AVANGARD, KLASIĞIN YIKIMI VE ESTETIK ÖZERKLIK
AVANT-GARDE, DESTRUCTION OF THE CLASSICAL AND AESTHETIC AUTONOMY

Summary/Abstract: This study provides a comprehensive examination of the radical criticism developed by modern avant-garde movements against the established institution of art in bourgeois society and their demands for the transformation of art's social functions. The process that began with modernism’s break from the concept of mimesis led art to focus on its own internal principles, bringing the debates on aesthetic autonomy to the forefront. However, the avant-garde movements objected to art remaining an elitist sphere that only questioned its own media. Instead, they sought to make art an active and transformative part of social life. In this context, movements such as Futurism, Dadaism, Constructivism, and Bauhaus took a stand against the aestheticist attitude that fostered art's isolation from life, advocating that art should move beyond the boundaries of museums and galleries to assume an "avant-garde" role in the reconstruction of everyday existence. Within the scope of the research, this revolutionary character of the avant-garde is analyzed through the lens of Peter Bürger’s Theory of the Avant-Garde and Theodor W. Adorno’s dialectical reflections on aesthetic autonomy. The relationship between Bürger’s ideal of "reintegrating art into life praxis" and Adorno’s critical distance provided by art’s detachment from social reality forms the theoretical backbone of the study. The paper evaluates the avant-garde's attempt to transform art from a "commodity" into a "mode of thought and action," specifically through the historical traumas created by war, alienation, and technological revolutions. The study reveals that the ultimate goal of avant-garde art was to create a change in its ontological status. The avant-gard artists and supporters aimed to dissolve the autonomous structure of art and reposition it as a tool through which life is aesthetically reconstituted. In this sense, the modern avant-garde can be defined not merely as a formal innovation but as a holistic cultural philosophy that simultaneously unites art with politics and art with life within a synchronized consciousness.

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