LEONARDO DA SILVA RODRIGUES

This work aims to propose an aesthetic and philosophical reflection on the debate surrounding the “problem” of artistic neo-avant-garde. Based on the discussion initiated by the publication of the work Theory of Avant-Garde (1974), by Peter Bürger, and carried forward by authors such as Benjamin Buchloh, Hal Foster, Dietrich Scheunemann and others, we will assume that such a discussion offers ways of understanding the tenuous passage from artistic modernity to contemporaneity, where the focus given to the dimension of repetition of avant-garde artistic procedures by the neo-avant-gardes of the 1950s and 1960s would have a problematic status, thus presenting itself as a fundamental reference for the intellectual consideration of the lines of force that structure the contemporary artistic scene itself. As a condition, we will give centrality to the artistic production of Robert Rauschenberg (1925 – 2008), thereby assuming that this artist is the one who best summarizes the hypothesis of the argument presented here. In other words, by given priority to the works of Rauschenberg, we will seek to question and, at the limit, displace the most incisive points of view regarding the neo-avant-garde, with the aim of introducing the concept of “undecidability”, based on the philosophy of Jacques Derrida, as the theoretical operator that best encompasses the web of problems raised by the artistic neo-avant-garde, placing it in its paradoxical position as a historical intermediary in the gap between the modern and the contemporary.