The avant-garde has been popular for some time, but its popularity has tended to fly under the radar. This "popular avant-garde," conceived as the meeting ground of the avant-garde and popular, avoids the divorce of art and praxis of which the avant-garde has been accused. The Popular Avant-Garde takes stock of the debates about both the "historical" ("modernist") and posterior avant-gardes, and sets them in relation to popular culture and art forms. With a critical introduction that examines the concepts of "the avant-garde," "the popular," and "the popular avant-garde," the series of essays...

This book explores how Modernist movements all across the Mediterranean basin differed from those of other regions. The chapters show how the political and economic turmoil of a period marked by world war, revolution, decolonization, nationalism, and the rapid advance of new technologies compelled artists, writers, and other intellectuals to create a new hybrid Mediterranean Modernist aesthetic which sought to balance the tensions between local and foreign, tradition and innovation, and colonial and postcolonial.