The neo-avant-garde completed the original avant-garde project by attacking art institutions

Evidence

For if the original avant-gardes had concentrated their fire on the conventions of art, they had paid relatively little attention to its institutions. In exposing these, the neo-avant-gardes had — as it were, after the event —consummated their project. This was the task undertaken by the cohort of artists whose work represented the most effective passage from minimalism to conceptualism: Buren, Brood-thaers, Asher, Haacke. … The notion of the postmodern, Foster insists, whatever later misuses were made of it, was not one the left should surrender. — Perry Anderson, The Origins of Postmodernity, 253

Categorization

• DEFINE: Defines Foster’s ‘neo-avant-garde’ by its object of attack — institutions rather than conventions — which is the load-bearing conceptual distinction.
• XREF: Links to Jameson’s own treatment of postmodernism as a cultural logic that should not be ceded to the right, and to the Foster-vs-Jameson debate over where the postmodern rupture actually falls (Pop vs Minimalism). — connects to: The avant-garde attacked art’s institutional status, not merely artistic styles — Alex Callinicos, Against Postmodernism: A Marxist…, 233; Stalinism and Nazism together destroyed the avant-garde — Alex Callinicos, Against Postmodernism: A Marxist…, 252; The avant-garde sought to dissolve art into life praxis, not integrate art into it (+1 more)

Broader Connections

• The avant-garde sought to dissolve art into life praxis, not integrate art into it #expands (0.85)
• avant-garde shock loses its subversive force once it becomes expected and institutionalized #qualifies (0.78) — Alex Callinicos, Against Postmodernism, 564