What Does the “End of the Avant-gardes” Mean?

Abstract

This paper intends to study those premises that, giving prior relevance to the problems related to the 'end' topic, have contributed to create the general conviction according to which avant-gardes are a thing of the past. Focusing on the coincidence between the proclamation of the end of the avant-gardes and that of the end of the grand narratives, this work considers the histori- cist premises upon which the ideas of “postmodernity” and an “art after the end of art” has been built, that combines one with the other in a movement which rejects both the rupturist tendencies in avant-garde art and the “modern project” as a whole, opposing a range of possibilities modelled according to the integration of a history considered as surpassed, to an open and free of coercion horizon of possibilities. Correlatively to the end of art proclaimed by postmodernist philosophies, this paper also calls attention to the renewed legitimacy given to the search of a definition of art, as a symptom of a shift away from the initial concerns of analytic aesthetics and from the debates aroused by contemporary art.