How to Be Avant-Garde: Modern Artists and the Quest to End Art

by Morgan Falconer

The strange story of the twentieth-century artists who sought to destroy art by transforming it into the substance of everyday life.


“Art has poisoned our life,” proclaimed De Stijl cofounder Theo van Doesburg. Reacting to the tumultuous crises of the twentieth century, especially the horrors of World War I, bands of writers and artists explored different ways to end art by having it become part of how they lived. In dynamic engagement with these revolutionary groups, Morgan Falconer starts with Futurist founder Filippo Tommaso Marinetti, whose manifesto extolling speed, destruction, and modernity seeded avant-gardes across Europe. In turn, Dadaists Hugo Ball and Emmy Hennings sought to replace art with political cabaret, and the Surrealists tried to exchange it for tools to plumb the unconscious. Falconer next guides us through the Constructivists, De Stijl, and the Bauhaus, who explored how art could transmute into architecture and design. Finally, the Situationists swapped art for politics, with many of their ideas inspiring the 1968 Paris student protests. How to Be Avant-Garde brings forward these extraordinary radicals and their wild attempts to create utopia by destroying art.

Genres: Art, Nonfiction, History, Biography, Audiobook

288 pages, Hardcover

First published February 18, 2025

Reviews

[Eric Sbar · Rating 2 out of 5]

This was an interesting overview of some avant garde movements in art. The problem is the pretext. How do you become avant garde when art is back to being a commodity. The description of Miami’s Art Basel was great as most modern art is uninteresting and sterile. I wanted to read about things that I was not privy to, but, instead, I will make my own art.

[Rose Rosetree · Rating 5 out of 5]

Make no mistake, this is a SOCIAL history of the Avant-Garde. That is, all about the social lives and party-like conduct of the leaders of movements like Dada and Surrealism.

A high point was learning about Kandinski's synesthesia. Synesthesia is a gift that all humans have, although not in as extreme a version as the painter. Those who learn my system of Aura Reading Through All Your Senses® learn to use, and benefit from, their talent for synesthesia.

Mostly, though, I found this book annoying. I didn't want to learn who went where and other partygoer-like details. Most annoying was the audiobook narration from Brian. He has a handsome voice and speaks clearly, but he also has the worst French accent I've ever heard. Was he even trying? Think of the equivalent of a tone deaf singer; that was his pronunciation of the many French words in this book.

RATING THIS BOOK

Unless I absolutely love or loathe a book, my policy is to rate it in terms of my imagined response of the intended readers. These intended readers like party-like details, skimming the social doings of celebs. For them, I could see this book deserving FIVE STARS.

[Jake Kasten · Rating 3 out of 5]

Struggling to figure out if I didn’t care for this book or if I’m just disappointed it wasn’t what I expected. I would have liked more discussion on specific works and how they bring the ideas to life, or even a little more discussion on what some of the movements actually were. Especially toward the end of the book it begins to move through movements at a wild clip and I don’t know that I ever really grasped what the various players ideologies were.

[Tim · Rating 3 out of 5]

Honestly I thought this book was at its best when the author discussed an art movement and its ethos/idiosyncrasies and then unwound how he tried to incorporate those things in his own life. I do feel like I know more about art from reading it but don’t quiz me on it