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The Avant Garde was much more than an artistic, or even anti-artistic, movement, it was an attempt to reformulate (or more often deformulate) culture itself through art, it was quintessentially rooted in Romantic Modernism. That much is well documented. Less well outlined is the dialectic which ran through it.

The Romantic movement was flawed for many by its psychological naivity and idealisation of the natural world, it’s thus no surprise that an opposite Romantic reaction was formed in the darkly Gothic mode, championed by Byron. Such a movement still revered Nature of course, in all its glorious chaos, but saw it as strife and tenson not harmony. It was left to the Symbolists to reject this in favour of either a transcendental Mysticism, or a material Artificiality in their Decadent mode, both seeking peace in the eye of the storm, or outside of Nature completely, which they now saw in a negative light. What remained unchanged was a love of the past over the present and a Traditionalism, which often included Magical perspectives on the world, shifting from Paganism to Gnosticism. This was an attempt to recapture the Ideal outside of Nature.

Growing out of the Artificial Idealism of the Decadents, which had produced a Neo-Pythagorean Suprematism, and the People Power of the broader Romantic tradition came a movement of Scientific Romanticism, and of the ideals of  Technological Culture mastering Nature. Along with this came a break with the past and all things Traditional, along with the Magical, and an embrace of the future. In Britain this became Vorticism while on the Continent it had spawned Futurism.  Such a movement however also rejected the serenity of the Symbolists and reemphasised Dynamism in opposition. It also instantiated an ongoing dialectic with Modernism, though differed in its projection beyond the contemporary into the future.

The First  World War saw an end to such Optimism and faith in Science and Reason. It was this that led to Absurdism and Dada. The same Dynamism freed not only of all Traditionalism but also of Reason itself. A Pessimistic Nihilism that sought the destruction of all Rational Order. The Chaos of the Unconscious was privaleged over the Intellect.

Not surprisingly this Nihilism soon proved unproductive and the Post Dada movement became subject to the goals and limits of Psychoanalysis and the alternative Rationalism of Hegel (and Marx), and so Surrealism was born.

A return to Nature was also achieved all be it the internal nature of the Psyche. Likewise Occult ideas began to regain popularity. The rest of this story is essentially a footnote to Surrealism, through Lettrism, Situationism, Fluxus, Neoism and all it’s other bastard children, onwards into ’Post Modernity’.

All of these movements also had their own sub-dialectics, a subject for further study, but the pattern seems essentially the same.  
In them we can see a very clear dialectic, however it’s a complex and chaotic one with many entwined strands, but It is thus a very illuminating revelation of the real nature of the Dialectic itself.

In fact in the main it is essentially a Trialectic, with two cultural movements in dialectical opposition reacting to a social ground. The classic case of which is the shift from Futurism to Dada after the First World War.

We could envision the primary dialectic as one between the Ancient and the Modern, within a Social Third, which sets up a secondary trialectic within each duality, which sets up a tertiary dialectic like the one we find in the Avant Garde, each a microcosm of the larger trialectic. Though the process is more organic, dynamic and unpredictable than Hegel’s rational, mechanism. It has to be found emprically rather than rationally.

There are several critiques of Hegel’s Dialectic, the most apt are its rationalistic and totalising nature (with its corresponding suppression of the non-rational and individual), as well as the characterising these as leading logically to some transcendental truth or ideal reality (which can be predicted and discovered through rational study). The same negative traits can be seen in a materialistic, social context in Marx, but Hegel is further criticized for positing a rational ’spirit’ beyond the immanent world of experience, that guides this development and underpins the logical nature of the world, a dualistic residue of Platonic thought and theology.

Whether or not this is an accurate intepretation of Hegel, as Existentialists, Logicians and Post-Modernists claim alike, it seems clear from the above observations that it doesnt match the actual dialectic. Which seems to contain the non-rational as much as the rational and to be a constant ebb and flow of opposites rather than any progressive unification, all within a rather immanent dynamic that seems accessible empirically rather than rationally. An immanent holistic process of opposition to self rather than between seperate polarities seeking union. This self-opposition is also crucial in understanding the history of Modernism.  

A comprehensive look at all the rival definitions of Modernity would be almost endless, I’ll simply suggest it refers to a period of modernisation, or a break from past ways of thinking and acting, and their replacement with newer ways believed to be more beneficial. The question of how this benefit is known and who benefits will be left open for a moment. According to Habermas, quoting Juass, this trend began in the 5th Century with the advent of Christianity within the Roman Empire, and was defined in opposition to the notion of the Ancient, or Antiquity. The distinction then arises anew at the beginning of each member of a sequential set of Epochs. Thus Modernity is seen as a series of historical modes of modernization. The major mode before the Enlightenment was characterised by a reformulation of the Ancient in the new Modern context, thus aesthetically preserving the best of both worlds, the reformed core of Antiquity in this ‘Proto-Modern’ mode was seen as an expanding Classical mode. The modernization was  seen in the context of a complete realisation of a new Truth, there was no sense of progress across Epochs. Only with the Enlightenment do we find the idea of Progress emerging, though the Classical remains as something preserved, due to its withstanding of the tests of time. Thus for many true Modernity begins with the Enlightenment. Habermas certainly argues for this, though I think he is mistaken here as he is in many other aspects. The Enlightenment can be seen as creating a Progressive Modernism, whose main features include Detached Rationalism, Reductionism, Objective Atomism, Universalism, Centralisation, Control and  Utilitarianism.  This was later concretised harshly in Industrialism, while a softer more humanitarian variant evolved into Rational Humanism.

A subsequent development in Modernism was a reaction against itself. Romantic Modernism rejected most of the features of the dominant Progressive Modernist movement, along with its Classicism (choosing rival Antiquities, such as Medievalism), while maintaining core Modernist ideas that had existed since the Rennaisance, primarily Direct Experience, Individualism and Liberation,  which it shared with the Progressives in variant form, plus a renewed counter emphasis on Subjectivism, Culturalism, Spirituality and Organicism. It also maintained a sense of progress, though not in any Rationalistic Development but rather in a Natural Historicism. This split was arguably prefigured in a religious context in the prior Epoch, of the Reformation and Counter Reformation, as Weber observed, by Protestantism and Modern (Anglo)Catholicism, a parallel not lost on its contemporary protaganists.

Thus a dialectical process emerged in the unfolding of Modernity which culminated with the Avant Garde as Modernism’s cultural vanguard. Unfortunately most commentators, including Habermas, have given a very poor critique of this movement, but I want to explore that in Part Two.

I would argue that the observation of this actual dialectical process was as much an inflluence on Hegel’s flawed dialectical theory as was his published rational arguement, and part of his aim to unite the Progressive and Romantic Modernisms in a new Realist Modernism. An attempt taken further but greatly distorted by Marx and his reductionist scientism. Nietzsche of course astutely criticised both and proposed his Romantic Realism in contrast, setting up a new Modernist dialectic, to be explored in Part Four, along with the emergence of Post Modernism.