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The crazy race for the hazy future
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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.
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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)
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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.
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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.
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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
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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.
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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.
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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
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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
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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
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''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.''
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‘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?
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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.
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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.
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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
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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
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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.”
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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.
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"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
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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
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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
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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)...
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...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."
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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
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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