A Quote by Eugene Ionesco

I am, it seems, an avant-garde dramatist. It would even seem obvious since I am present here at discussions on the avant-garde theatre. It is all entirely official. But what does the term avant-garde mean?

Eugene Ionesco

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Am Avant-Garde Discussions Does Entirely Even Mean Obvious Official Present Seem Seems Since Term Theatre Would

Quote Author

Eugene Ionesco
French - Dramatist
November 26, 1909 - March 28, 1994

If you try consciously to be avant-garde, it's a little dangerous, like the present state of modern painting, where dealers try to be avant-garde, and under this pretext, painters take some old scraps and call it avant-garde.

Simone de Beauvoir

The majority of people probably think that Damien Hirst is avant-garde. Look at the amount of people who say 'What is this rubbish? Who is running our galleries? Why are they spending all this money on the avant-garde?' That doesn't make it avant-garde to me.

Vic Reeves

More than one branch of the avant-garde, claiming to break with the bourgeois vision and mode of production, remains tied to it in spite of its denials and ex-communications. We are far from having overcome bourgeois thought or practices, despite the socialist "intermission" between the Russian revolution and the collapse of the Berlin wall. The avant-garde has lost its radical nature. On the other hand, "bourgeois theatre" is sometimes subtle enough to flirt with the avant-garde or to make "intelligent boulevard theatre.

Patrice Pavis

We will have to create an avant-garde.... We could have a Union for the enlarged Europe, and a Federation for the avant-garde.

Jacques Delors

The only place Avant Garde looks good is in the words Avant Garde.

Ed Benguiat

The avant-garde understands itself as invading unknown territory, exposing itself to the dangers of sudden, shocking encounters, conquering an as yet unoccupied future ... The avant-garde must find a direction in a landscape into which no one seems to have yet ventured.

Jurgen Habermas

The avant-garde has always existed throughout the history of mankind. The good things from the avant-garde last and eventually, after many years, become tradition and people forget they were ever part of the avant-garde. The kitchen is a living discipline, always evolving, and there will always be cutting edge things that over the years, ends up being part of tradition.

Ferran Adria

Now there is no taboo; everything is allowed. But one cannot simply go back to tonality, it’s not the way. We must find a way of neither going back nor continuing the avant-garde. I am in a prison: one wall is the avant-garde, the other wall is the past, and I want to escape.

Gyorgy Ligeti

My writing is called exotic or avant-garde because I write about rural places. Has it really come to this, that if you write about the country you are avant-garde? How did this happen? Modern agriculture and spaces are still so relevant.

Sarah Hall

Experiment - exercising to see the result. We planned Europa not as an experiment in this sense but as a work of art. Yet The Eye and the Ear was done as a consciously designed experiment. Not every avant-garde dealt with experiments and not every experiment equalled avant-garde.

Stefan Themerson

My work first engaged with the early russian avant-garde; the paintings of moholy-nagy, el lissitzky's 'prouns' and naum gabo's sculptures, but in particular with the work of kasimir malevitch - he was an early influence for me as a representative of the modern avant-garde intersection between art and design.

Zaha Hadid

An avant-garde man is like an enemy inside a city he is bent on destroying, against which he rebels; for like any system of government, an established form of expression is also a form of oppression. The avant-garde man is the opponent of an existing system.

Eugene Ionesco

In short, it occurred to me that perhaps the only possible avant garde is the avant garden.

Hakim Bey

I was part of the sort of avant guard tradition of John Cage and music concrete and pushing back the boundaries of avant garde classic pop rhythms. I think everyone brings something completely different to it.