Click here to read Bäckström's essay, "One Earth, Four or Five WordsThe Notion of 'Avant-Garde' Problematized." There is a printer-friendly version here. Ann and I switched dates, so we will be discussing this essay during our April meeting. If anybody has any thoughts or questions about this essay, please post them here.
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Backstrom's essay addresses a Euro-American context. But I was intrigued when Norman brought up the question of how the term works in Asian contexts. So I wrote to my friend who's a Japanese design scholar and asked.
She wrote: "It's usually translated as zenei (zen=forward and ei=guard), in other words as a pretty straightforward adoption of the French concept..." But she said there is little agreement on what it means.
She also forwarded this interesting link with information about the Japanese avant garde movement following World War II.
http://www.getty.edu/art/exhibitions/postwar_japan/
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