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The Avant Garde was a cutting edge art movement that originally began in France in 1850. It takes its name from the military role of the advanced guard, and its role in the art movement is characterised by this definition. The artists of the avant-garde sought to tear down the old restrictions of traditional art and society as a whole. Courbet was one of the first artists to align himself with the avant-garde movement. He was a radical and had been imprisoned for tearing down monuments in a protest against the elite classes. Courbet was a realist and therefore depicted ordinary subject matter in his art, rather than the lofty and magical works that the upper classes desired. Millet was anothe