Avant-garde and theory: A misunderstood relation

The relation of avant-garde artworks and theories is a hotly debated topic. It is often claimed that avant-garde works perform theoretical labor-either by formulating theoretical propositions in an artistic form or by eliciting theoretical insights from readers, viewers, or listeners. Other critics and philosophers have denied that avant-garde works play any substantial role in relation to theories; at most, they may serve as allusive flags around which communities that already possess a given theory might rally. accepting the view that theories and avant-garde artworks are distinct types of discourse, I suggest that the critics who fully sever the link between theories and such artworks draw exaggerated conclusions from this initially valid distinction. I go on to outline three major functional relations between avant-garde artworks and theories: (1) theories play a key role in identifying events or objects as pertaining to "art" and not to other social or natural domains; (2) theories help shape the heuristics that artists employ in making artworks and that audiences use in trying to understand them; and (3) artworks may, with strong limitations, provide impetus for changes in theories. I then develop a sixfold taxonomy of symbolic relations between artworks and theories-that is, the variety of ways in which artworks may refer to theories. In order of their explicitness, these are iconographic correspondence, use of theories as thematic material, exemplification, direct allusion, formal allusion, and expressive use of theoretical diction. Finally, I consider the pedagogical problems raised by avant-garde works: the contexts in which audiences come to understand how to approach avant-garde works and the role of theories in the explicit and implicit pedagogies of the avant-garde.