In this paper I attempt to decipher some representative discourses concerning the »failure of the avant-garde« and thereby to illuminate a latent structure of denial/repression/exclusion underlying the origin of Western modern art, that is, a structure developed as the other side of the self-formation of art at the time of the newly gained myth of autonomy.
Since modern »arts« fell into a generic category »Art«, this Art seems to have been increasingly marginalized and impoverished, and yet, at the same time, given more privileges (if only symbolic ones) in compensation. In order to establish itself within the sublimated domain of high culture, art might have had to throw away everything that could not comfortably fit in with its self-definition.
While the dualism between »high culture« and »low culture« ceased being grounded in reality, a new device, modernism, was invented to secure imaginary boundaries and to forward the process of the autonomization of art. Modernism, in this case, serves as a more advanced and reinforced repressive device. It also includes the rebellious avant-garde as a momentary release of the repressed. The interrelatedness of modernism and the avant-garde, then, will appear as a conflict between an aesthetics of control and an aesthetics of anarchy.V članku poskušam analizirati nekatere značilne diskurze posvečene »neuspehu avantgarde« ter tako osvetliti latentno strukturo zanikanja / potlačitve / izključitve, na kateri leži temelj zahodne moderne umetnosti, se pravi strukturo, ki je bila razvita kot druga plat samooblikovanja umetnosti v dobi, ko je nastal mit o njeni avtonomiji.
Odkar so moderne »umetnosti« padle v rodovno kategorijo »Umetnost«, ta daje videz, da je postajala vedno bolj obrobna, da pa je hkrati pridobivala v zameno več privilegijev (čeprav le simbolnih). Da bi se lahko vzpostavila v sublimiranem območju visoke kulture, je bila umetnost morda prisiljena zavreči vse, česar ni bilo mogoče udobno uskladiti z njeno samodefinicijo. Medtem ko so dualizem med »visoko« in »nizko« kulturo prenehali utemeljevati v realnosti, so izumili nov pripomoček, da bi zavaroval navidezne meje, ter da bi pospešil proces avtonomizacije umetnosti.
Modernizem v tem primeru služi kot bolj izpopolnjen ter okrepljeni vzvod potlačitve; vsebuje tudi uporniško avantgardo, ki služi za začasno sprostitev potlačenega. Medsebojna povezanost med modernizmom in avantgardo se bo tako pokazala kot spopad med estetiko nadzora in estetiko anarhije
