AVANGARDA

-4+3

It cannot exist in the absence of the spirit of fronde.

It is not constituted without polemic and criticism.

It does not manifest itself without shock actions.

It does not accept established art forms.

The avant-garde lives within a form of spectacular revolt.

The avant-garde is the reaction of the elite.

Avant-garde in Romania has been dominant as a ^{constructive1} rather than a demolitionist gesture.

Even if AVANGARDA manifested itself at a European ^level2 in the inter-war period - particularly between 1920-1930, certain forms in which this movement primed and reformed aesthetics can be detected late in the 20th century. Without having the consistency of a movement, there are today pioneering pioneers, incipient molecules of a combative aesthetic group and certain attitudes manifest in both art and architecture that justify us in questioning the avant-garde.

I don't believe that there are any nostalgics of the avant-garde, but I am certain that there are very many people who still hope in the regenerative quality of the elites. Many still hope, I believe, in courageous steps taken in the name of a beneficial and promising novelty.

At present, the shift to architectural design and construction of buildings with a "green" footprint is rather post-garden. The flaunted preference for the use of 'cheap' or unconventional materials is, in a certain overly canonical perception, a slut-slut. Our speed of critical reaction is far too slow in relation to the speed at which the world around us is changing. We no longer listen carefully, there is no manifest time. The convenience of technological communication sometimes alienates us. The spectacle of the image realized by a new construction - as a result of the various technologies of putting the available materials to work - does not guarantee its lack of aesthetic platform, lack of image desirability or concerted change.

We dream, sometimes apathetically and ignorantly, of change without recognizing the effort of the avowed.

In the '90s, the first public manifestations, to which the Romanian Union of Architects committed itself with a then explicable enthusiasm, attempted a remedy of both information and attention towards avant-garde and modernism. The distinction or relation avant-garde-modernism is necessary here. The answer is one of crowds included. Thus, Romanian modernism in its acute, extremist phase, or avant-garde is not a uniform, homogeneous current, but a mixture of currents, orientations and tendencies. The dosage and emphasis in the commentary on the avant-garde are both very complex and difficult to assume.

In fact, Romanian avant-gardism developed on the modernist foundations of the post-symbolists (Adrian Maniu), who had been in existence since before World War I. In 1912 the magazine Simbolul, edited by Ion Vinea and Tristan Tzara, appeared. The precursor of Romanian avant-garde was Urmuz. Romanian avant-garde was diverse. Tristan Tzara and Marcel Iancu started out as Dadaists, but Ion Vinea was not a Dadaist. The magazine "Contimporanul"³, founded by Ion Vinea and Marcel Iancu, was a constructivist forum, promoting the modernism that was emerging in the artistic field as a result of the industrial revolution. The Romanian avant-garde had an eclectic characteristic, synthesizing the different trends. One example was the magazine^Integral4, which promoted modernism regardless of the current.

We will try, after this stop in the precedents of the Romanian avant-garde - in the pages of this issue - to give some possible answers to what the avant-garde meant then and what it means now. Before inviting you to browse through the thematic articles, we present below some data relevant to the idea of revisiting the avant-garde. We call them consensus information or simultaneous readings.

CONSENSUS INFORMATION or SIMULTANEOUS READINGS

1. On Wednesday, February 9, 2011, starting at 7:30 p.m., the New Cinematograf of the Romanian Director (NCRR), in collaboration with the Visual Arts Foundation (FAV), presents three little-known short films, situated on the border between documentary and experimental: The Chronicle from Zurich (directed by Alexandru Solomon and Radu Igazsag, 1996), Shout in the ^Tympani5 (directed by Radu Igazsag and Alexandru Solomon, 1993) and Duo for Paoloncel and Petronom (directed by Alexandru Solomon, 1994).

Strigăt în timpan is an unconventional chronicle of the Romanian literary and artistic avant-garde. Based on the exhibition "Romanian Avant-Garde, 1916-1947" at the Museum of Romanian Literature, the film reconstructs the atmosphere of those years of madness in the spirit of the avant-garde, using the specific means of their art (collages, absurd associations, etc.).

2. International Symposium on Avant-garde: Bucharest-Zürich-Paris-Tel Aviv: Romanian and Jewish Avant-gardists in the Romanian Cultural Milieu; Bucharest, May 26-27, 2011. Following the success of the symposium "Romanian Avant-garde between Bucharest, Paris and Tel Aviv", which took place in Tel Aviv in December 2010 (www.agonia.ro/index.php/press/13963144/simpozionul_), the Faculty of Letters of the University of Bucharest, the Institute of Jewish Studies in Jerusalem, the Romanian Academy Library, the Romanian Cultural Institute, the Embassy of Switzerland in Bucharest organize a second symposium on the same theme, in the Ion Heliade Rădulescu Hall of the Romanian Academy Library, Calea Vitoriei 125, in Bucharest.

3. Colloquium "Romanian avant-garde - European avant-garde", 2nd edition, organized by the National Museum of Romanian Literature and the Metropolitan Library (Bucharest).

October 27-November 4, 2011 - The exhibition "Victor Brauner and his Companions" (George Grosz, Jacques Herold, Marcel Iancu, M.H.Maxy, Egon Schiele, Arthur Segal), presented in the Rotunda of the MNLR.

The exhibited works come from the collections of the MNLR, the Federation of Jewish Communities in Romania, Vladimir Pană, Mihai Gavrilă, Anna and Prof. Dr. Ștefan Udrescu, Florin Colonaș.

NOTES:

¹ Ion Pop emphasized, in his May 2009 communication entitled "The Romanian avant-garde: trends, developments, posterity", that each culture assimilated avant-garde in its own way. Romanian culture was too new to find room for a radical negation of cultural tradition. In Romania there were no museums and libraries to be destroyed, as Marinetti proposed in the Futurists' manifesto. For the Romanian avant-garde, it was a question of building, not destroying. The Romanian avant-garde started by being constructivist ("Contimporanul"), tried to synthesize modernity ("Integral"), and later became surrealist ("unu").

n.red. - Ion Pop (b. 1941) is a professor at the Faculty of Letters of the Babeș-Bolyai University, Cluj-Napoca. He was editor-in-chief and then director of the magazine "Echinox" between 1969 and 1983. He was director of the Romanian Cultural Center in Paris (1990-1993) and dean of the Faculty of Letters of the "Babeș-Bolyai" University of Cluj (1996-2000). He has produced an anthology of the Romanian literary avant-garde, La réhabilitation du rêve, Paris-Bucharest, 2006.

² The phenomenon of the European avant-garde includes a multitude of currents: expressionism, futurism, Dadaism, constructivism, to which are added hermeticism, surrealism, integralism, literrism, etc., each with its own nuances. In architecture, the avant-garde movement (influenced by and contemporary with the Bauhaus) is asserting itself through the experiments supported by DE STIJL (Neoplasticism) and Russian Constructivism. The artists behind the DE STIJL movement are the painters Piet Mondrian and Theo van Doesburg, together with the furniture designer and architect Gerrit Rietveld.

³ The journals that created trends of ideas in inter-war Romanian culture and literature were 'Sburătorul' (the modernist trend based on the principle of synchronizing our literature with European literature) and 'Gândirea' (the traditionalist-orthodox trend), which included 'Contimporanul' (representing avant-garde trends) and eclectic journals such as 'Viața literară', 'Revista fundațiilor', 'Jurnalul literar', etc.

⁴ For a diachronic understanding, see the year of the magazine's appearance alongside the publications of the period - "Contimporanul" (1922-1930), "75 H.P." (1924), "Punct" (1925), "Integral" (1925-1927), "Unu" (1928-1932), "Urmuz" (1928), "Alge" (1930). Some of these magazines became promoters of avant-garde ideas in art. Some of the most important of these ideas could be mentioned: Dadaism, Surrealism, Constructivism, Hermetism, etc.

⁵ Awards: the UCIN Award for Romanian Documentary Film in 1993; the Video Film Award at the Costinești National Film Festival, 1993; the Experimental Film Award at the Mediawave International Film Festival, Gyor (Hungary), 1994; the Third Prize at the Astra Film International Documentary-Antropological Film Festival, Sibiu, 1994; the First Prize at the Art History Documentary Film Festival, Cotroceni National Museum, 1995.