The avant-garde attacked art’s institutional status, not merely artistic styles

Evidence

For Adorno it is the ‘absoluteness’ of the Modernist work, its abstract, depersonalized, visibly constructed character which allows it to criticize, by allusion, a social world dominated by commodity fetishism, in which social relations are transformed into relations between things. But there is another, more emphatic sense in which Modernism issues in political critique. Bürger argued that what is distinctive about the avant-garde movements of the early twentieth century - Dadaism, early Surrealism, post-revolutionary Russian Constructivism - is their ‘attack on the status of art in bourgeois society. What is negated is not an earlier form of art (a style) but art as an institution that is unassociated with the life-praxis of men’: 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. — Alex Callinicos, Against Postmodernism, 233

Bürger argued that what is distinctive about the avant-garde movements of the early twentieth century - Dadaism, early Surrealism, post-revolutionary Russian Constructivism - is their ‘attack on the status of art in bourgeois society. What is negated is not an earlier form of art (a style) but art as an institution that is unassociated with the life-praxis of men’: 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. — Alex Callinicos, Against Postmodernism, 233

Categorization

• DEFINE: Distinguishes Adorno’s critical-allusion account from Bürger’s stronger avant-garde thesis — a key contrast for contesting Jameson’s narrative of cultural phases.
• XREF: Connects to the Modernism/Postmodernism debate and to Callinicos’s broader argument about how culture critiques commodified society. — connects to: Autonomous high art was founded on excluding the lower classes — Theodor W. Adorno, Max Horkheimer, Dialectic of Enlightenment, 106; The avant-garde sought to dissolve art into life praxis, not integrate art into it; Avant-garde art depends on concrete political conditions, not just aesthetic logic — Alex Callinicos, Against Postmodernism: A Marxist…, 243 (+8 more)
• corroborated: 2 independent passages support this claim — Alex Callinicos, Against Postmodernism: A Marxist…, 233

Broader Connections

• The neo-avant-garde completed the original avant-garde project by attacking art institutions #corroborates (0.95) — Perry Anderson, The Origins of Postmodernity, 253
• Avant-gardes shared an anti-bourgeois stance against market culture #expands (0.85) — Perry Anderson, The Origins of Postmodernity, 217
• avant-garde shock loses its subversive force once it becomes expected and institutionalized #expands (0.80) — Alex Callinicos, Against Postmodernism, 564
• Art’s autonomy paradoxically depends on the very commodity economy it negates #complicates (0.80) — Theodor W. Adorno, Max Horkheimer, Dialectic of Enlightenment, 118
• Avant-garde art communicates by breaking the propositional structure of discourse itself #expands (0.75) — Herbert Marcuse, One-Dimensional Man, 313
• The avant-garde is absorbed and neutralized as entertainment by advanced industrial society #complicates (0.75) — Herbert Marcuse, One-Dimensional Man, 319