The article deals with the aspect of the First Avant-Garde phenomenon – its culturalpsychological origins – that remains rather poorly explored. The author introduces a hypothesis that one of significant reasons for the avant-garde to be born as a radical innovation (and, at the same time, as denial overcoming the artistic past) was a persistent and all-embracing spiritual and psychological state of artistic and overall cultural consciousness of the mainly young generation of art creators. It was the tiredness from the past and dominating culture. There is a brief analysis of semantics, pragmatics and the roots of a sociocultural phenomenon of tiredness as well as its modification, the tiredness from culture. The paper considers a key reason behind the emergence of the tiredness from culture, the internal spiritual and mental exhaustion of the very culture (“culture fatigue”). It is culture fatigue that causes the state of its own inutility, outdatedness, senselessness, intolerability, which can be integrally expressed by the state of the tiredness from culture, on the one hand. On the other hand, there is an aspiration to overcome this tiredness, the “protest”, “polemic” will of the creators regarding to the culture fatigue, their vitality, enthusiasm, strengthening spirit, hanger for new, free of tiredness, “fresh” in terms of form, contents and psychology and attractive for the society state of creativity. The author highlights that avant-garde denial of the past and desire for the new is distinguished by its great ontological value reflecting the avant-garde consciousness and creativity focused on culture as a whole. There are two ways to realize the denial of the previous culture “as a whole”: the constructive endeavor for new culture as a specific way of people’s existence and attempts, even more radical, to overstep the culture’s frames, to break away from tiresome “civility”; in practice, this may mean never feasible moving to “clear” or “absolute” naturality.
Keywords: Avant-garde; The First Avant-garde; culture; tiredness; culture fatigue; tiredness from culture; semantics and pragmatics of tiredness in culture; reasons for the tiredness from culture; modernism in the arts; radical innovativeness; avant-garde denial of the past and aspiration for the future; ontological value of avant-garde consciousness; culture creation as the avant-garde denial of the previous culture and constructive endeavor for the new culture; avant-garde denial of “culture as a whole” and moving to “clear” naturality; free of cultural vestiges