Charles Esche – European Avant-gardes and the construction of the Modern

Lesson part of the course Decolonised History of Art: Global Narratives from 1900 to the Present. Click here for the programme and the entire course.

This lesson critically examines how the Western canon of modern art was shaped by artists, critics and curators from the 1920s to 1940s, and the resonances in art history up to the 1980s. It will highlight the dynamics of appropriation, exclusion and marginalization involved in the formation of the first artistic avant-garde and developed in the second wave of avant-garde practice after 1945. Starting with examples drawn from Cubism, the Futurists, Expressionists and the experimental disruptions of Constructivism and Surrealism, the lesson will explore their problematic relation to colonialism and modernism. Later it will explore the rise of US cultural hegemony, and how it shaped the artistic canon in western Europe. We will also touch briefly on Soviet experiments with art in opposition to the western avant-garde. The lesson will explore how artists selectively and often prejudicially engaged with non-European art forms, such as African masks or Orientalist motifs, transforming them into aesthetic instruments. Drawing on the conflicting perspectives of Alfred Barr and Alexander Dorner as curators and art historians, the lecture will conclude with some thoughts of Igor Zabel at the end of the long avant-garde period. The session discusses how the modern canon was constructed and naturalized in order to provide a critical account of modern artistic innovation, showing both the radical creativity of the avant-garde and the tensions and contradictions inherent in the creation of a supposedly universal canon.

Charles Esche is a curator, writer, museum director, and educator whose work has significantly shaped contemporary art discourse and institutional practice. Director of the Van Abbemuseum in Eindhoven from 2004 to 2024 and Professor of Contemporary Art and Curating at the University of the Arts London, he is known for experimental exhibition models and socially engaged approaches to collections, biennials, and public programs.