Synthetic Studies on Dada, Surrealism and Other Avan-garde Movements in the 20 th Century World Art

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Our group study on "Dada and Surrealism" and the avant-garde arts of the 20 th century, closely associated with these movements, has naturally covered various historical and geographical fields. From the beginning, our objective has consisted not only in investigating the avant-garde movements in France and in Europe, but also in tracing their reception and development in Japan. It is the exposition "Japan of the Avant-gardes" given in the National Cultural Center of Georges Pompidou in Paris, from autumn 1986 to spring 1987, that gave us one of the guiding principles of our research. In this exposition did three members of our group take part from the stage of planning : Be, Watanabe and Hasumi. What came to light through this exposition was, in the first place, a gap, between Japan and France (or Europe), in the acceptation of "avant-garde". A Japanese avant-garde is not always a French avant-garde in the same period ; what is considered as a revolutionary event in Japan is, in many cases, banal and completely out of date in Europe. Secondly, there are "avant-gardes of the 20 th century" having nothing to do with Dada or surrealism. So, if we limited, in the present research, our point of view to the only "Dada and surrealism", our conception of "avant-garde art" should inevitably be partial.Standing on these reflections, we organized a series of symposiums by the title of "What is the 'avant-garde', today ?" in the College of Arts and Sciences of University of Tokyo in May and June 1987. The themes of four seances were : "The Post-modern Horizon", "Technology and the Avant-garde", "A Fiction Named 'Theater'"and"The Horizon of Contemporary Music".As to the results that each member has realized in his major field, see the printed final report. We consider that our research has achieved remarkable results, particularly by international collaborations and interdisciplinary approaches.