avant-garde

This is ‘Fountain’ (1917) by Marcel Duchamp. Yup, it’s a urinal. With a signature on it.

If you’re avant-garde you’re usually an artist, intellectual or writer who experiments with work or ideas that challenges cultural norms (so it’s those pieces you see in galleries that make you say ‘I could knock that up at home’, which then go on to win the Turner Prize). But you knew all that already, right? The reason I’ve chosen it as the word of the week is because I found out its origins on this week’s Wittertainment podcast (which, considering it’s supposed to be about films, actually contains a surprising amount of etymology – see, for example, curfew, sabotage and egregious). And I had no idea how literal it is.

So, ‘avant-garde’ is French (naturellement), and translates literally as ‘advance guard’ (AKA ‘vanguard’). It was originally used by the French military to refer to a small group of soldiers that reconnoi… reconoi… reccono… scouted ahead of the main force. In the 19th century it became associated with left-wing French radicals campaigning for political reform. And from there it was then linked with the idea of art as a force for social change, eventually losing the association with left-wing social causes to become the term we know today.

One of the first artworks to be described as avant-garde was The Little Fourteen Year Old Dancer by Edgar Degas. Despite looking pretty inoffensive to us today, she caused an outcry when she was first exhibited in 1881. The public didn’t like how realistic she looked, or that she was a dancer – then considered a profession on a similar level to prostitution. Critics of the time described her as both ‘repulsive’ and ‘a threat to society’. I’d love to know what they would have made of Duchamp’s urinal.

David Bowie doing avant-garde like only David Bowie could

curfew

This is another one I’ve shamelessly stolen from the Wittertainment podcast (which is technically about films, but lucky for me also features a lot of etymology, generally courtsey of Sir Simon of Mayo). You know what a curfew is – that thing your parents gave you which meant you had to be home by a certain time (you know, back when we were allowed to go outside and do stuff). ‘Curfew’ comes from an Anglo-French word, coverfeu, which itself comes from an Old French word cuevrefeu. This literally means ‘cover fire’ (as in to cover a fire in a fireplace to put it out, not the stuff that soldiers do when they’re advancing on a battlefield).

The story is that back in the Middle Ages, houses were mainly made of wood and straw, and other super-flammable things. And, due to the fact that electricity wouldn’t appear for another few hundred years, obviously everyone had candles for light and fires to keep warm. Which was a bit of a recipe for disaster (see The Great Fire of London*). To make sure that no one fell asleep without putting their fire out, Alfred the Great or William the Conqueror (no one’s quite sure who came up with it) put a law in place which meant someone rang a curfew bell at 8pm to remind everyone to do just that, and also blow out any candles, put out their pipes/ciggies, etc. Willie the Conq also used the curfew bell to make sure that everyone was back in their house by 8, to stamp out any pesky English people getting together after dark to talk rebellion.

The curfew law was rePEALed (bad bell joke, sorry) in 1103 by Henry I. But you can still find a few curfew bells round the UK, like this one in Leadhills, Scotland.

*Interesting fact alert: despite the fact that the GFOL, as no one calls it, destroyed around 70,000 of the 80,000 homes in London at the time, only six people are known to have died.