Referring to the concept of “likely avant-garde” developed by
De Fusco and taking up some reflections by Enzensberger and
Baudrillard, this contribution questions the meaning of some experiences of contemporary artists – among others, Koons and
Murakami, Hirst and Abramovic, Cattelan and Kusama – fascinated by the demands of the market, committed to creating objects in series. They are postmodern fetishes, which lead us to
reflect on the current fate of the idea of the avant-garde. In our
time, the avant-garde no longer presents itself as a spectacle of
the unexpected, nor as an opening of perspectives or even as a
journey into the landscapes of the imagination. The avant-garde
no longer breaks customs, nor undermines expectations and does
not dream of revolutions. It seems to have exhausted its radicality, to lose itself in a mannerism made of twentieth-century liturgies tiredly replicated. In front of us, however, the outlines of the
weak avant-garde are drawn, made similar to a supermarket full
of things poised between luxury craftsmanship and ready-towear. It is an all-over avant-garde. Open, fluid, widespread. And again: glamour, flat, superficial, disengaged, governed by the
search for entertainment, close to dissolving in the interstices of
a standardized mass culture, aimed at destroying every distinction between cultured and pop art, between boutique and gallery,
between painting and fashion, between autonomy and commer-
cialization, between expressive freedom and functional design,
between authorial pretensions and ephemeral spectacle. A low
intensity avant-garde which, realizing a prophecy of Baudelaire,
becomes a commodity, fashion, advertising prosthesis, expression of the phantasmagoria of a modernity without depth.
