lecture 04 educating vision

7/29/2019 Lecture 04 Educating Vision

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EDUCATING VISION:PHOTOGRAPHY AND THE EUROPEAN AVANT-GARDE


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A change to advertised times

The lecture order now:

-Educating Vision

-A Question of Beauty

-Fashion Stories

-Locating the Digital


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FIVE AREAS:

FUTURISM

DADA

SURREALISM

CONSTRUCTIVISM

BAUHAUS


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FUTURISM: CONTEXT

Italy: 1909 - 1930s

Artists: F. T. Marinetti, Umberto Boccioni, Giacomo Balla, LuigiRussoloFilippo Tommaso Marinetti:We affirm that the worlds magnificence has been enriched by a new beauty: the beauty of

speed a roaring car that seems to ride on grapeshot is more beautiful than the Victory ofSamothrace


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*The use of force, aggression and rupture

*The importance of embodied sensation in the work of art replacing distanced cerebral observation.

*The punch, the slap, spasms of violence as the ultimate Futurist gestures.

*The avant-garde as typified by shock and / or provocation


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Fortunato Depero!Self-portrait with clenchedfist!1915!


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F. T. Marinetti:

We intend to exalt aggressive action, a feverish insomnia, the racersstride, the mortals leap, the punch and the slap

Except in struggle, there is no more beauty Poetry must be conceived

as a violent attack on unknown forces!


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Filippo Masoero Dynamised view of the Roman Forum 1934!


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Ottavio Berard, Futurist photograph: punch in the eye 1932!


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Anton Giulio Bragaglia and Arturo Bragaglia, Typist 1913!


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Anton Giulio Bragaglia:

We are involved only in the area of movement which produces sensation, the memory of whichstill palpitates in our awareness.

We despise the precise, mechanical, glacial reproduction of reality

We will endeavour to extract not only the aesthetic expression of the motives, but also the inner,sensorial, cerebral and psychic emotions that we feel when an action leaves its superb, unbroken

trace.


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We are involved only in the area of movement which producessensation, the memory of which still palpitates in our awareness.



trace.


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trace.


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We will endeavour to extract not only the aesthetic expression of themotives, but also the inner, sensorial, cerebral and psychic emotions

that we feel when an action leaves its superb, unbroken trace.


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Arturo Bragaglia Photodynamic portrait of a woman c.1924!


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Lady Gaga at MTV Video and Music Awards

2010


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Sensation: Young British Artists from the Saatchi Collection

curated by Norman Rosenthal and Charles Saatchi

1997

A legacy ofshock tactics of recent art

managed by an advertising mogul


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DADA:

Main areas: Zurich, Berlin, Paris, New York, 1914-1921

Hugo Ball:

The Dadaist fights against the death-throes and

death-drunkenness of his times He knows that

this world of systems has gone to pieces


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Hugo Ball in costume at Cabaret Voltaire in 1916,

text for poem Caravan overprinted

Logic imprisoned by the senses is an organic

disease I detest greasy objectivity, and harmony,

the science that finds everything in order I am

against systems, the most acceptable system is on

principle to have none.

I proclaim bitter struggle with all the weapons of

Dadaist disgust: Every product of disgust capable of

becoming a negation of the family is Dada; a protest

with the fists of its whole being engaged in

destructive action: Dada abolition of logic

abolition of memory abolition of the futureFreedom: Dada Dada Dada, a roaring of tense

colours, and interlacing of opposites and of all

contradictions, grotesques, inconsistencies: LIFE

Tristan Tzara, Dada Manifesto 1918!(see Art in Theory: 1900-1990)!


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Raoul Hausmann, ABCD, 1923-4

Hannah Hch, Cut with the Kitchen Knife Dada through the last WeimarBeer Belly Cultural Epoch of Germany, 1919-20


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Hannah Hch, Self-portrait (double exposure) 1924Hannah Hch, Das Schne Mdchen (Pretty Woman), 1920, collage on paper


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Hannah Hch!

Merry Woman!1923!


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Montage:

A relation of parts to parts

A refusal to make a whole

A construction not a composition

To demand connections to be made (by the viewer)


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David Bordwell:

Montage is often associated with film, but applies to many other arts

(originating in photo-montage)

The fundamental principles assemblage of heterogeneous parts, juxtaposition of fragments,

the demand for the audience to make conceptual connections, in all a radically new relation

among parts to a whole seem transferable to drama, music, literature, painting and

sculpture

The Idea of Montage in Soviet Art and Film, Cinema Journal, vol.11, n.2, 1972

Key practioners of montage (1919-1924):

Photomontage of John Heartfield, Hannah Hoch, Gustav Klutsis

Film montage of Lev Kuleshov, Sergei Eisenstein and Dziga Vertov


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John StezakerFilm Portrait (She) I

2005


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John Stezaker

Love XI

2006


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Montage

Just an image?

Text / Syntax /Grammar

A series of relations

Other metaphoric terms:

Cut / Interval / Fold

Repetition and Stoppage.

See Montage and Modern Life: 1919 1942, eds. Lavin, Michelson et al., MIT Press,1992

Various sites: photography, exhibition design, film, advertising (the internet, mass media the

message force multiplier)


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The political dimension of!photo-montage:

!!!John Heartfield!The true meaning of the Hitler

salute: millions stand behind me!1932!!


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Martha Rosler

Bringing the War Home: House Beautiful

2004


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READYMADE OR FOUND OBJECT

The aesthetic dimension of the readymade:

Marcel Duchamp, Fountain, 1917Marcel Duchamp, L.H.O.O.Q. 1919


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Richard Prince:

the found photograph


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Andy Warhol:!*the mechanical

*the foundobject

*questioning value*self-insertion into!

circulating media structures!


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SURREALISM!&!PHOTOGRAPHY!


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The surreal as a dialogue with the otherthat is encountered through:

dreams

coincidences

correspondences (strange equivalences)

the marvellous

the uncanny

a reciprocal exchange: connecting conscious and unconscious thought


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Mary Ann Caws: surrealism operates aroundintense encounters between the everyday and theimaginary

A (proto)Surrealist hero and one of his mottos:

LComte de Lautrmonts (aka Isidore Ducasse) Les Chants de Maldoror, 1869:

the chance encounter of a sewing machine and an

umbrella on a dissection table


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Man RayThe Enigma of Isidore Ducasse 1920!Published in La Revolution surrealiste, 1, December 1924!


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SURREALISM, n. Psychic automatism in its pure state, by which

one proposes to express verbally, by means of the written work,

or in any other manner the actual functioning of thought. Dictatedby thought, in the absence of any control exercised by reason,

exempt from any aesthetic or moral concern.

ENCYCLOPAEDIA. Philosophy. Surrealism is based on the belief in

the superior reality of certain forms of previously neglectedassociations, in the omnipotence of dream, in the disinterested play

of thought.

Andr Breton, Manifesto of Surrealism, 1924


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Andr Breton:Beauty will be convulsive

(in his Nadja)

Convulsive beauty will beveiled-erotic, fixed-explosive,

magical circumstantial or will not

be (in his LAmour Fou)

Man Ray, Fixed-Explosive, 1934!


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Surrealist techniques and themes:

Doubling - Superimposing

Convulsing the ordinary into the extra-ordinaryMannequins and other objects that look alive: an uncanny confusionof the animate and inanimate, the alive and the dead

The found object - the lost object - the chance encounter

The pseudo scientific - the discovery of paranoid knowledge


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Man Ray, The Marquise Casati, 1922


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Man Ray, Untitled, 1924

Man Ray, Tomorrow (Demain), 1924


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Brassa, !Involuntary Sculptures!1933!


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BrassaNude 1931-1932!!Man RayUntitled 1934!


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Karl Blossfeldt: looking closely nature convulsed into writing / culture!


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Hans Bellmer


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Hans Bellmer:

The game belongs to the category of experimental poetry, and bearing in

mind such poetrys method of provocation, the toy will take the role of theprovocative object

Paul Eluard:

Its a girl! Where are her eyes?

Its a girl! Where are her breasts?Its a girl! What does she say?

Its a girl! What games does she play?

Its a girl! Its my desire!

Hans Bellmer,The Doll, 1936/1949


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Brassa, Graffiti, 1933-1956


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Salvador Dali

Communication: visage paranoaque

1931


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Walter Benjamin:

Surrealism [and the avant-garde] is a profaneillumination(see his Surrealism: The Last Snapshot of the European

Intelligentsia in his One Way Street and Other Writings)

A revelation, a making obvious, a coming to light, of

something that may be deeply hidden, or repressed.

A return of the repressed

Less a style than a state of mind that, like Dada,

refutes the rational culture that led to the trauma of war


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NEW VISIONS:BAUHAUS & CONSTRUCTIVISM


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SOVIET CONSTRUCTIVISM:BUILDING A REVOLUTIONARY SOCIETY"The avant-garde as an integral part of revolutionary social life

KASIMIR MALEVICH!VLADIMIR TATLIN!


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El Lissitzky, The Constructor, 1924


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INKhUK collective:

Construction is the effective organisation of material elements.

The indications of construction:i. the best use of materials

ii. The absence of any superfluous elements.

The scheme of a construction is the combination of lines, and the planes and forms which they

define; it is a system of forces. Composition is an arrangement according to a defined and

conventional signification

cited in Briony Fer, The Language of Construction in Realism, Rationalism, Surrealism:Art Between the Wars, p.104


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Alexsandr Rodchenko

Construction = organisation of elements.

Constructivist life is the art of the future

Down with art as a beautiful patch on the squalid life of

the rich.Down with art as a precious stone in the midst of the

dismal and dirty life of the poor.

Work for life and not for palaces, cathedrals, cemeteriesand museumsM Kaufmann, Rodchenko in front of dismantled constructions, 1922


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Alexandr Rodchenko, !poster for Dziga Vertovs Kino-Eye, 1924!


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Gustav Klutsis, Let Us Fulfill the Plan of the Great Projects , 1930, photomontageNatalia Pinus, Female Delegate, Worker, Shock-Worker, 1931, photomontage


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RODCHENKO:

in order to accustom people to seeing from new viewpoints it isessential to take photographs of everyday, familiar objects in

completely unexpected positions. We must revolutionise our visual

reasoning


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Aleksandr Rodchenko, Mother, 1924Aleksandr Rodchenko, Osip, 1924


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Aleksandr Rodchenko, back cover to Vladimir Mayakovsky,To Sergei Essenin, 1926

Specific values attributed to lines ofsight:

The old rural: tradition

The new urban: revolution

A visual strategy of de-familiarization;

Especially ofhabits of viewing


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Aleksandr Rodchenko, Fire Escape from series The Building on Miasnitskaia, 1925Aleksandr Rodchenko, Steps, 1930


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Alexsandr Rodchenko,Pioneer, 1930

Lszl Moholy-Nagy Light-Space Modulator, 1930!


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LSZL MOHOLY-NAGYTHE NEW VISION:visionenhanced: teaching us to see the present, to make the

future!


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Lzl Moholy-Nagy, cover of Painting, Photography, Film, 1925


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Lzl Moholy Nagy, cover ofPainting, Photography, Film, 1925


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Lzl Moholy-Nagy, Parking Lot, Chicago, 1938

Lzl Moholy-Nagy, Dynamics of the Metropolis, 1921-2

Imaging the rhythms ofmodern life


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Lzl Moholy-Nagy, Berlin Radio Tower, c 1928


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Umbo, Uncanny Street, 1928

Moholy-Nagy:

the photographic camera caneither complete or supplement

our optical instrument, theeye

from his Painting,Photography, Film, 1925

(reprinted 1967), p.28


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Lzl Moholy-Nagy, Marseilles, 1929

Moholy-Nagy:

the view from above, from below, the

oblique view, which today oftendisconcert people who take them to be

accidental shots. The secret of their

effect is that the photographic camera

reproduces the purely optical image

and therefore shows the optically true

distortions, deformations,foreshortenings etc.


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*An emphasis on the technical

conditions of the apparatus

*A creation of the picture outside the

constraints ofcorrect composition or

perspective a new picture?

*An attempt to use the camera as in-

organic mechanical apparatus to re-

energise ourorganic way of seeing

*An aesthetics of shock (again)


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Key paradigms to consider:

*How is sensation or provocation an issue for photography?

*What is the potential of montage?

*How does the unconscious getfigured?

*What is a revolution in visual understanding?

*How can technology help us make connections to the conditions welive in?

lecture 04 educating vision

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