccio
Chapel, Florence) by Masaccio, and the hypermodern bronze sculpture
David by Donatello (c.1440, Bargello Museum, Florence).

Not until the dust settled after the French

Revolution did artists really begin to experiment
again. It began with landscape painting. A new
plein-air tradition was initiated by Corot and
others from the Barbizon School; the German
symbolist painter Caspar David Friedrich injected
his landscapes with a new form of romanticism;
and the genre was taken to even higher and more extraordinary levels by the English genius
JMW Turner. History painting, too, became avant-garde with works like Goya's Third of May,
1808 (1814, Prado, Madrid), which had no heroes and no uplifting message.

The most iconoclastic movement of all time is perhaps Dada, founded by Tristan Tzara (1896-
1963) which ignited in Zurich in 1916 before spreading to Paris,
Berlin and New York. Dadaists rejected most, if not all, bourgeois
values of visual art, in favor of a heady mixture of anarchism and
hypermodern innovation. The latter
included a number of subversive ideas
which are now seen as relatively
mainstream, such as the creation of
junk art from 'found objects'
(Duchamp's 'ready-mades'), and the
introduction of 3-D collage (Schwitters' Merzbau).

The next really avant-garde school was Impressionism. The first major movement of modern art
which turned color conventions upside down. All of a sudden, grass could be red and haystacks
could be blue, depending on the momentary effect of sunlight as perceived by the artist. Today,
Impressionism may be seen as mainstream, but back in the 1870s the public, as well as the arts
hierarchy, were scandalized. As far as they were concerned, grass was green, and haystacks were
yellow and that was that.

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Reference:

https://www.widewalls.ch/avant-garde-movement-theater-music-photography-contemporary-art/
https://www.tate.org.uk/art/art-terms/a/avant-garde