Rear Guards in Art: Context and Analysis
of a New Concept in Art (and Literature) History
Paper | Mirgorod, Vol. 23/24 (2025) | pp. 323–339
Leonid HELLER
Abstract: The article proposes a critical approach to the concept of “artistic rear guards”, introduced in the early 2000s by the French comparative literature scholar William Marx. It aims to balance the generally accepted concept of the avant-garde. Our perspective in this article is mainly terminological. The starting point is a brief glance at the history of the use of the term “avant-garde”. The metaphorical and nonbinding meaning of the term is emphasised, as well as the fact that it
was rarely used by the innovators themselves, especially in Russia, where the word at that time belonged to the discourse of ideology and politics. We proceed to deal with the concept of “rear guard”, its transition from a military context to its application in politics, and then we analyse its application to artistic theory and practice in the works of William Marx and the scholars who were mobilised by the new concept. We find much in common between how the relationship between
the avant-garde and the rear guard was described in Marx’s circle and the view of the artistic evolution of the Russian Formalists of the 1920s and 1930s, who did not use the concept of the rear guard. In our opinion, this concept requires some further elaboration, but it may prove useful for historians.
Keywords: avant-garde / neo-avant-garde / post-avant-garde /
rear guard / modernism / literary history / literary evolution /
terminology / William Marx
DOI: https://doi.org/10.32017/mirgorod-2025-23.24-10
Cite this paper: Heller, L. (2025). Ariergardy artystyczne: kontekst i analiza nowego pojęcia z teorii sztuki (i literatury). Mirgorod: The Annual of the History and Epistemology of Contemporary Literary Studies, 23/24, pp. 323–339. DOI: https://doi.org/10.32017/mirgorod-2025-23.24-10
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