EDUCATING VISION:

PHOTOGRAPHY AND THE EUROPEAN AVANT-GARDE

A change to advertised times The lecture order now: -Educating Vision -A Question of Beauty -Fashion Stories -Locating the Digital

FIVE AREAS: FUTURISM DADA SURREALISM CONSTRUCTIVISM BAUHAUS

FUTURISM: CONTEXT Italy: 1909 - 1930s Artists: F. T. Marinetti, Umberto Boccioni, Giacomo Balla, Luigi Russolo

Filippo Tommaso Marinetti: We afrm that the worlds magnicence 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 of Samothrace

*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 typied by shock and / or provocation

Fortunato Depero ! Self-portrait with clenched st! 1915 !

F. T. Marinetti: We intend to exalt aggressive action, a feverish insomnia, the racers stride, 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

Filippo Masoero Dynamised view of the Roman Forum 1934!

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

Anton Giulio Bragaglia and Arturo Bragaglia, Typist 1913!

Anton Giulio Bragaglia: We are involved only in the area of movement which produces sensation, the memory of which still 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.

Anton Giulio Bragaglia: We are involved only in the area of movement which produces sensation, the memory of which still 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.

Anton Giulio Bragaglia: We are involved only in the area of movement which produces sensation, the memory of which still 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.

Anton Giulio Bragaglia: We are involved only in the area of movement which produces sensation, the memory of which still 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.

Arturo Bragaglia Photodynamic portrait of a woman c.1924!

 Lady Gaga at MTV Video and Music Awards 2010

Sensation: Young British Artists from the Saatchi Collection curated by Norman Rosenthal and Charles Saatchi 1997 A legacy of shock tactics of recent art managed by an advertising mogul

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

The Dadaist ghts against the death-throes and death-drunkenness of his times He knows that this world of systems has gone to pieces

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 future Freedom: 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)!

Hugo Ball in costume at Cabaret Voltaire in 1916, text for poem Caravan overprinted

Raoul Hausmann, ABCD, 1923-4 Hannah Hch, Cut with the Kitchen Knife Dada through the last Weimar Beer Belly Cultural Epoch of Germany, 1919-20

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

Hannah Hch! Merry Woman! 1923!

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)

David Bordwell: Montage is often associated with lm, 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 Hearteld, Hannah Hoch, Gustav Klutsis Film montage of Lev Kuleshov, Sergei Eisenstein and Dziga Vertov

John Stezaker Film Portrait (She) I 2005

John Stezaker Love XI 2006

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, lm, advertising (the internet, mass media the message force multiplier)

The political dimension of ! photo-montage:! ! ! John Hearteld ! The true meaning of the Hitler salute: millions stand behind me ! 1932! !

Martha Rosler Bringing the War Home: House Beautiful 2004

READYMADE OR FOUND OBJECT The aesthetic dimension of the readymade: Marcel Duchamp, Fountain, 1917 Marcel Duchamp, L.H.O.O.Q. 1919

Richard Prince: the found photograph

Andy Warhol: ! *the mechanical *the found object *questioning value *self-insertion into ! circulating media structures!

SURREALISM! &! PHOTOGRAPHY!

The surreal as a dialogue with the other that is encountered through: dreams coincidences correspondences (strange equivalences) the marvellous the uncanny a reciprocal exchange: connecting conscious and unconscious thought

Mary Ann Caws: surrealism operates around intense encounters between the everyday and the imaginary 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

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

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. Dictated by 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 neglected associations, in the omnipotence of dream, in the disinterested play of thought. Andr Breton, Manifesto of Surrealism, 1924

Andr Breton: Beauty will be convulsive (in his Nadja) Convulsive beauty will be veiled-erotic, fixed-explosive, magical circumstantial or will not be (in his LAmour Fou)

Man Ray, Fixed-Explosive, 1934!

Surrealist techniques and themes: Doubling - Superimposing Convulsing the ordinary into the extra-ordinary Mannequins and other objects that look alive: an uncanny confusion of 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

Surrealist techniques and themes: Doubling - Superimposing Convulsing the ordinary into the extra-ordinary Mannequins and other objects that look alive: an uncanny confusion of 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

Man Ray, The Marquise Casati, 1922

Man Ray, Untitled, 1924 Man Ray, Tomorrow (Demain), 1924

Surrealist techniques and themes: Doubling - Superimposing Convulsing the ordinary into the extra-ordinary Mannequins and other objects that look alive: an uncanny confusion of 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

Brassa, ! Involuntary Sculptures ! 1933 !

Brassa Nude 1931-1932! ! Man Ray Untitled 1934 !

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

Surrealist techniques and themes: Doubling - Superimposing Convulsing the ordinary into the extra-ordinary Mannequins and other objects that look alive: an uncanny confusion of 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

Hans Bellmer

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 the provocative 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

Surrealist techniques and themes: Doubling - Superimposing Convulsing the ordinary into the extra-ordinary Mannequins and other objects that look alive: an uncanny confusion of 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

Brassa, Graffiti, 1933-1956

Surrealist techniques and themes: Doubling - Superimposing Convulsing the ordinary into the extra-ordinary Mannequins and other objects that look alive: an uncanny confusion of 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

Salvador Dali Communication: visage paranoaque 1931

Walter Benjamin: Surrealism [and the avant-garde] is a profane illumination (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

NEW VISIONS: BAUHAUS & CONSTRUCTIVISM

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

El Lissitzky, The Constructor, 1924

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 superuous elements. The scheme of a construction is the combination of lines, and the planes and forms which they dene; it is a system of forces. Composition is an arrangement according to a dened and conventional signication cited in Briony Fer, The Language of Construction in Realism, Rationalism, Surrealism: Art Between the Wars, p.104

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, cemeteries and museums

M Kaufmann, Rodchenko in front of dismantled constructions, 1922

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

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

RODCHENKO: in order to accustom people to seeing from new viewpoints it is essential to take photographs of everyday, familiar objects in completely unexpected positions. We must revolutionise our visual reasoning

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

Specific values attributed to lines of sight: The old rural: tradition The new urban: revolution A visual strategy of de-familiarization; Especially of habits of viewing

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

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

Alexsandr Rodchenko, Pioneer, 1930

Lszl Moholy-Nagy Light-Space Modulator, 1930!

LSZL MOHOLY-NAGY THE NEW VISION: vision enhanced: teaching us to see the present, to make the future!

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

Imaging the rhythms of modern life

Lzl Moholy-Nagy, Parking Lot, Chicago, 1938

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

Lzl Moholy-Nagy, Berlin Radio Tower, c 1928

Moholy-Nagy: the photographic camera can either complete or supplement our optical instrument, the eye from his Painting, Photography, Film, 1925 (reprinted 1967), p.28

Umbo, Uncanny Street, 1928

Moholy-Nagy: the view from above, from below, the oblique view, which today often disconcert 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.

Lzl Moholy-Nagy, Marseilles, 1929

*An emphasis on the technical conditions of the apparatus *A creation of the picture outside the constraints of correct composition or perspective a new picture? *An attempt to use the camera as inorganic mechanical apparatus to reenergise our organic way of seeing *An aesthetics of shock (again)

Key paradigms to consider: *How is sensation or provocation an issue for photography? *What is the potential of montage? *How does the unconscious get gured? *What is a revolution in visual understanding? *How can technology help us make connections to the conditions we live in?