modern, modernity, modernism for option

8/6/2019 Modern, Modernity, Modernism for Option

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The crazy race for the hazy future



In the 12th Century, William, theageing abbot of Saint-Thierry,when told that King David, whenhe was old, ruled the kingdom from

his bed, concluded that in biblicaltimes, the world was youthful andpeople had more strength andvitality.

Bernard of Chartres wrote aboutthe ‘antiqui’ and ‘moderni’, sayingin essence that modern scholarswere dwarves who could seefarther, but only because theystood on the shoulders of giants.



In the early 17th Century,Rene Descartes argued fornew ways of judging andseeking truth. He frequently

set his views apart fromthose of his predecessors. Hespecifically rejected theancients . He accounted forthings by mechanicalexplanations. He beganideas which laid thegroundwork for the scientificmethod. He said ‘I think,therefore I am’ (Cogito ergosum)



In the late 17th century. JohnLocke argued againstAugustine and the churchwho said that man was

inherently sinful. Locke saidthat man was essentiallyborne with a clean slate, or‘tabula rasa’. He alsosuggested that the peoplehad the right to overthrowtheir leaders. He broke out of the ‘sacred circle’. His theoryof mind is often seen as theorigin of modern conceptionsof identity and the self.



Locke’s ideas went into the‘Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen’ of theFrench Revolution of 1789.This asserts that all men areequal and that there is nodivine right of kings and nospecial privilege for thechurch. No mention, however,of the rights of women or

slaves. The declaration isbased on the principles of theAge of Enlightenment, suchas individualism and the socialcontract of John Locke andJean-Jacques Rousseau.



The Industrial Revolutionbegan in England in the late18th Century. A hostilitydeveloped towards

industrialisation.Romanticism grew. Membersin England included artist andpoet William Blake and poetslike Wordsworth, Coleridge,John Keats, Lord Byron and

Percy Shelley. Mary Shelley'snovel ‘Frankenstein’ showedconcerns that scientificprogress might not be alwaysbe for the good.

Philip James de Loutherbourg,Coalbrookdale by Night, 1801



The movement stressed theimportance of "nature" in art, incontrast to "monstrous" machines

and factories. The Romanticsreacted against the mechanicaland the controlled. In art,literature and music, theyemphasized the individual, the

subjective, the irrational, theimaginative, the personal, thespontaneous, the emotional, thevisionary, and the transcendental.‘Wanderer Above the Sea of

Fog’ Caspar David Friedrich,

1818.



The Victorian Era continuedEnlightenment ideas. Thewild, passionate, erotic,even destructive aspects of

Romanticism continue in allthe arts, (although not in thehome). There is a longingfor the Gothic and medievalpast and at the same time,

great scientific and technicalprogress. Photographytakes off. Moving images arecaptured on film for the firsttime in 1888, in Leeds.



MODERNITY

Charles Darwin Einstein's Theory of

Relativity Sigmund Freud and

Psychoanalysis Communism

Cars Airplanes Telephones Radios WWI

MODERNISM

Cubism

Futurism (and Vorticism) Abstraction(ism) Stream of Consciousness dada(ism) Surrealism? Expressionism Existentialism Pop art Celebration of Technology



Avant-Garde.

1. The advance group in anyfield, esp. in the visual, literary,or musical arts, whose works arecharacterized chiefly byunorthodox and experimentalmethods.

2. Of or pertaining to theexperimental treatment of artistic, musical, or literary

material. 3. Belonging to the avant-garde:

an avant-garde composer. 4. Unorthodox or daring; radical.

From dictionary.comPablo Picasso. The TwoSaltimbanques (Harlequin and

his Companion), 1901



The world seen frommultiple viewpoints.Picasso’s ‘LesDemoiselles d'Avignon’,

1907.

‘There's somethinganarchist and ruthlessabout it that contains

dada and MarcelDuchamp and punk’.

Jonathan Jones, The Guardian



''On or about December1910 human characterchanged,'' Virginia Woolf observed. Relations

between ''masters andservants, husbands andwives, parents andchildren'' shifted, shewrote, ''and when

human relations changethere is at the same timea change in religion,conduct, politics andliterature.''



‘Nude Descending aStaircase, No. 2’ byMarcel Duchamp,1912. Successivesuperimposed images– influenced by stop-motion images of Etienne Jules Marey.

Criticised as ‘anexplosion in a shinglefactory’. Influence of scientific ideas –Einstein?



Futurists were fascinatedwith dynamism, speed,and restlessness of

modern urban life. ‘Wewant no part in the past’wrote Marinetti in Italy.Old art should be

‘heaved over the side of the steamship of modernity’ saidMayakovsky in Russia.

Umberto Boccioni – Elasticity 1912.



Hans Richter saw thebeginnings of Dada in theoutbreak of World War I. Themovement was a protest

against the bourgeoisnationalist and colonialistinterests which many believedwere the root cause of the war,and against the cultural andintellectual conformity — in art

and more broadly in society —that corresponded to the war.Dada protested againsteverything, a nonsensical,absurd world represented byslaughter and stupidity.



Dada was nihilistic and antirational. Artists madenonsensical speeches, poetsconstructed poems by cutting

random words fromnewspapers and picking themout of a sack).Marcel Duchampexhibited 'found objects' out of context e.g. urinals. A reviewerfrom the American Art News

stated at the time that "TheDada philosophy is the sickest,most paralyzing and mostdestructive thing that has everoriginated from the brain of man."‘Fountain’ by Marcel Duchamp,

1917



The art of the Surrealistmovement was centredaround the irrational and the

subconscious. Surrealistswere influenced by the'untutored' art of children,madness and so called'primitive art forms'. They

wanted to create somethingmore real than reality itself.Many Surrealists knew andinteracted in various wayswith Freud and Jung. ‘The Elephant Celebes’, Max Ernst. 1921.



Modernism and the avant-garde

“Modernism has proposed a new kind of art for a new kind of social and perceptual

world. The avant-garde, aggressive fromthe beginning, saw itself as a breakthroughto the future. It’s members were…the

militants of a creativity which would reviveand liberate humanity”.

(Raymond Williams, ‘The Politics of Modernism’, 1989.



Avant-Garde Film

Traditionally, the avant-garde cinema is seen inopposition to Hollywood.

Mid 20th

century art criticClement Greenbergattached aesthetic value tothe avant-garde in paintingas in cinema. He dismissedHollywood as kitsch – thesentimental, themelodramatic and thebanal.

In fact, this opposition isnot so clear cut. Manyavant-garde filmmakers

worked in commercial filmand some celebratedaspects of Hollywood –often the most tacky andthe most kitsch. Therearose a third category –commercial art films whichincorporated radical ideas,perspectives and politics.



dada

The Dadaists saw in film an opportunity toassault traditional narrative verities, to ridicule“character,” “setting,” and “plot” as bourgeoisconventions, to slaughter causality by using theinnate dynamism of the film medium tooverturn conventional Aristotelian notions of

time and space. In so doing, they knew theywould question the ideological underpinnings of the old era which had held the well-made storyso dear’. Donald Faulkner, NYSU Writers Institute



The Bearded Heart

Tristan Tzara organized a dadaevent ‘The Bearded Heart’, andwanted to show Dada films. He

commissioned Man Ray. He alsoshowed his own play ‘Heart of Gas’.There was a riot afterwards andseats and lights were broken. Oneperson had a broken arm. Hans

Richter wrote that it was Dada’sswansong. “There was no point incontinuing because nobody couldany longer see any point.”



Salt, Pepper, Pins and Tacks

Man Ray writes “On some strips I

sprinkled salt and pepper, like a

cook preparing a roast, on other

strips I threw pins and thumbtacks

at random; then I turned on thewhite light for a second or two”.

The anarchic arrangement of

strips of Rayographs and filmed

sequences expressed a spirit of

spontaneity and chance, whichwere the dada strategies of

disrupting logic and rational order.

The title of the film, ‘Retour { la

Raison’, is therefore highly ironic.



"I suggested that we burnthe negative... something Iwould have done withouthesitation had the group

agreed. In fact I'd still do ittoday; I can imagine ahuge pyre in my own littlegarden where all mynegatives and all thecopies of my own films goup in flames. It wouldn'tmake the slightestdifference." Luis Bunuel.

Screenshot from ‘Le Chien Andalou’, 1929



Precisionists wereAmerican painters whopainted mammoth urban

structures devoid of human activity, standing inmute testament to thehardness and coldness of modern life. Precisionism

was an American responseto Cubism and Futurism,sometimes called ‘CubistRealism’.

Charles Demuth, Aucassiuand Nicolette, 1921



Charles Scheeler hadspent time in Paris, asdid many American

artists. He createdPrecisionist landscapesand cityscapes. Heteamed up with Paul

Strand, a photographerto make ‘Manhatta’ a cityfilm celebrating NewYork.Skyscrapers, 1922



In 1929, Dziga Vertovmade the film ‘Man witha Movie Camera’ which

he wrote “Represents anexperimentation in thecinematic transmissionof visual phenomenawithout the use of

intertitle (a film withoutintertitles) without thehelp of a script (a filmwithout script)...



...without the help of aTheatre (a film withoutactors, without sets, etc.)This new experimentation

work by Kino-Eye isdirected towards thecreation of anauthentically internationalabsolute language of cinema – Absolute

Kinography – on the basisof its complete separationfrom the language of theatre and literature."



Tossing aside thetraditional notions of cinematic narratives(poignant love stories,

sweeping historicalaccounts, spooky suspenseflicks), Léger zoomed in onevery day objects, like "apipe, a chair, a typewriter,a hat, a foot." Finding

visual likeness betweenshapes and movements,"Le Ballet Mécanique"divorces an object’s visualaspects from its function.

Screenshot from ‘Ballet Mécanique’ by painter Fernand Leger and

cinematographer/journalist Dudley Murphy, 1924



Closely aligned withpainting, photography

Non-narrative, abstract

images Celebrating the city,

technology, energy Creating an effect,

including shock Experiments with

montage, form, close-ups Can be Romantic, idealistic

Fernand Léger , ‘Le Grand

Dejeuner’ , 1920/21

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