Transcript Lecture3

SpatialStudies 7c:
Lecture 3
Strategies of the Avant-Garde
(from R. Krauss, Passages in Modern Sculpture)
A. 1) Cubism, 2) Futurism, 3) Constructivism, comparison of
Gabo + Tatlin, 4) Dada, 5) Surrealism, 6) Abstract Concretion
B. A comparison: Brancusi + Duchamp (Rosalind Krauss)
C. An avant-garde legacy- video The Way Things Go
D. Finish ‘Creativity: BBC, The Creative Brain, How Insight Works’
Jonathan Schooler, Dr. Simon Ritter, John Kounos
Pouring plaster for current project
Extra credit offering – play with food and photograph
(1pt. on exam, could depict scenario based on real life)
Midterm
Feb. 3 during lecture
30 True/False questions, T/F = 60pts.
13 Multiple Choice = 26pts.
2 essay questions = 20pts.
(I subtract the three questions that most people missed).
T/F
Sergei Eisenstein, who filmed ‘October,’ thinks sculpture lacks inherent
ideology.
Gotthold Lessing asserts that sculpture is about portraying bodies in
space and that sculpture is distinct from poetry and music in that it is
static and nonsequential.
A)
R. Krauss challenges the myth of originality in the Avant-garde – starts with
Rodin – moves to Modernism in Passages in Modern Sculpture
Your reading for this lecture:
1) Naum Gabo’s writings on Constructivism: (new norms for
sculpture: Mass, Space, and Time 1937)
•Space as medium
•Material – expressive qualities – determine limits
•Any material is o.k.
•Problem of time – sees it as necessitating kinetics
2) Arthur Danto: Playthings and
Boris Groys: The Speed of Art
Fischli and Weiss, legacy to avant-garde
A.This lecture: Strategies of the Avant-Garde
(from R. Krauss, Passages…):
Avant-garde definition:
new and unusual or experimental ideas, esp. in the arts, or the people
introducing them."works by artists of the Russian avant-garde”
synonyms: innovative, original, experimental, left-field, inventive,
ahead of the times, cutting/leading/bleeding edge, new, modern,
innovatory, advanced, forward-looking, state-of-the-art, trend-setting,
pioneering, progressive, Bohemian, groundbreaking, trailblazing,
revolutionary;
Cultural conditions for the Avant-Garde:
Industrial Revolution
Movement from an agrarian-based society to urban
Two world wars
20th century ideological experimentation
and conflicts re: role of art
objectivity vs. subjectivity
orthodoxy (convention) vs. absurd
autonomy vs. applied/utilitarian
real time and space vs. transcendent t & s
End of the 19th Century
A.
Advent of photography. Industrial Revolution:
the Machine Age - a new plasticity, mechanization
of material and form
Into the 20th Century
1900 Sigmund Freud - Psychoanalysis
1914 World War I Begins
1917 Russian Revolution
New social orders and shifting realities embodied
in ideology and aesthetics
Cubism: (Central Europe) Picasso, Braque
Futurism: (Central Europe) Marinetti, Boccioni
Constructivism: (Russia) Tatlin, Gabo, Pevsner
Dada: (Zurich, Cabaret Voltaire) Tristan Tzara,
Duchamp, Arp
Surrealism: Giacometti, Ray, Dali,
Oppenheim, Duchamp
Nude Descending a Staircase, Marcel
Duchamp, 1912
Abstract-Concretion: Arp, Moore, Hepworth
A.1) Cubism: (Central Europe) Picasso
early 1900s
many young artists hear about and travel to see
his painting, collage, and sculpture
Nude Descending a Staircase, Marcel
Duchamp, 1912
Head of a Woman, Picasso
A.1) Cubism: (Central Europe) Picasso
Planar break-down
eliminates traditional perspectival
space - not illusionistic, autonomous
object
accepts photography as recording
tool
A.2) Italian Futurism: Marinetti (manifesto 1909),
Boccioni
“Oh, maternal ditch, half full of
muddy water! A factory gutter! I savored
a mouthful of strengthening muck which
recalled the black teat of my Sudanese
nurse!
As I raised my body, mudspattered and smelly, I felt the red hot
poker of joy deliciously pierce my heart.
A crowd of fishermen and gouty
naturalists crowded terrified around this
marvel. With patient and tentative care
they raised high enormous grappling
irons to fish up my car, like a vast shark
that had run aground. It rose slowly
leaving in the ditch, like scales, its heavy
coachwork of good sense and its
upholstery of comfort.” Marinetti, 1909
Umberto Boccioni, The Unique Forms
of Continuity in Space, 1913
A.2) Italian Futurism: Marinetti (manifesto 1909),
Umberto Boccioni
 grows out of Cubism
 added implied motion to the shifting
planes and multiple observation
points of Cubists
 celebrated natural as well as mechanical
motion and speed
 glorified danger, war, and the machine
age (in keeping with the martial
spirit developing in Italy at the time)
“Marinetti, thrown from his automobile one
evening in 1909 into a factory ditch filled with
water, emerges as if from amniotic fluid to be
born - without ancestors - a futurist. This
parable of absolute self-creation that begins the
first Futurist Manifesto functions as a model for
what is meant by originality among early 20thC
avant-garde.” RK
Umberto Boccioni, The Unique Forms of
Continuity in Space, 1913
A.2) Italian Futurism: Marinetti, Boccioni
Italian Futurism: Umberto Boccioni (1882-1916) Development of a Bottle in Space, 1912.
Drawing and Bronze, 15" x 24”
 a kind of synthetic vision (x-ray vision)
 introducing movement to planar study
 remains within traditional materials/means
A.2) Italian Futurism
Greek, 3rdC b.c.
“… We declare that the splendor of the world has been enriched by a
new beauty: the beauty of speed. A racing automobile with its bonnet
adorned with great tubes like serpents with explosive breath ... a roaring
motor car which seems to run on machine-gun fire, is more beautiful than
the Victory of Samothrace.”
A.3) Constructivism: comparing Naum Gabo, Vladimir Tatlin
vs.
Vladimir Tatlin, Counter-Relief, 1915
Naum Gabo, Model for Constructed Torso,
1917
A.3) Constructivism: Naum Gabo
VOLUME OF MASS
VOLUME OF SPACE
Naum Gabo, volumetric cube
I, stereometric cube II
A.3) Constructivism: Naum Gabo
Stereometric figure sculpture
from flat cardboard and plywood
shapes (1915-17).
An “interlacing of shapes in 3
dimensions through the interior, or
structural core, of the normally closed
volume.…”
rt. Jacques Lipchitz
1916, bronze
A.3) Constructivism: Naum Gabo
Light Space Modulator, Laszlo Moholy-Nagy
http://www.sfmoma.org/explore/multimedia/videos/1
Naum Gabo, left, Construction in Space
1938-40, right, Linear Construction no. 2,
1970
• All materials can be used for sculpture
• Sculptural space has become a malleable
material element (Not dematerializing
sculpture)
• Space perception as new concept
• Non-narrative ideal forms
Context for Tatlin’s career:
1910: Martinetti’s Futurist
A.3) Constructivism: Vladimir Tatlin
(1885-1953)
Manifesto translated into Russian.
1913: at age 28, goes to Europe to
meet Picasso.
,
1915: Begins work on corner reliefs
in the spirit of “Productivism”.
 radical perceptual shift:
 sculptures bring attention to the
specific situation they inhabit
 real time and real space
1917: Russian Revolution
Corner Counter Relief, Vladimir Tatlin,
1914-15
A.3) Vladimir Tatlin
Corner Relief, 1915, iron, aluminum, primer, 31”x60”x30” (original
destroyed. Reconstruction 1966-70 by Martyn Chalk from photographs).
A.3) Tatlin’s corner reliefs:
radical because they reject transcendent
(imagined) space in two ways:
1. Anti-illusionism of situation in space. Real time and space
(meeting of two real architectural walls).
2. Attitude manifested toward the materials of which they are
made. Real materials (truth to materials + their inherent
characteristics)
A.3) Tatlin’s
monument:
Plans for real monument:
Taller than Eiffel Tower
Meant to be center of
Proletariat*
communications
and activities
Each section rotates
*proletariat – industrial wage
earners – not bourgeoisie
A.3) Tatlin’s monument:
Scaled-down London version
Plans for real monument:
Taller than Eiffel Tower
Meant to be center of
Proletariat* communications
and activities
Each section rotates
*proletariat – industrial wage earners – not bourgeoisie
A.3) Gabo’s column:
Idealizing tower – like structure
Never meant to be built
Transcendent space and time
A.3)
Naum Gabo - ideology of art as autonomous: Column, 1923, plastic wood and
metal: structural/material essense of object – transcendent time + space. A
summary of vantage points. Toward an immediate legible geometry,
transparency. (Pevsner, Gabo, Malevitch, Kandinsky, El Lissitzky)
Vladimir Tatlin - ideology of art as “of and for the people:” Monument to the Third
International, 1919-20. Factual Reality. Steel Girders, 1/3 higher than Eiffel
Tower. An aesthetic technology in real time, real space, real materials.
Technology placed in service of revolutionary ideology. (Rodchenko, Tatlin)
A.4) Dada: Tristan Tzara, André Breton, Jean
Arp, Marcel Duchamp, Man Ray
(gives rise to Surrealism 1924)
Surrealism: Giacometti, Man Ray, Dali,
Oppenheim, Duchamp
Born out of the horror of WWI
“Dada: abolition of logic, the dance of
the impotents of creation; Dada:
abolition of all the social hierarchies
and equations set up by our valets to
preserve values; …
Dada: abolition of archaeology; Dada:
abolition of the prophets; Dada:
abolition of the future; Dada: absolute
and unquestionable faith in every god
that is the product of spontaneity.” TT
DADA: nihilistic, absurdist, shocking, unorthodox, decries bourgeois
rationalism
Hausmann, Mechanical
Head Spirit of Our Time,
1919
1914
Duchamp,
Bottle Rack,
Surrealism
found object, readymade, altered
readymade
Degas, Little Dancer,
Degas, late 1800s
1881
A.5) Marcel Duchamp, above, Bicycle Wheel, 1913, right,
A.5) Surrealism: Andre Breton, Giacometti,
Man Ray, Dali, Oppenheim, Duchamp 1924
Meret Oppenheim, Luncheon in Fur,
1936
 a means of joining dream and fantasy to
everyday reality to form “an absolute reality,
a surreality.”
 influenced by Sigmund Freud, the unconscious
was the wellspring of the imagination.
 “beautiful as the chance encounter of an
umbrella and a sewing machine on a
dissecting
table.” Lautreamont
Degas,
Little Dancer,
1881
Man Ray, Indestructible
Object, 1923
A.6)
Jean Arp:
“Abstract
Concretions”
converts inert
matter to living
form….
Art belongs to a
species of natural
form
Head with Annoying
Objects, Jean Arp, 1930
A.6) Abstract-Concretion: Arp, Moore, Hepworth
Henry Moore, Reclining Figures
B. Case study of two contemporaries:
Duchamp/Brancusi (RK)
Marcel Duchamp (1887-1968):
un-worked, anti-representational,
cerebral…
Princess X, Brancusi,
1916
Constantin Brancusi: (1876-1957)
representational, raw material labored +
polished to perfect reflectivity.
Like Duchamp, his polished surfaces
“impenetrable” to analysis (narrative) no relationships between parts exist.
In Advance of the Broken Arm, Duchamp,
B. Marcel Duchamp (1887-1968):
The
Beginning
of the
World, 1924
Constantin Brancusi: (1876-1957)
Duchamp’s Bicycle Wheel
B. Marcel Duchamp (1887-1968)
Rrose Selavy (Eros, c’est la vie):
Selected serial objects that did not bear the
stamp of an act of creation from personally
held ideas or emotions
Readymades beg the question: What is a
work of art? Why do we think of art as
statements that must convey or embody a
certain content?
Not intended to hold the object up for
examination, but to scrutinize the act of
aesthetic transformation itself. RK
Constantin Brancusi: (1876-1957)
“There is a purpose in all things. To get
to it one must go beyond oneself.” CB
Arduous and patient labor, reducing to
refined elegant craft
1.Odd similarity btwn. Duchamp and
Brancusi - both end up with works that
appear machine made
2.Both men stand out from movements
Glossy surface deflects surface
interpretations - courting the finish of
machine-made objects
C. Der Lauf der Dinge, (The
Way Things Go), Fischli and
Weiss:
Cause and effect - celebrating the
banal
Element of play (opposite of Freud),
politics of childhood - calculated to
annoy
The thingness of the thing
(non-rep.) + things at hand Heidegger, Tatlin, Duchamp
Found object inversion since
Duch.:
Trompe l’oeil
Andy Warhol’s Brillo Boxes,
1964
Jasper Johns, Ale Cans, 1960
Arthur C. Danto –
“…as The Way Things Go
makes manifestly clear, ordinary
objects have their dark side, and
the bland peaceful world of
orderly routine which facilitates
the conduct of ordinary life, is
achingly fragile.”
C. Fischli and Weiss:
Plötzlich diese Übersicht
(Suddenly This Overview), 19812012
Unfired clay
above, Small and Large
rt. Freeway
C. Fischli and Weiss:
Plötzlich diese Übersicht
(Suddenly This Overview), 19812012
C. Fischli and Weiss:
Plötzlich diese Übersicht
(Suddenly This Overview),
1981-2012
above, Mick Jagger and Brian
Jones Going Home Satisfied
after Composing “I Can’t Get
No Satisfaction”
rt. Mr. and Mrs. Einstein Shortly
After Conceiving Their Genius
Son Albert
D. BBC video (58 minutes):
http://www.dailymotion.com/video/xy9ag1_bbchorizon-the-creative-brain-how-insight-works_tech
Horizon: The Creative Brain, How Insight Works
Jonathan Schooler, Simone Ritter
Divergent Thinking