The Avant Garde’s Decline and Fall in the 20th Century

Melvyn Bragg examines the social and aesthetic impact of the Avant Garde and discusses whether it has failed in making painting relevant in the 20th century.Avant-garde is in the dictionary as ‘anything that is in the forefront of new developments in their media’. Jackson Pollack in the 1960s was seen as one of the leaders of Avant Garde painting. But for the Marxist historian Eric Hobsbawm, Jackson Pollack is merely representative of the uncertainty which has plagued the Avant Garde visual arts movements in the twentieth century, and which has led to paintings’ ultimate demise and lack of relevance in the modern age. With Professor Eric Hobsbawm, eminent historian and author of Behind The Times: The Decline and Fall of the Twentieth Century Avant-Gardes; Frances Morris, specialist in contemporary art and Art Programme Curator for the Tate Gallery of Modern Art.

→ Play on BBC Sounds website

Guests

• Professor Eric Hobsbawm 2 episodes
  Eminent historian and author of Behind The Times: The Decline and Fall of the Twentieth Century Avant-Gardes
• Frances Morris No other episodes
  Specialist in contemporary art and Art Programme Curator for the Tate Gallery of Modern Art

Related episodes

• Bohemianism
  
  9 Oct, 2003 700 Arts
• The Decadent Movement
  
  18 Nov, 2021 820 English and Old English literatures
• Modern Culture
  
  21 Jan, 1999 800 Literature, rhetoric and criticism
• William Morris
  
  5 Jul, 2018 700 Arts
• The Baroque Movement
  
  20 Nov, 2008 700 Arts
• Walter Benjamin
  
  10 Feb, 2022 190 Modern Western Philosophy
• Auden
  
  19 Dec, 2019 820 English and Old English literatures
• Literary Modernism
  
  26 Apr, 2001 820 English and Old English literatures
• The City in the 20th Century
  
  12 Nov, 1998 300 Social sciences, sociology and anthropology
• Vincent van Gogh
  
  21 Dec, 2023 750 Painting

---

Programme ID: p00545dc

Episode page: bbc.co.uk/programmes/p00545dc

Auto-category: 700 (Arts and Recreation)

Hello (First sentence from this episode)

Hello. Next month sees the opening of one of the Tate Gallery's most ambitious retrospectives, Jackson Pollock.