Many, or maybe most, students have encountered Clement Greenberg's famous essay from 1939 published in The Partisan Review: Avant-Garde & Kitsch. For fairly obvious reasons, it is relevant to the concerns of this seminar. In 1939 the PRB was at its absolute nadir. It was either derided as an unfortunate episode of medieval escapism or forgotten about altogether, not even worth deriding. What are Greenberg's assumptions about the avant-garde? Using his terms, how could the PRB be re-fashioned from kitsch to avant-garde?
This is an example of optional or supplemental reading. Read it or not, the choice is yours.
Victorian Avant-Garde // A Seminar at the Corcoran School of Arts and Design at the George Washington University // Spring 2016 // Professor Casey Smith // kcs@gwu.edu // The painting above is by Sir John Everett Millais, 1829–1896, British, L'Enfant du Regiment, 1854 to 1855, Oil on paper, laid on canvas, mounted on board, Yale Center for British Art, Paul Mellon Fund
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