TECHNOLOGICAL UNIVERSITY OF THE PHILIPPINES

College of Architecture and Fine Arts Ayala, Blvd., Ermita Manila

WRITTEN REPORT:

AVANT GARDE

Leader: Ma. Kristina Victorio Members:

Carmina Belarmino Marcy Benosa Katherine Joy Bondoc Reina Yvette Duray Lino Jamisola Almarie Joyce Miranda Joy Marie Perez
BFA-4A Group 3

Ms. Pinky O. Ludovice Faculty-in-Charge

Avant-garde
French means front guard, advance guard, or vanguard. People often use the term in French and English to refer to people or works that are experimental or novel, particularly with respect to art, culture, and politics. According to its champions, the avant-garde pushes the boundaries of what is accepted as the norm within definitions of art/culture/reality. The origin of the application of this French term to art can be fixed at May 17, 1863, the opening of the Salon des Refuss in Paris, organised by painters whose work was rejected for the annual Paris Salon of officially sanctioned academic art. Salons des Refuss were held in 1874, 1875, and 1886. The vanguard, a small troop of highly skilled soldiers, explores the terrain ahead of a large advancing army and plots a course for the army to follow. This concept is applied to the work done by small bands of intellectuals and artists as they open pathways through new cultural or political terrain for society to follow. Due to implied meanings stemming from the military terminology, some people feel the avant-garde implies elitism, especially when used to describe cultural movements. The term may also refer to the promotion of radical social reforms, the aims of its various movements presented in public declarations called manifestos. Over time, avant-garde became associated with movements concerned with art for art's sake, focusing primarily on expanding the frontiers of aesthetic experience, rather than with wider social reform. In our context the avantgarde will cover the avantgarde'ist movements of the early 20th century that specifically focused on visual communication design and/or implemented it as a modus operandi.

Constructivism
was an artistic and architectural movement in Russia from 1914 onward, and a term often used in modern art today, which dismissed "pure" art in favour of art used as an instrument for social purposes, namely, the construction of the socialist system. The term Construction Art was first used as a derisive term by Kazimir Malevich to describe the work of Alexander Rodchenko in 1917. Constructivism first appears as a positive term in Naum Gabo's Realistic Manifesto of 1920. Kazimir Malevich also worked in the constructivist style, though he is better known for his earlier suprematism and ran his own competing group in Vitebsk. The movement was an important influence on new graphic design techniques championed by El Lissitzky.

Paintings by Constructivist Kasimir Malevich (1878 - 1935)

As a part of the early Soviet youth movement, the constructivists took an artistic outlook aimed to encompass cognitive, material activity, and the whole of spirituality of mankind. The artists tried to create art that would take the viewer out of the traditional setting and make them an active viewer of the artwork. Most of the designs were a fusion of art and political commitment, and reflected the revolutionary times.

El Lissitzky

El Lissitzky: Self portrait Lazar Markovich Lissitzky (1890 1941), better known as El Lissitzky, was a Russian artist, designer, photographer, teacher, typographer, and architect. He was one of the most important figures of the Russian avant garde, helping develop suprematism with his friend and mentor, Kazimir Malevich.

El Lissitzky's extraordinary typographic work: page spreads for a book of poems by Mayakovsky

"The story of the little red square". Book design by El Lissitzky

The "Proun"s. This was years befoe the invention of digital 3D... Lissitzky's entire career was laced with the belief that the artist could be an agent for change. 4 A Jew, he began his career illustrating Yiddish children's books in an effort to promote Jewish culture in Russia, a country that was undergoing massive change at the time and had just repealed its anti-semitic laws. Starting at the age of 15, he began teaching; a duty he would stay with for the vast majority of his life. Over the years, he taught in a variety of positions, schools, and artistic mediums, spreading and exchanging ideas at a rapid pace. He took this ethic with him when he worked with Malevich in heading the suprematist art group UNOVIS, when he developed a variant suprematist series of his own, Proun, and further still in 1921, when he took up a job as the Russian cultural ambassador in Weimar Germany, working with and influencing important figures of the Bauhaus and De Stijl movements during his stay. In his remaining years he brought significant innovation and change to the fields of typography, exhibition design, photomontage, and book design, producing critically respected works and winning international acclaim for his exhibition design. This continued until his deathbed, where in 1941 he produced one of his last known works a Soviet propaganda poster rallying the people to construct more tanks for the fight against Nazi Germany. Alexander Rodchenko (1891 - 1956), was one of the most versatile Constructivist artist/designers to emerge after the Russian Revolution. He worked as a painter and graphic designer before turning to photomontage and photography. His photography was socially engaged, formally innovative, and opposed to a painterly aesthetic. Concerned with the need for analytical-documentary photo series, he often shot his subjects from odd angles - usually high above or below - to shock the viewer and to postpone recognition. He wrote: "One has to take several different shots of a subject, from different points of view and in different situations, as if one examined it in the round rather than looked through the same key-hole again and again."

The graphic design of Rodchenko

Futurism
The Futurists explored every medium of art, including painting, sculpture, poetry, theatre, music, architecture and even gastronomy. The Italian poet Filippo Tommaso Marinetti was the first among them to produce a manifesto of their artistic philosophy in his Manifesto of Futurism (1909), first released in Milan and published in the French paper Le Figaro (February 20). Marinetti summed up the major principles of the Futurists, including a passionate loathing of ideas from the past, especially political and artistic traditions. He and others also espoused a love of speed, technology and violence. The car, the plane, the industrial town were all legendary for the Futurists, because they represented the technological triumph of man over nature.

Futurist book design and typography

Marinetti's impassioned polemic immediately attracted the support of the young Milanese painters Boccioni, Carr, and Russolo who wanted to extend Marinetti's ideas to the visual arts (Russolo was also a composer, and introduced Futurist ideas into his compositions). The painters Balla and Severini met Marinetti in 1910 and together these artists represented Futurism's first phase. Futurism influenced many other twentieth century art movements, including Art Deco, Constructivism, Surrealism and Dada. Futurism as a coherent and organized artistic movement is now regarded as extinct, having died out in the 1944 with the death of his leader Marinetti, and Futurism was, like science fiction, in part overtaken by 'the future'. Nonetheless the ideals of futurism remain as significant components of modern Western culture; the emphasis on youth, speed, power and technology finding expression in much of modern commercial cinema and culture. Ridley Scott consciously evoked the designs of Sant'Elia in Blade Runner. Echoes of Marinetti's thought, especially his "dreamt-of metallization of the human body", are still strongly prevalent in Japanese culture, and surface in manga/anime and the works of artists such as Shinya Tsukamoto, director of the "Tetsuo" (lit. "Ironman") films.

Dada
or Dadaism is a cultural movement that began in neutral Zrich, Switzerland, during World War I and peaked from 1916 to 1920. The movement primarily involved visual arts, literature (poetry, art manifestoes, art theory), theatre, and graphic design, which concentrated its anti war politic through a rejection of the prevailing standards in art through anti-art cultural works.

Dada periodicals. Page layouts and typography: "391". Publisher and designer: Francis Picabia

"Dada". Publisher and designer: Tristan Tzara

One of the most beautiful periodicals ever designed, Merz was published and designed by Kurt Schwitters:

Merz. Issue 1.

Merz. Issue 2.

Merz. Issue 4.

Merz. Issues 6 and 7.

Merz. Issue 8.

Merz. Issue 21: Das Veilchen (The Violet)

According to its proponents, Dada was not art it was "anti-art". Dada sought to fight art with art. For everything that art stood for, Dada was to represent the opposite. Where art was concerned with aesthetics, Dada ignored aesthetics. If art were to have at least an implicit or latent message, Dada strove to have no meaning interpretation of Dada is dependent entirely on the viewer. If art is to appeal to sensibilities, Dada is to offend. It is perhaps then ironic that Dada became an influential movement in modern art. Dada became a commentary on order and the carnage they believed it wreaked. Through this rejection of traditional culture and aesthetics they hoped to destroy traditional culture and aesthetics. Art historians have described Dada as being, in large part, "in reaction to what many of these artists saw as nothing more than an insane spectacle of collective homicide."Years later, Dada artists described the movement as "a phenomenon bursting forth in the midst of the postwar economic and moral crisis, a savior, a monster, which would lay waste to everything in its path. [It was] a systematic work of destruction and demoralization...In the end it became nothing but an act of sacrilege." Reason and logic had led people into the horrors of war; the only route to salvation was to reject logic and embrace anarchy and the irrational.

Raoul Hausmann (1886-1971)

John Heartfield / Helmut Herzfeld (1891-1968).

Bauhaus
is the common term for the Staatliches Bauhaus, an art and architecture school in Germany that operated from 1919 to 1933 and briefly in the United States from 1937-1938 and for the approach to design that it developed and taught. The most natural meaning for its name (related to the German verb for "build") is Architecture House. Bauhaus style became one of the most influential currents in Modernist architecture. The foundation of the Bauhaus occurred at a time of crisis and turmoil in Europe as a whole and particularly in Germany. Its establishment resulted from a confluence of a diverse set of political, social, educational and artistic shifts in the first two decades of the twentieth century. Art nouveau had broken the preoccupation with revivalist historical styles that had characterised the 19th century. In the first decade of the new century however, the movement was receiving criticism; impelled by rationalist ideas requiring practical justification for formal effects. Nonetheless, the movement had opened up a language of abstraction which was to have a profound importance during the 20th century. One of the main objectives of the Bauhaus was to unify art, craft, and technology. The machine was considered a positive element, and therefore industrial and product design were important components. Vorkurs ("initial course") was taught; this is the modern day Basic Design course that has become one of the key foundational courses offered in architectural schools across the globe. There was no teaching of history in the school because everything was supposed to be designed and created according to first principles rather than by following precedent.

Graphic Design and Typography of the Bauhaus school.

The Bauhaus had a major impact on art and architecture trends in Western Europe, the United States and Israel in the decades following its demise, as many of the artists involved fled or were exiled by the Nazi regime. Both Gropius and Breuer went to teach at the Harvard Graduate School of Design and worked together before their professional split in 1941. The Harvard School was enormously influential in the late 1940s and early 1950s, producing such students as Philip Johnson, I.M. Pei, Lawrence Halprin and Paul Rudolph, among many others.

Herbert Bayer
(1900-1985) was an Austrian graphic designer, painter, photographer, and architect. In the spirit of clean simplification, Bayer developed a crisp visual style and adopted an all-lowercase and sans serif typeface for all Bauhaus publications. Bayer is also credited with designing the custom geometric sans-serif font, universal. In 1928, Bayer left the Bauhaus to become art director of Vogue magazine's Berlin office. Ten years later, he settled in New York City where he had a long and distinguished career in nearly every aspect of the graphic arts.

Lszl Moholy-Nagy
(1895 1946) was a Hungarian painter and photographer as well as professor in the Bauhaus school. He was highly influenced by constructivism. He was a strong advocate of the integration of technology and industry into the arts. In 1923, he replaced Johannes Itten as the instructor of the preliminary course at the Bauhaus. This effectively marked the end of the school's expressionistic leanings and moved it closer towards its original aims as a school of design and industrial integration. The Bauhaus became known for the versatility of its artist and Moholy-Nagy was no exception. Throughout his career he became proficient and innovative in the fields of photography, typography, sculpture, painting, and industrial design. One of his main focuses was on photography. He coined the term "the New Vision", for his belief that photography could create a whole new way of seeing the outside world that the human eye could not. His theory of art and teaching was summed up in the book The New Vision, from Material to Architecture.

De Stijl also known as neoplasticism, was a Dutch artistic movement, founded in 1917. In a narrower sense, the term De Stijl is used to refer to a body of work created by a group of Dutch artists, from 1917 to 1931. De Stijl is also the name of a journal which was published by the painter and critic Theo van Doesburg, propagating the group's theories. Next to Van Doesburg, the group's principal members were the painters Piet Mondrian and Bart van der Leck, and the architects Gerrit Rietveld and J.J.P. Oud. The artistic philosophy that formed a basis for the group's work is known as neoplasticism the new plastic art. Proponents of De Stijl sought to express a new utopian ideal of spiritual harmony and order. They advocated pure abstraction and universality by a reduction to the essentials of form and colour they simplified visual compositions to the vertical and horizontal directions, and used only primary colors along with black and white.

Posters and flyers by Paul Schuitema, 1920's

Paul Schuitema (1897 - 1973 ) was a Dutch graphic artist. He also designed furniture and expositions and worked as photographer, film director, painter and teacher for publicity design at the Royal Academy of Art in The Hague. Schuitema studied at the Academie voor Beeldende Kunsten in Rotterdam. In the 1920s, he began to work on graphic design,[1] applying the principles of De Stijl and constructivism to commercial advertising. Along with Gerard Kiljan and his famous colleague Piet Zwart, he followed ideas pioneered in the Soviet Union by El Lissitzky and Rodchenko, in Poland by Henryk Berlewi and in Germany by Kurt Schwitters. During his employment at the NV Maatschappij Van Berkel Patent scale company in Rotterdam, Schuitema gained recognition for his original designs of stationery and publicity material, often using only the colors black, red and white and bold sans serif fonts. From 1926 on, he started working with photomontages, becoming one of the pioneers of this technique in the field of industrial design. Even though he was a convinced socialist and often designed leftist publications directed at industrial workers, Schuitema also worked for major companies, such as Philips.

AVANT GARDE PAINTINGS

Pierre Alechinsky (born 19 October 1927) is a Belgian artist. He has lived and worked in France since 1951. His work is related to Tachisme, Abstract expressionism, and Lyrical Abstraction. Alechinsky was born in Brussels. In 1944 he attended the l'Ecole nationale suprieure d'Architecture et des Arts dcoratifs de La Cambre, Brussels where he studied illustration techniques, printing and photography. In 1945 he discovered the work of Henri Michaux, Jean Dubuffet and developed a friendship with the art critic Jacques Putman. In 1949 he joined Christian Dotremont, Karel Appel, Constant, Jan Nieuwenhuys and Asger Jorn to form the art group Cobra. He participated both with the Cobra exhibitions and went to Paris to study engraving at Atelier 17 under the guidance of Stanley William Hayter in 1951. In 1954 he had his first exhibition in Paris and started to become interested in oriental calligraphy. In the early 1950s he was the Paris correspondent for the Japanese journal Bokubi (the joy of ink). In 1955, encouraged by Henri Storck and Luc de Heusch, he left for Japan with his wife. He exhibited Night, 1952 (Ohara Museum, Kurashiki) and made a film: Japanese Calligraphy Christian Dotremont would write the commentary with music by Andr Souris. By 1960 he had exhibited in London, Bern and at the Venice Biennial, and then in Pittsburgh, New York, Amsterdam and Silkeborg as his international reputation grew. He worked with Walasse Ting and continued to be close to Christian Dotremont. He also developed links with Andr Breton. His international career continued throughout the seventies and by 1983 he became Professor of painting at the cole nationale suprieure des Beaux-Arts, Paris. In 1994 he was awarded an honorary doctorate by the Free University of Brussels, and in 1995 one of his designs was used on a Belgian stamp.

His works are held in the collections of the Royal Museums of Fine Arts of Belgium, the Tate,[Museum Ludwig in Cologne, the Museum of Modern Artand the Walker Art Center.

Hans Bellmer Bellmer was born in the city of Kattowitz, then part of the German Empire (now Katowice, Poland). Up until 1926, he'd been working as a draftsman for his own advertising company. He initiated his doll project to oppose the fascism of the Nazi Party by declaring that he would make no work that would support the new German state. Represented by mutated forms and unconventional poses, his dolls were directed specifically at the cult of the perfect body then prominent in Germany. Bellmer was influenced in his choice of art form by reading the published letters of Oskar Kokoschka (Der Fetisch, 1925). Bellmer's doll project is also said to have been catalysed by a series of events in his personal life, including meeting a beautiful teenage cousin in 1932 (and perhaps other unattainable beauties), attending a performance of Jacques Offenbach's Tales of Hoffmann (in which a man falls tragically in love with an automaton), and receiving a box of his old toys. After these events, he began to actually construct his first dolls. In his works, Bellmer explicitly sexualized the doll as a young girl. The dolls incorporated the principle of "ball joint" , which was inspired by a pair of sixteenth-century articulated wooden dolls in the Kaiser Friedrich Museum He visited Paris in 1935 and made contacts there, such as Paul luard, but returned to Berlin because his wife Margarete was dying of tuberculosis. Bellmer's 1934 anonymous book, The Doll (Die Puppe), produced and published privately in Germany, contains 10 black-and-white photographs of Bellmer's first doll arranged in a series of "tableaux vivants" (living pictures). The book was not credited to him, as he worked in isolation, and his photographs remained almost unknown in Germany. Yet Bellmer's work was eventually declared "degenerate" by the Nazi Party, and he was forced to flee Germany to France in 1938. Bellmer's work was welcomed in the Parisian art culture of the time, especially the Surrealists around Andr Breton, because of the references to female beauty and the sexualization of the youthful form. His photographs were published in the Surrealist journalMinotaure, 5 December 1934 under the title "Poupe, variations sur le montage d'une mineure articule" (The Doll, Variations on the Assemblage of an Articulated Minor). He aided the French Resistance during the war by making fake passports.[citation needed] He was imprisoned in the Camp des Milles prison at Aix-en-Provence, a brickworks camp for German nationals, from September 1939 until the end of the Phoney War in May 1940. After the war, Bellmer lived the rest of his life in Paris. Bellmer gave up doll-making and spent the following decades creating erotic drawings, etchings,sexually explicit photographs, paintings, and prints of pubescent girls. In 1954, he met Unica Zrn, who became his companion (until her suicide in 1970). He continued working into the 1960s.

The interdisciplinary artist, dancer, and multiple amputee Lisa Bufano lists Hans Bellmer's doll work in her artist's statement as an influenc He visited Paris in 1935 and made contacts there, such as Paul luard, but returned to Berlin because his wife Margarete was dying of tuberculosis. Bellmer's 1934 anonymous book, The Doll (Die Puppe), produced and published privately in Germany, contains 10 black-and-white photographs of Bellmer's first doll arranged in a series of "tableaux vivants" (living pictures). The book was not credited to him, as he worked in isolation, and his photographs remained almost unknown in Germany. Yet Bellmer's work was eventually declared "degenerate" by the Nazi Party, and he was forced to flee Germany to France in 1938. Bellmer's work was welcomed in the Parisian art culture of the time, especially the Surrealists around Andr Breton, because of the references to female beauty and the sexualization of the youthful form. His photographs were published in the Surrealist journal Minotaure, 5 December 1934 under the title "Poupe, variations sur le montage d'une mineure articule" (The Doll, Variations on the Assemblage of an Articulated Minor). He aided the French Resistance during the war by making fake passports.He was imprisoned in the Camp des Milles prison at Aix-en-Provence, abrickworks camp for German nationals, from September 1939 until the end of the Phoney War in May 1940. After the war, Bellmer lived the rest of his life in Paris. Bellmer gave up doll-making and spent the following decades creating erotic drawings, etchings, sexually explicit photographs, paintings, and prints of pubescent girls. In 1954, he met Unica Zrn, who became his companion (until her suicide in 1970).He continued working into the 1960s. The interdisciplinary artist, dancer, and multiple amputee Lisa Bufano lists Hans Bellmer's doll work in her artist's statement as an influence. Henri Matisse (French pronunciation: [ i matis]; 31 December 1869 3 November 1954) was a French artist, known for his use of colour and his fluid and original draughtsmanship. He was a draughtsman, printmaker, and sculptor, but is known primarily as a painter. Matisse is commonly regarded, along with Picasso and Marcel Duchamp, as one of the three artists who helped to define the revolutionary developments in the plastic arts in the opening decades of the 20th century, responsible for significant developments in painting and sculpture.[1][2][3][4] Although he was initially labelled a Fauve (wild beast), by the 1920s he was increasingly hailed as an upholder of the classical tradition in French painting. His mastery of the expressive language of colour and drawing, displayed in a body of work spanning over a half-century, won him recognition as a leading figure in modern art.

Andrew Warhola, Jr. (August 6, 1928 February 22, 1987), known as Andy Warhol, was an American painter, printmaker, and filmmaker who was a leading figure in the visual art movement known as pop art. After a successful career as a commercial illustrator, Warhol became famous worldwide for his work as a painter, avantgarde filmmaker, record producer, author, and member of highly diverse social circles that included Bohemian street people, distinguished intellectuals, Hollywood celebrities and wealthy patrons.

Warhol has been the subject of numerous retrospective exhibitions, books, and feature and documentary films. He coined the widely used expression "15 minutes of fame." In his hometown of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, The Andy Warhol Museum exists in memory of his life and artwork. The highest price ever paid for a Warhol painting is US$100 million for a 1963 canvas titled Eight Elvises. The private transaction was reported in a 2009 article in The Economist, which described Warhol as the "bellwether of the art market." $100 million is a benchmark price that only Jackson Pollock, Pablo Picasso, Vincent van Gogh, Pierre-August Renoir, Gustav Klimt and Willem de Kooning have achieved.

Pieter Cornelis "Piet" Mondriaan, after 1912 Mondrian (Dutch pronunciation: [ pi t m ndria n], later [ m ndri n]; March 7, 1872 February 1, 1944), was aDutch painter. He was an important contributor to the De Stijl art movement and group, which was founded by Theo van Doesburg. He evolved a non-representational form which he termed Neo-Plasticism. This consisted of white ground, upon which was painted a grid of vertical and horizontal black lines and the three primary colors. Between his 1905 painting, The River Amstel, and his 1907 Amaryllis, Mondrian changed the spelling of his signature from Mondriaan to Mondrian.

Jackson Pollock
Paul Jackson Pollock (January 28, 1912 August 11, 1956), known as Jackson Pollock, was an influential American painter and a major figure in the abstract expressionist movement. During his lifetime, Pollock enjoyed considerable fame and notoriety. He was regarded as a mostly reclusive artist. He had a volatile personality, and struggled with alcoholism for most of his life. In 1945, he married the artist Lee Krasner, who became an important influence on his career and on his legacy.

Pollock's most famous paintings were made during the "drip period" between 1947 and 1950. He rocketed to popular status following an August 8, 1949 four-page spread in Life magazine that asked, "Is he the greatest living painter in the United States?" At the peak of his fame, Pollock abruptly abandoned the drip style. Pollock's work after 1951 was darker in color, including a collection painted in black on unprimed canvases. This was followed by a return to color,and he reintroduced figurative elements. During this period Pollock had moved to a more commercial gallery and there was great demand from collectors for new paintings. In response to this pressure, along with personal frustration, his alcoholism deepened.

AVANT GARDE ARCHITECTURE

INTRODUCTION: During the 20th century some avant-garde movements had their expression in architecture. In general, these styles are influenced by the Bauhaus, and they are contemporary of it. These avant-garde architectonical experienced are linked to De Stijl or Neoplasticism (Netherlands) Russian Constructivism.

De Stijl Associated with three important figures: the painters Piet Mondrian and Theo van Doesburg, and the architect and furniture-maker Gerrit Rietveld De Stijl (or the style ) was perhaps first developed in Mondrian s post-Cubist paintings, which consist largely of broken horizontal and vertical lines. These works evolved into more spare geometric compositions of orthogonal elements, which are rendered in primary colors set against a white field. In 1917, Rietveld created the canonical Red/Blue Chair and projected the Neo-Plastic aesthetic into three dimensions.

Van Doesburg taught, for a time, at the Bauhaus, enabling him to widen the De Stijl circle to artists as the Russian El Lissitzky under whose influence, Van Doesberg began to project, as axonometric drawings, a series of hypothetical architectural constructs These buildings comprise an asymmetrical cluster of articulated planar elements suspended in space about a volumetric center.

Characteristics: The characteristics of this architecture were established by van Doesburg: the form does not imitate any other style; especial attention is given to plastic elements, in addition to function, mass, surface, time, space, light, colour and material; it is an economic and functional architecture; it does not have any form following fixed styles and the building is not monumental, but a form open to the space through windows; the ground-plan is essential but in this the walls are not closed even if they support punctually the building; it is an open architecture in which space and time are considered; it is anti-cubic and surfaces follow a centrifugal trend at the same time that symmetry and repetition are eliminated; there is not a clear front in the building and colour is included as a plastic value but, in general, it is a non decorate architecture that aims to be a synthesis of the Neo-Plasticism It uses the same primary colours that appear in Mondrian s paintings

Russian Constructivism The universalizing tendency of the De Stijl soon gave way to the broader, more objective concerns of the Modern movement. The project of De Stijl became, through necessity and evolution, a broader trajectory dedicated to social concerns and conditions. The desire to create architecture for the people through means of production, rather than an architecture simply guided by aesthetic concerns, became a rallying cry of a broader European Modernism. Constructivist themes are also quite minimal, where the artwork is broken down to its most basic elements. New media was often used in the creation of works, which helped to create a style of art that was orderly. An art of order was desirable at the time because it was just after WWI that the movement arose, which suggested a need for understanding, unity and peace. Famous artists of the Constructivist movement include Vladimir Tatlin, Kasimir Malevich, Alexandra Exter, Robert Adams, and El Lissitzky. Tatlin's most famous piece remains his "Monument to the Third International" (1919-20, Moscow), a 22-ft-high (6.7-m) iron frame on which rested a revolving cylinder, cube, and cone, all made of glass which was originally designed for massive scale.

AVANT GARDE SCULPTURE Avant-Garde Sculpture Origins While Auguste Rodin was still being the most famous sculptor of the moment, a number of progressive younger artists were calling his art in question. The academic and official style was firmly founded in middle-class taste and Rodin s works belonged to it but, at the same time, his pathos style and the literary nature of his bronzes were making a way for other principles.

Influencies Rodin influenced with two elements: his treatment of the torso and his victory over symbolism. Some critics added the importance of Egyptian sculpture. An example of the mix of these influences is The Mediterranean, by Maillol, that can be considered pure sculpture. One of the things that led modern sculptors to break with the rules of the Western art tradition was the discovery that the images of the primitive people in the colonial empires of Oceania and Africa These were not merely exotic curiosities, examples of naf art or barbaric fetishes, but creative works with the same consideration as the classical models. These products were known in Europe since mid 19th century. First Examples The first European artists to study Oceanian an African objects as works of art were not sculptors but painters: Matisse, Picasso, Derain, Kirchner. They adopted these models in both their paintings and their sculpture works. Images have short legs, thick thighs, long torso and big heads. Some artist adapted the models while others just imitated them. Modigliani created heads of women inspired by an elegant refinement of African and Buddhist art were in a style very much his own. Cut from ashlar stones stolen in public building, they should all be regarded as sculptured fragments of architecture. His production included pillar-like heads, kneeling caryatids and standing nude women.Brancusi did not manage to make so personal an adaptation. Since he did not want to imitate certain African figures too openly, he split them into fragments. In some way he tried to adapt primitive modernity to the modernity of the technical era.

Cubism Picasso did his personal approach to sculpture from the Cubist language. His idea was to hold view of each element from different angles of the surface parts with regard to each other as a last manifestation of Rodin s impressionism. It served to intensify the multiple broken gleams of light on the bronze. In the case of Picasso works of sculpture, the term that should be used is construction. For the themes a new category has to be defined, for nothing here is represented as corresponds to tradition, such as a human figure or an animal or an allegory of them or even a still life. Characteristics: Sculpture has no base and can neither stand nor lie, but hangs on the wall and in this sense it is more like a picture than a relief. The origin of these sculpture may be the papier colls used by Picasso who one day decided to substitute the material by lead and wires. Picasso could have collaborated with Julio Gonzalez when beginning with these works because he was a technique of the assemblages.These sculptures extend into our real space, for they let the eye penetrate into what is in reality the invisible space of the object (the first sculpture Picasso did was a guitar). Picasso was inspired in African art. He took from this, apart from the idea the assemblage of concave and convex shapes. The objects represented are not useful but they are the plastic representation of them.

Futurism The artists of this movement dealt with came to modern sculpture by way of academicism and Rodin. They found their inspiration in their knowledge of archaic and non-European sculpture, modern painting spearheaded from Paris.The characteristics of the movement are evident in Umberto Boccioni. For him movement could be as beautiful as any manifestation of classical art. His figures are influenced by Rodin, Gaudi and Cubism.Its representation of movement in space marks no advance on the breakdown of movement in the chrono-photographs. He kept to the traditional concept in which the volume of a body is a modelled mass, more or less closed. Sculpture characteristics: Sculpture needs to find new sources of emotion, not copy the academicism. The objects will be given life through their extension into space tangible, systematic and plastic. Sculpture will be produced by the systematized vibrations of light and the interpenetration of planes. Transparent planes of glass or celluloid, sheets of metal, wire, electric lights inside and out, will go to indicate the planes, trends, tones and halftones of a new reality. Colouring can step up the emotional force of the images. The materials do not need to be the traditional, but the artist can mix as many as he wants in each sculpture, if with it can gain movement.

Dadaism Marcel Duchamp was a middling painter with an ingenious turn of mind that has made him one of the most influential artists of the 20th century. After the first experiments of Cubism and Futurism, he took the front fork of a bicycle with its wheel, set it upside down on a studio stool and signed this object construction with his name as a work of art. This new concept of art was promptly taken over by individual artists in other countries.The artists of the Dada movement in Germany (Arp, Ernst, Schwitters) and later of French Surrealism produced relief pictures. Characteristics: The use of unartistic materials and unpainterly strong colours forms apart of their art of dispute. The same as classical freezes were painted in bright colours, they coloured their creations.

Aiming at creating a work of art as a harmonious whole, assemblages and relieves of outstanding beauty were constantly produced in spite of their intention to shock. Constructivism Tatlin created the link between Picasso and the Russian constructivism. They gave the western artistic revolution a new direction influenced equally by icons and Russian folk art, and the combination of cosmic speculations and radical living revolution. Tatlin took a radical step from representational to non-representational sculpture.The bits of wood, metal and glass that he assembled represent nothing; they are material forms in space. Some of his works needed the walls as a support but others were suspended in space by curved metal rods or wires spanning the corner of the room. He called them counter-reliefs or wounter-corner-reliefs.

AVANT GARDE FASHION

The avant-garde current it is an artistic current which fights against the already known and accepted forms and traditions, suggesting a revolutionary formula. In other words, this avant-garde may be regarded as an artistic innovative movement, which came out from a spirit of negation and revolt against certain traditionalism. It has become a synonym of innovation, progress and rebellion. Avant Garde is the French word Vanguard, which has been described in both art and military scenarios. In the art, which would apply to the Fashion Industry, it has been described as being innovative or inventive. It has also been labeled in some cases as Vintage, unconventional and innovative fashion AVANT GARDE FASHION - In fashion, the avant-garde style is defined through its personality. -The accessories have to be very modern, unusual, but elegant. All clothes should be matched with hats, belts or shoes in the most unusual shapes. -The models may intimidate because what they wear is beyond a normal image. -Avant-garde fashion means a little bit of theatre. -It means a mixture between fashion and art. -Avant-garde clothes mean unusual ones.

AVANT GARDE MAKE UP

-The make-up has to express something new, unexpected, and even exotic. -At the beginning, women were the perfect models to underline these innovative ideas. Little by little, the designers extended upon men. First of all, they wanted to surprise through their clothes, later on every little detail mattered. -One example may be the boots designed especially for them. A mixture of styles, the first tendency towards rejection and then the craziness of wearing them are some of the reactions encountered.

AVANT GARDE FASHION DESIGNER

It is hard to determine exactly when designers started creating Avant Garde Fashion. The art, itself started around the early 1900 s, but there is some indication that the art and some fashion pieces, like wedding gowns were created in the late 1800 s. Avant Garde art and fashion was a controversial subject through the 1960 s. As with any trend, fashions seem to disappear or slow down, but Avant Garde has been present in one form or another since its beginning. Striking, bizarre, bold, loud and mysterious are some of the words that have been used to describe the Avant Garde Fashion style. Jewelry, belts, shoes, gloves, purses and hats are all designed and included as part of the apparel. Gareth Pugh- is one of the top Avant Garde Fashion Designers. He was the first to start using balloon type attachments in his garments to enhance different areas of the models anatomy. Even though he started designing at the age of 14, it wasn t until after his graduation from Central Saint Martins in 2003 that his designs started to become popular in mainstream society. Bernard Willhelm- graduated from Antwerp Academy in 1998. While working with Walter Van Beirendocks, he learned many different techniques for combinations that would label him as one of the top designers of Avant Garde Fashion Although individual makeup looks may be distinct, there are several characteristics that typify this style of makeup. The word avant garde itself is a French term meaning 'advance guard,' and refers to things that are unique and new; experimental or innovative in nature. Applied to makeup, this term represents very artistic looks that are often exotic and high fashion makeup styles.

Characteristics of this makeup style include:

y y y y y y y y

Very artistic and unusual or unique Dramatic and stylized Follow a specific theme or meant to evoke a certain image Often uses bold or unusual makeup color May have heavy emphasis on a specific feature, often the eyes Use of additional mediums beyond the makeup palate, such as gems, feathers, or glitter Use professional quality cosmetics May take a significant amount of time to creat

Avant Garde Eye Makeup

-From whimsical to dark, avant garde eye makeup run the gamut of styles. The eyes are tRuly the gem of a great avant garde makeup creation since the eyes are such an expressive part of the face. Here are a few simple ways for anyone to get instant avant garde eyes (always use a good primer prior to heavily made up to keep the shadows and liner stable). Dramatic: Apply a dark, smoky shadow over the eye lid and blend out and up towards the outer corner of the eye. Apply a shimmer highlight shade near the browbone, and lightly smudge a shade two or three shades lighter than the shadow along the lower lash line until it meets. Line the upper eye with a thick, dark line and apply false eyelashes, blending with mascara. Cool and Playful: Use two bright, cut complimentary eye shadow shades, cover eyelid eith one shade, and then blend the other color into the crease. Add more of the lid color above the crease shade near the brow bone. Lightly blend a metallis or shimmer shade all over the lid and browbone. Line the top lid with black liner, and add false eyeslashes or several coats of mascara on curled lashes. Affix gems to the side of each eye in a creative design. Dark or Goth Inspired: Starting in the middle of the eyelid and working outward, blend a dark orange or red shadow into the lid and crease. Draw a dark, sharp line with liquid liner slightly above the crease and extend out and up. Draw a thinner line about a quarter inch below the lash line and out and down slightly at the end of the eye.

AVANT GARDE PHOTOGRAPHY

Giving mainstream culture the finger, the avant-garde movement explored concepts that challenged tradition and veered away from the norm.

Tears by Man Ray (1930)

Avant-garde photography flourished in the 1920s-1930s, when Surrealist photographers used the camera as a tool to create visuals that explored the boundaries of the subconscious. Probably the most celebrated photographer of this movement is Man Ray, who pioneered a photographic technique with his Rayographs. This process involved placing objects such as spoons and pearl necklaces on photo paper and exposing the entire thing to light. While Surrealist photographers preferred to shoot from the hip (taking pictures without having to look through the viewfinder sounds familiar, huh? :) ), Man Ray continued to explore this cameraless photography. This technique was not originally Man Ray s. Dada artist Christian Schad created Schadographs (a term coined by avantgarde poet Tristan Tzara) by placing various elements usually bits of paper and discarded objects on light-sensitive platters and placing a sheet of glass over the entire thing before exposing it to light. While it was speculated that Schadography was based from Schad s name, it could have also been derived from the German word schaden meaning damaged an apt description for Schad s work, since he used scraps and unimportant objects in his images.

Schadografia Nr 2 by Christian Schad (1919)

Hungarian painter-photographer (and more importantly, professor at the Bauhaus) Lszl Moholy-Nagy also toyed around with this idea, which he called Photograms. He used objects with a more industrial feel , in line with the Constructivism movement. He did not limit his experimentation to solid objects he also used liquids, crystals, and lenses to discover the mysteries of different light effects.

Photogramm No.II by Lszl Moholy-Nagy (1929)

Photography clubs were very helpful in sustaining avant-garde photography. Alfred Stieglitz famously promoted the movement with his participation in the Camera Club of New York. By convincing his pals to turn the club newsletter to a magazine called Camera Notes it became the most esteemed publication that featured the most excellent photos and photography-related writing. In San Francisco, American filmmaker and photographer Willard Van Dyke founded Group f/64, whose members included Ansel Adamsand Imogen Cunningham. They agreed on the same photographic style sharp and carefully composed as a revolt against the soft-focused look that was popular in the early 1900s. Needless to say, the group name was based on the diaphragm number of the camera lens which yielded good resolution and DOF (depth-of-field). Asia was not to be outdone. Japan s esteemed photographer Kiyoshi Koishi was a member of the Naniwa Photography Club and pioneered Japanese modernist photography with his monograph, featuring surrealist images brought about by photomontage and photogram techniques.

Drunken Dream Fatigue by Kiyoshi Koishi

Japanese photographer/filmmaker Eikoh Hosoe was also respected for his psychologically-charged images, and joined art groups to collaborate with other avant-garde artists.

by Eikoh Hosoe

Today, the resurgence of plastic cameras from the Diana camera of the 60s, Holga of the 80s, and various point-andshoot plastic snappers, as well as photomanipulation by way of film tricks and techniques, has contributed largely to making experimental photography active and accessible to everyone!

AVANT GARDE MUSIC

Avant-garde in music can refer to any form of music working within traditional structures while seeking to breach boundaries in some manner, or to describe the work of any musicians who radically depart from tradition altogether. A little tidbit about Avant Garde Music... Historically, the term avante garde comes from French word, "vanguard," which translates to the frontline of the armed forces. When it comes to specific terminology, avante garde music refers to new techniques of expression. By all definition, avante garde music is innovative and off-the-wall from mainstream or traditional music. Avant garde music is commonly referred to as "experimental music." Using haphazard musical elements, avant garde music is an unpredictable form of music, which includes variable methods of musical instrument performance. Sometimes regarded as odd but original, avant garde music is unconventional in almost every way. Other styles of avant garde music include electronic. Atonal, electro-acoustic and modern composition, to name a few. Combining non-Western traditions with varying instruments, scales or tunes with other sound sources such as broomstick strokes, common household sounds, telephone ringers, and even trash cans; avant garde music is intentionally played against the grain of "normal-sounding" music. Avant garde music may include computer style, contemporary, electronic, extreme, free improvisation, and other electronically mastered music. Some assumed avant garde recording artists include the Beastie Boys, the Beatles, Black Sabbath, Deep Purple, Falco, Paul McCartney, Yoko Ono, Robert Palmer, Sonic Youth and the Tear Garden for a small sampling. Although the terms avant-garde and experimental are often used to categorize radical composers and their works, it has been noted that avant garde remains more a slogan than a definition (Griffiths 1980, p. 743) and that experimental music is ill-defined and the concept it is used to describe is vague (Rockwell 1986, p. 91). (In fairness to Rockwell, he does also stress the bolder, more individualistic [and] eccentric aspects of experimentalism, which suggest an untrammeled willingness to probe the very limits of music [p. 91].) But equally problematically, there is no

clear demarcation line between the composers and repertories to which the terms are usually applied, or between the territory supposedly described by combining the two terms and that inhabited by other species of contemporary composer. Thus Ruth Crawford (Seeger) (1901 1953) and George Crumb (born 1929) might be thought of as either avant garde or experimental, while Steve Reich (born 1936) and Philip Glass (born 1937) have over a twenty-five year period moved imperceptibly from the experimental fringe to the postmodern mainstream, without having compromised their work to any substantive degree. These problems of definition are at least partly attributable to two linked paradoxes. First, almost all forms of radicalism will, as a function of time, progressively degenerate into normality and acceptability: today's novelty can easily become tomorrow's clich. Second (and more important), radicalism does not exist per se, but rather is a function of difference when measured against contemporaneous norms. Like avant-garde visual artists, musicians composing and playing in the avant-garde tradition seek to break past the limits and boundaries of modern music to explore and encourage cultural, political and societal changes. Music scholars generally point to the period immediately following World War II as the start of the avant-garde music tradition. Hallmarks of avant-garde music include disregard for traditional chord structures and blending several musical traditions together. Avant-garde musicians may combine several musical styles, such as rock, jazz and classical, to form a never-before head sound. Musique concrete, for example, is a French avant-garde musical technique that uses various sounds, instruments and tones that when mixed together form original pieces. avant-garde experiments in dance often seem purposely designed to play havoc with traditional definitions and concepts. Regardless of the intent of the creators, these experiments present an enormous challenge to both critics and philosophers in understanding dance, although it is not necessarily the case that adequate definitions must accommodate any and all such experiments

AVANT GARDE ICON

Captain Beefheart Bjork Lady Gaga Katy Perry
AVANT GARDE DANCE Avant-garde choreographers is that use of non-formalized movements, in the sense of both "everyday" movements and random movements. Some of today's avant-garde have swung to the other extreme, attempting to "free" movement from any dramatic or emotional content at all, a trend making it difficult to distinguish such dance from athletics in terms of emotional content. Avant-garde productions blur the distinctions between theaters and dance still more. In many dance productions the spoken word has been used some dances have no musical accompaniment. Others have a minimum of movement and a very strong dramatic or expressive element. Some performances are so borderline that critics and creators call them "dance-dramas" or "music-dance-theater events," although dance critics still seem to treat them as dance performances with unusual characteristics. The difference between dance-with-elements-of-theater and theater-with-elements-of-dance is by no means clear. Born Marie Louise Fuller in the Chicago suburb of Fullersburg, now Hinsdale, Illinois, Fuller began her theatrical career as a professional child actress and later choreographed and performed dances inburlesque (as a skirt dancer), vaudeville, and circus shows. An early free dance practitioner, Fuller developed her own natural movement and improvisation techniques. Fuller combined her choreography with silk costumes illuminated by multi-coloured lighting of her own design Portrait of Loe Fuller, by Frederick Glasier, 1902.

Although Fuller became famous in America through works such as Serpentine Dance (1891), she felt that she was not taken seriously by the public who still thought of her as an actress. Her warm reception in Paris during a European tour persuaded Fuller to remain in France and continue her work. A regular performer at the Folies Bergre with works such as Fire Dance, Fuller became the embodiment of the Art Nouveau movement. An 1896 film of the Serpentine Dance by the pioneering film-makers Auguste and Louis Lumire gives a hint of what her performance was like. (The unknown dancer in the film is often mistakenly identified as Fuller herself.) Fuller's pioneering work attracted the attention, respect, and friendship of many French artistsand scientists, including Jules Chret, Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, Franois-Raoul Larche, Henri-Pierre Roch, Auguste Rodin, Franz von Stuck,Maurice Denis, Thomas Theodor Heine, Koloman Moser, Stphane Mallarm, and Marie Curie. Fuller held many patents related to stage lighting including chemical compounds for creating color gel and the use of chemical salts for luminescent lighting and garments (stage costumes US Patent 518347). Fuller was also a member of the French Astronomical Society. Loie Fuller's original stage name was "Louie". In modern French "L'ouie" is the word for a sense of hearing. When Fuller reached Paris she gained a nickname which was a pun on "Louie"/"L'ouie". She was renamed "Loe" - this nickname is a corruption of the early or Medieval French "L'oe", a precursor to "L'ouie", which means "receptiveness" or "understanding". Fuller formed a close friendship with Queen Marie of Romania; their extensive correspondence has been published. Fuller, through a connection at the U.S. embassy in Paris played a role in arranging a U.S. loan for Romania during World War I. Later, during the period when the future Carol II of Romania was alienated from the Romanian royal family and living in Paris with his mistress Magda Lupescu, she befriended them; they were unaware of her connection to Carol's mother Marie. Fuller initially advocated to Marie on behalf of the couple, but later schemed unsuccessfully with Marie to separate Carol from Lupescu.[1] With Queen Marie and American businessman Samuel Hill, Fuller helped found the Maryhill Museum of Art in rural Washington State, which has permanent exhibits about her career. Fuller occasionally returned to America to stage performances by her students, the "Fullerets" or Muses, but spent the end of her life in Paris where she died of pneumonia on January 1, 1928 at age 65. She was cremated and her ashes are interred in the columbarium at Cimetire du Pre Lachaise in Paris. Continuing influence Fuller s work has been experiencing a resurgence of professional and public interest. Sally R. Sommer has written extensively about Fuller s life and times[2] Marcia and Richard Current published a biography entitled Loie Fuller, Goddess of Light in 1997.[3] And Giovanni Lista compiled a 680-page book of Fuller-inspired art work and texts in Loe Fuller, Danseuse de la Belle Epoque, 1994. Fuller continues to be an influence on contemporary choreographers. Among these are Jody Sperling who re-imagines Fuller s genre from a contemporary perspective.

AVANT GARDE THEATRE

In Twentieth Century Theatre from the time of the Renaissance on, theatre seemed to be striving for total realism, or at least for the illusion of reality. As it reached that goal in the late 19th century, a multifaceted, antirealistic reaction erupted. Many movements, generally lumped together as the avant-garde, attempted to suggest alternatives to the realistic drama and production. Paralleling modern art movements, various theoreticians turned to symbol, abstraction, and ritual in an attempt to revitalize the theatre. Although realism continues to be dominant in contemporary theatre, its earlier functions are now better served by television and film. The originator of many antirealist ideas was the German opera composer Richard Wagner. He believed that the job of the playwright/composer was to create myths. In so doing, Wagner felt, the creator of drama was portraying an ideal world in which the audience shared a communal experience, perhaps as the ancients had done. He sought to depict the "soul state," or inner being, of characters rather than their superficial, realistic

aspects. Furthermore, Wagner was unhappy with the lack of unity among the individual arts that constituted the drama. He proposed the Gesamtkunstwerk, the "total art work," in which all dramatic elements are unified, preferably under the control of a single artistic creator. The avant-garde choreographers can be characterized by, in general having a less formal attitude towards dance than the previous generation. While their predecessors were obsessed with conveying angst and emotion, these dancers seemed to have more fun. Their frivolity could be attributed to the fact that as dancers, they were no longer on a crusade to legitimise their art. The avant-garde choreographers felt free to experiment. They questioned the frontal aspect of creating a dance that was inherent in ballet and early Modern dance; why couldn't dance be in...

AVANT GARDE FILMS

Naqoyqatsi: Life as War

Directed by Produced by Written by Music by Cinematography Editing by Distributed by Release date(s) Running time

Godfrey Reggio Joe Beirne Godfrey Reggio Lawrence Taub Godfrey Reggio Philip Glass Russell Lee Fine Jon Kane Miramax Films October 18, 2002 89 minutes

Naqoyqatsi, or Naqoyqatsi: Life as War, is a 2002 documentary film directed by Godfrey Reggio and edited by Jon Kane, with music composed by Philip Glass. It is the third and final film in the Qatsi trilogy. Naqoyqatsi is a Hopi word (written properly as naqyqatsi) meaning "life as war". While Koyaanisqatsi and Powaqqatsi examine modern life in industrial countries and the conflict between encroaching industrialization and traditional ways of life, using slow motion and time-lapse footage of cities and natural landscapes, about eighty percent of Naqoyqatsi uses archive footage and stock images manipulated and processed digitally on non-linear editing (non-sequential) workstations and intercut with

specially-produced computer generated imagery to demonstrate society's transition from a natural environment to a technology-based one. Reggio described the process as "virtual cinema"

Tropical Malady

Directed by Produced by Written by

Apichatpong Weerasethakul Charles de Meaux Axel Moebius Apichatpong Weerasethakul Sakda Kaewbuadee Banlop Lomnoi Sirivech Jareonchon Udom Promma Huai Deesom Jarin Pengpanitch Vichit Tanapanitch Jean-Louis Vialard Lee Chatametikool Jacopo Quadrie TIFA Kick the Machine Anna Sanders Films May 17, 2004 (Cannes) June 24, 2004 (Thailand) 125 minutes Thailand Thai

Starring

Cinematography Editing by Distributed by Release date(s) Running time Country Language

Tropical Malady (Thai: or Sud pralad; RTGS: Satpralat) is a 2004 Thai romantic psychological drama film directed by Apichatpong Weerasethakul. It is a film in two segments the first part a romance story about two homosexual men, and the second a mysterious tale about a soldier lost in the woods, bedeviled by the spirit of a shaman. It won the Jury Prize at the 2004 Cannes Film Festival and was the first Thai film to be in [1] the main competition at Cannes. It is also the first Thai film to win a prize at any of the "A festivals".

Little Otik

Directed by Produced by Written by Starring Music by Cinematography Editing by Distributed by Release date(s) Running time Country Language

Jan vankmajer Keith Griffiths Jaromir Kallista Jan vankmajer Jan vankmajer Veronika Zilkov Jan Hartl Kristina Adamcov Ivo Spalj Juraj Galvnek Marie Zemanova Zeitgeist Films Czech Republic: January 25, 2001 UK: October 26, 2001 132 minutes Czech Republic United Kingdom Czech

Little Otik (Czech: Otesnek), also known as Greedy Guts, is a 2000 Czech film by Jan vankmajer and Eva vankmajerov. Based on the folktale "Otesnek" by K J Erben, the film is a comedic live action, stop motion-animated feature film set mainly in an apartment building in the Czech Republic. The film uses the Overture to Der Freischutz by Carl Maria von Weber as the score for the movie.

Last Days (film)

Directed by

Gus Van Sant Gus Van Sant Dany Wolf Gus Van Sant Michael Pitt Lukas Haas Asia Argento Jared Solano Scott Patrick Green Nicole Vicius Thadeus A. Thomas Rodrigo Lopresti Michael Pitt Harris Savides Gus Van Sant HBO Films Picturehouse July 22, 2005 97 minutes United States

Produced by

Written by

Starring

Music by

Cinematography Editing by Studio Distributed by Release date(s) Running time Country

Language Box office

English $2,456,454

Last Days is a 2005 American film directed, produced, and written by Gus Van Sant, and is a fictionalized account of the last days of Nirvana frontman Kurt Cobain. It was released to theaters in the United States on July 22, 2005, and was produced by HBO. The film stars Michael Pitt as the character Blake, based on Kurt Cobain. Lukas Haas, Asia Argento, Nicole Vicius, Scott Patrick Green and Thadeus A. Thomas also star in the film. This is the first film from Pictureshouse, a joint venture between TimeWarner's New Line Cinema and HBO Films subsidiraries to release Independent, Foreign and Documentary films.