Benjamin and the Avant-Garde

Walter Benjamin noticed in the avant-garde movement the tendency to overcome the discrepancy between society and culture, and art and life. His essay The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction, envisioned as a framework for the theory of modernity in light of the avant-garde, is paradigmatic for understanding of the avant-garde art and contemporary culture. It represents Benjamin's intervention, the politics of modernity (Kiefer). Wholesome theory of avant-garde does not exist. I will briefly examine interpretations on avant-garde by Peter Burger and Aleksandar Flaker, while I will be relying on Dietrich Scheunemann's Avant-Garde Critical Studies to examine newer theory on avant-garde. In the central part of this review I will present relation between Benjamin and surrealism, which Adorno described as: "Benjamin's intention was to fully give up on obvious exposition and let the meaning appear only through the shocking montage material. Not only should philosophy catch up with surrealism, it alone must become surreal." Finally, in the last part of this paper I will be dealing with profane illumination. In Benjamin's essay "Surrealism: The Last Snapshot of the European Intelligentsia" (1929), one of the most important reviews on theoretical, philosophical and political achievements and characteristics of avant-garde, he presents the profane illumination as the grounding and the core of Surreal Marxism.