ABSTRACT
In the Introduction to this book, the point was made that within every art movement and art form there are two apparently codifiable trends: mainstream and avant-garde art. Mainstream art recodifies the dominant praxis – makes anew what is already there. In this respect it is either heavily dependent on its immediate predecessors or else it harks back to earlier art forms. Thus it is not unequivocal to say that mainstream art opposes change and as such serves to preserve the dominant ideology. In its unidirectional reflection, this art can be qualified as symptomatic and unoppositional. In its most extreme forms this can lead to academicism or to mannerism. Conversely, avant-garde art, as its name suggests, is art before its time – art looking forward not backwards (as mainstream predominantly does), attempting to break terrain with its implicit subversion of the old codes and conventions. Symptomatic, mainstream art runs the danger of semiotic reductionism. Conversely, oppositional art displays itself as redolent with semiotic expansionism.1
