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In this article, I compare the operativity of radical avant-garde and new dialogical art forms from one selected viewpoint. I discuss the issue of the artist's attitude as a significance-producing element in the artwork. For decades, artist-issued interpretation of art has been problematic. Thus it is interesting to question the significance of the strong definition of the artist's attitude, inherent in the theories of the new dialogical art. New dialogical art-forms are for example new genre public art, community art, socially engaged art, public engaged art, littoral art, activist art, dialogical art, and conversational art. In the Finnish discussion, the concept of community art is the one most commonly used.

As the title suggests, this article will deal not only with the avant-garde and the romantic idea of geniality but also with the much more mundane concept of literary property. Even though the law might seem alien to the lofty ideals of the avant-garde artist, the construction of the creative genius and the birth of copyright will eventually prove to be quite closely connected. But before I move on to the legal part I would like to start with the essentials: with the author, or the artist. The American artist John de Andreas sculpture The Artist and his model from 1980 is probably one of the most revealing pictures of the avant-gardist selfconception ever made. This is a picture of the artist at work, but I will argue it can also be regarded as a legal character. What meets the eye is however very far from the law as we know it. de Andreas sculpture is a self-portrait of the artist at work: a highly naturalistic full-scale portrait of two people. One of them is a naked woman, resting casually on a white socket and looking down on the other who is a fully dressed man. As the title clearly states, the sculpture depicts the classical relation between The Artist and his Model, and it is no coincidence that the artist has a male pronoun and the model a female body. The roles of the artist and his model are traditional stereotypes which we can find in most books on art history - one is an artist and the other is a model; one is a man and the other is a woman; one is dressed and the other one is undressed.

The Rodopi series Avant-Garde Critical Studies not only publishes books on neo-avant-garde but also studies of diverse aspects of the avant-garde in general. This new volume (no. 18), for example, is entirely dedicated to one of the most far-reaching avant-gardes in history, namely Dada. Although one cannot on the whole claim that a new book on Dada fills a gap, given that an enormous amount of research has been published over the years, nevertheless every contribution presenting a new and clear view on the subject is welcome. In this book the focus is on the contemporary (theoretical) engagement with Dada, in an effort to show the actuality of the movement itself. Given the subtitle "Critical Texts on the Avant-Garde", however, it becomes relevant to note the problem inherent in such a formulation: a book on Dada contains critical texts on one avant-garde, but not on the avant-garde, a fact that is all the more conspicuous since David Cunningham points out in the concluding article that the expression "the avantgarde" is a post-war phenomenon (p. 272). However, the two excellent final articles point in many ways far beyond Dada, towards a rewritten theory of the avant-garde (which makes these articles alone worth the price of this volume); the preceding comment is therefore focused on the overall ambition of the volume, rather than the individual articles in themselves.

Metaphors grow old, turn into dead metaphors, and finally become clichés. This succession seems to be inevitable - but on the other hand, poets have the power to return old clichés into words with a precise meaning. Accordingly, academic writers, too, need to carry out a similar operation with notions that are worn out by frequent use in everyday language. One metaphor that has been hollowed out in such a way, through lax use by journalists and literary historians, is the concept of "avant-garde". In this article, I shall try to shed some new light upon this notion, with the purpose of showing its different national use and heterogeneity of meaning. This pluralism is overlooked today because of the hegemony of English in academic studies, which leads one to believe that a consensus exists in the use of the term "avant-garde", since so many academics write their articles and books in this language. The current analysis is directed towards theoreticians' ways of dealing with the notion in question, by which I meaneverybody who writes or thinks about the notion of "avant-garde". This article is an attempt to recuperate the term to stringent use and gain a deeper insight into the aesthetic movements of modernity and late modernity. I hope to show that, despite the fact that many writers believe that there exists only one recognition of the notion of "avant-garde", the understanding of the Anglo-American "centre" is actually as peripheral as that of other countries - which are normally regarded as peripheries.

The Romanian avant-garde looked for inspiration in two principal places where artists from all-over Europe gathered, confronted and discussed their ideas of a new art. While Berlin nourished the constructivist orientation of the Romanian avantgarde, Paris stimulated its interest in surrealism. Although Berlin was by far more significant as a stimulus for the synthesis of all arts and all modern movements toward which the Romanian avant-garde strove, Paris had the advantage of an emotional attachment. The French culture had been set long ago as a model for the entire Romanian modern culture and institutions. Consequently it is not surprising that poets and artists, including Victor Brauner, chosed to live and work in Paris in order to feel closer to what was considered to be the origin. Victor Brauner is discussed both in the context of the Romanian avant-garde and in the history of the French surrealism, but one cannot detect any tension between center and periphery. One motivation can be found in the myth he creates for himself. Meanwhile it is obvious that he wanted to identify himself with the French surrealism. Once settled in France he paid great attention to the theories and to the artists André Breton promoted. I will discuss the myth of the artist as well as the threads which connect Brauner to other artistic strategies bringing forth the body problem. Almost always his paintings and drawings display the ineluctable presence of a metamorphic body within no narrative construction. This preoccupation informed every stage of his career as he dedicated it the greatest energies of his artistic inventiveness. Before going into the subject, one needs to frame Brauner in a larger picture.

Mieczysław Porębski, a distinguished Polish art historian of the 20th century, once expressed the demand for Polish art history to be researched simultaneously with foreign studies - as parallel fields. "We entered the research field of the old masters' art as partners in, so to say, a ‘furnished household', whereas in the field of contemporary art we are co-explorers, exploring a ‘virgin land'", as Porębski put it. The book by professor Piotr Piotrowski Awangarda w cieniu Jałty. Sztuka w Europie środkowo-wschodniej w latach 1945-89 (The Avant-Garde in the Shadow of Yalta. The Art in East-Central Europe, 1945-1989) fully accomplishes this demanding postulate which nowadays seems to be rather rarely remembered by Polish art historians. The explored area, the East-Central European countries, which emerged, as a result of the Yalta Conference, between the iron curtain and the border of The Soviet Union (including former Yugoslavia) appears at least as an ‘old maiden' land, where scientific penetration still seems to be necessary.

Det nordiska neoavantgardet har hittills i liten grad varit föremål för utforskning i sin helhet. Forskningsuppgiften som sådan innebär i sig en empirisk utmaning, eftersom förbindelserna mellan länderna ofta bara nämns i förbigående i större historieskrivningar, och man måste söka i ett stort och utspritt textbestånd bestående av minnesskildringar, tidskrifts- och tidningsartiklar etc. Jag inleder med en kort diskussion av det nordiska utbytet under 60-talet, följt av nedslag hos de tre svenska och danska avantgardisterna och författarna Öyvind Fahlströms, Åke Hodells och Per Højholts, vars text-ljudkompositioner finns utgivna på cd-skivor. Mitt syfte är att demonstrera (neo-)avantgardets gränsöverskridande karaktär i tre olika men inbördes relaterade avseenden: att 60-talet präglades av en bred nordisk interaktion; att skrifter, manifest och andra texter av de tre författarna ger uttryck för en tvärestetisk poetologi; att avantgardet lägger tonvikten på den processuella skapelseprocessen. Det jag har valt att fokusera på är alltså den poetologi som ligger till grund för genreöverskridande konst som t.ex. text-ljudkompositioner. Resultaten kan ofta rubriceras som både poesi, happening, teater och performance, och är i hög grad ett resultat av 60-talets medieutveckling med lätthanterliga bandspelare, transistorradio, TV m.m. Även om konstverken i sig kanske inte alltid är lika intressanta ut estetisk synpunkt, fördjupar en analys av den bakomliggande idévärlden förståelsen för det nordiska neoavantgardets betydelse och den kreativitet som präglade 60-talet.

Syftet med denna artikel är att, med utgångspunkt i stenciltidskriften Guru Papers och uttalanden av Bruno K. Öijer, ge en bild av de avantgardistiska stämningar som härskade i svenskt kulturliv under den första hälften av 1970-talet. Denna strömning var inte bara inspirerad av 1910- och 20-talens europeiska avantgarde, utan även av andra traditioner såsom amerikansk modernism och avantgarde.