Avant-garde retained aestheticism’s rejection but aimed to build new life-praxis from art.

Evidence

The avant-gardistes proposed the sublation of art — sublation of art in the Hegelian sense: art was not to be simply destroyed, but transferred to the praxis of life, where it would be preserved, albeit in a changed form. The avant-gardistes thus adopted an essential element of Aestheticism. Aestheticism had made the distance from the praxis of life the content of works. The praxis of life to which Aestheticism refers and which it negates is the means-end rational­ ity of the bourgeous everyday. Now, it is not the aim of the avant-gardistes to integrate art into this praxis. On the contrary, they assent to the Aestheticists’ rejection of the world and its means-end rationality. What distinguishes them from the latter is the attempt to organize a new life-praxis from a basis in art. — Alex Callinicos, Against Postmodernism, 234

Categorization

• DEFINE: Sharply distinguishes avant-garde sublation-from-within from mere bourgeois-integration, using the Hegelian concept of sublation.