In the arts and in literature, the term avant-garde identifies an experimental genre, or work of art, and the artist who created it; which usually is aesthetically innovative, whilst initially being ideologically unacceptable to the artistic establishment of the time. The military metaphor of an advance guard identifies the artists and writers whose innovations in style, form, and subject-matter challenge the artistic and aesthetic validity of the established forms of art and the literary traditions of their time; thus, the artists who created the anti-novel and Surrealism were ahead of their times.

आवाँ गार्द एक फ्रान्सीसी शब्द है जो उन व्यक्तियों या कृतियों के लिए प्रयुक्त होता है जो यथास्थितिवाद से हटकर हों या आमूलवादी हों। इन्हें हिन्दी में अग्रगामी या अग्रदल (vanguard) कह सकते हैं। ऐसी कृतियाँ या व्यक्ति पहले अपारम्परिक और अस्वीकार्य लगते हैं।