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.

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Guests

• Professor Eric Hobsbawm 2 episodes
  
• Frances Morris No other episodes
  Art Programme Curator for the Tate Gallery of Modern Art

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Programme ID: p00545dc

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

Auto-category: 709.04 (History of art: 20th century)

Hello (First sentence from this episode)

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