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Avant-Guardian Musings

  • Spring 2025
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“Art is an outlet toward regions which are not ruled by time and space”
— Marcel Duchamp

Avant-Guardian Musings is a curated space of ideas and information, resources, reviews and readings for undergraduate and graduate students studying modern and contemporary art history and visual art theory, film and photography studies, and the expanding field of visual culture and screen studies. For students currently enrolled in my courses or the field school, the blog and associated social media links also serve as a place of reflection and an extension of the ideas and visual material raised in lecture and seminar discussion.

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Blog
From the Archives | How (And Why) To Take Excellent Lecture Notes
From the Archives | How (And Why) To Take Excellent Lecture Notes
about 10 months ago
Weekly Musings + Round Up... And A Few More Things
Weekly Musings + Round Up... And A Few More Things
about 2 years ago
Weekly Musings + Round Up... And A Few More Things
about 2 years ago
Weekly Musings + Round Up... And A Few More Things
Weekly Musings + Round Up... And A Few More Things
about 2 years ago
Top 10 Modern and Contemporary Art Exhibitions Worth Visiting In 2023
Top 10 Modern and Contemporary Art Exhibitions Worth Visiting In 2023
about 2 years ago

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Delighted to find these iconic Tom Ford Whitney’s deep in my closet over the weekend ✨☀️🕶️Anyone else remember these sunglasses from back in the day? I want to say these are well over 15 years old and they were a very big splurge, but I loved
Delighted to find these iconic Tom Ford Whitney’s deep in my closet over the weekend ✨☀️🕶️Anyone else remember these sunglasses from back in the day? I want to say these are well over 15 years old and they were a very big splurge, but I loved rediscovering and wearing them today. Great design is timeless. Invest in things you love— your future self will thank you✨ . . . #tomford #sunglasses #tomfordwhitney #whatiwore #shamelessselfie
If Seoul was a colour, it would be neon and bright, and if it was a shape, it would be curved and post-structural.
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#artanddesign #odetoacity #urban #seoul #korea #design #contemporaryart #architecture
If Seoul was a colour, it would be neon and bright, and if it was a shape, it would be curved and post-structural. . . . #artanddesign #odetoacity #urban #seoul #korea #design #contemporaryart #architecture
Visited the stunning Leeum Museum of Art today and took in the spatial delights of Korean architecture married to modern art. What I love most is how the familiar European and American “masters” (i.e. Rodin, Giacometti, Rauschenberg, Hess
Visited the stunning Leeum Museum of Art today and took in the spatial delights of Korean architecture married to modern art. What I love most is how the familiar European and American “masters” (i.e. Rodin, Giacometti, Rauschenberg, Hesse, Flavin, Rothko, Andre, Lewitt, Stella, etc…) are curated both in dialogue with Korean modern artists such as Lee Ufan and Kim Chong-yung, but also in juxtaposition to the beautiful natural setting that is showcased through large windows throughout the complex. A must see gallery if you visit Seoul. . . . #seoul #korea #modernart #contemporaryart #koreanart #arthistory
Flaneur for the day in Seoul ✨🇰🇷 A global city of high contrast, beauty, and living history around every corner.
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#seoul #korea #flaneur #daytripping #streetart #contemporaryart #modernart #urbanart #arthistory #urban #globalcity
Flaneur for the day in Seoul ✨🇰🇷 A global city of high contrast, beauty, and living history around every corner. . . . #seoul #korea #flaneur #daytripping #streetart #contemporaryart #modernart #urbanart #arthistory #urban #globalcity
Hello Seoul! 🇰🇷🛬✨안녕하세요 서울 Lucky me, I am incredibly excited to have arrived in South Korea today and staying smack dab in the middle of the stylish Gangnam District at the COEX Conference Centre. It is my first time in this beautiful city and I ca
Hello Seoul! 🇰🇷🛬✨안녕하세요 서울 Lucky me, I am incredibly excited to have arrived in South Korea today and staying smack dab in the middle of the stylish Gangnam District at the COEX Conference Centre. It is my first time in this beautiful city and I cannot wait to begin exploring, especially the contemporary art and design scene. I am here to attend and give a paper at the #IPSA2025 International Political Science Association World Congress, the largest global gathering of researchers and academics working on all things political and international relations oriented. IPSA as an academic association was founded under the auspices of UNESCO in 1949 and is devoted to the advancement of political science in all parts of the world and promotes collaboration between scholars in both established and emerging democracies. The 2025 Conference theme is “Resisting Autocratization in Polarized Societies” and I was invited to present a paper on my ongoing work on Trumpism, the neo avante-garde, and visual culture on a panel examining the role of cultural actors during periods of democratic backsliding. I only had a few hours after I arrived to my hotel to check out COEX, but I had to see the world famous library housed inside the shopping complex. It was a very cool sight for a book nerd like me 🤓 . . . #seoul #korea #southkorea #politicalscience #arthistory #academiclife #conference @kpuarts @kwantlenu

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© Dorothy Barenscott, Avant-Guardian Musings, and dorothybarenscott.com, 2010-2023. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Dorothy Barenscott, Avant-Guardian Musings, and dorothybarenscott.com with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.

Sándor Pinczehelyi, Small Star Coca-Cola III (1988), oil on canvas. The Hungarian artist was one of many practitioners featured in Promote, Tolerate, Ban: Art and Culture In Cold War Europe, a book I recently reviewed for H-Net Reviews. 

Sándor Pinczehelyi, Small Star Coca-Cola III (1988), oil on canvas. The Hungarian artist was one of many practitioners featured in Promote, Tolerate, Ban: Art and Culture In Cold War Europe, a book I recently reviewed for H-Net Reviews. 

Focus on Ideas: Art, Propaganda, and the Avant-Garde

June 14, 2018

Questions of art and propaganda loom large in the public imagination, perhaps more today than at any moment in history. Consider for example the intensification of visual and screen culture globally, connecting traditional forms of media (photography, film, print, painting, drawing, etc..) with emerging media forms (digital, social media, immersive, virtual, memes, etc..) at the same time that proclamations around "fake news" and the veracity of media's claims to truth grow exponentially. It is a potent and dangerous combination that brings to mind the culture wars that took place between and within communist and non-communist countries during the twentieth century. Art and culture, as a unifier and divider of nations, was actively deployed and weaponized to achieve targeted political ends. 

What is the role of the artist in these situations? How can they intervene, question, bring awareness, or even find a way to participate and subvert the status quo? These questions have animated my own research interests for many years and I have worked to understand the emergence of modernism and the avant-garde within the context of the fraught political landscape of Europe as it transformed from the late nineteenth into the twentieth century. Critically, what I have come to believe is that there is much to learn about the current state of global relations, tying the cultural to the political, by studying historical events connected to rise and fall of Soviet-controlled Eastern bloc countries.

As Central and Eastern Europe, and Hungary in particular, has been a big focus of my research to date, I recently accepted an invitation to review Christina Cuevas-Wolf and Isotta Poggi’s edited collection Promote, Tolerate, Ban: Art and Culture in Cold War Hungary. I invite you to read my review and reflect on the themes raised in the book (I have embedded the PDF below and it can also be found here) and consider what parallels can be drawn to today's political climate. This is especially pressing as the broader authoritarian resurgence in Central and Eastern Europe, linked to the cultural policies of political leaders, continues to grow. Since at least 2010, for example, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán’s mainstreaming of the far right within the framework of Hungarian cultural politics and policies has been both alarming, but understandable and predictable, given Hungary’s tumultuous history connecting victimhood and ethnocentrism within the context of politicized art and cultural expression. It is also this model of authoritarianism that is admired and replicated in many of the recent policies adapted by the Trump administration in the U.S. 

As I argue in the review, a close and more nuanced reading of how propaganda and "socialist realism" evolved during the Cold War is crucial, together with offering alternative histories and theories of the avant-garde, and a deeper dive by art historians into the contingent nature of art and culture under Soviet-backed regimes. As the book makes clear, artists living behind the iron curtain did not operate as a monolithic whole, and the forms of subversion and response by cultural practitioners outlined in the book provide powerful lessons for today's artists.   

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© Dorothy Barenscott, 2010-2025