Word: avante
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Fogg Art Museum. Through Nov. 14: "American Painting at Mid-Century: Highlights from a Private Collection." Considers the vital moment in history of avant-garde painting in New York by artists such as Andy Warhol, Jasper Johns, Willem de Kooning and Frank Stella...
There was always the whiff of the charlatan about John Cage. The puckish composer, audacious theoretician, stylish writer, subtle graphic artist, macrobiotic guru and fearless mushroom hunter was the impish personification of the 20th century avant-garde. Arch, soft-spoken and witty, Cage was passionately adored by his acolytes right up to his death at age 79 in 1992, and continues to be regarded by some as a kind of contemporary Beethoven, his influence ranging as far afield as Germany and Japan (where he is a demigod). And yet: Was there ever a composer of whom it can be said...
Finally there is the not at all negligible matter of how the music sounds. A common, philistine criticism of avant-garde art used to be that small children banging on pots and pans or flinging paint at a canvas could have produced exactly the same effect. In Cage's case, at least, this is very probably true (and he probably would have delighted in it). A concert of Cage's noises is, by and large, as much of a room emptier as it was when the work was new; Cage may be the first important artist whose work one wants...
Through Oct. 31: "School of Paris." Works by the group of artists whose work epitomizes European and modernism and the avant-garde, especially as they were conceived by American audiences between the two World Wars...
Havel is a writer first, and has always considered himself such. While still very young he became well known in Prague avant garde theatre. For Havel, absurdist theater presents the individual's life and place within society in modern times. It also provides the framework in which to realize the loss of meaning within society. All of Havel's plays are concerned with the quest for truth and the destruction of personal responsibility. Havel's major theme, in his writings as in his life, is the negation of value and the moral imperative for action by each individual. These...