Showing posts with label Dada. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Dada. Show all posts
Wednesday, September 7, 2011
Monday, March 7, 2011
Dada dump (and a re-boot)
Looking back at this blog over the last few weeks, it's apparent to me that I haven't actually written anything in awhile. But what I had intended to do (and didn't) was post a few more profiles of notable artists associated with Dada, then contrast their collectivist, random, and very expressive approach to that of Marcel Duchamp's "non-retinal" conceptualist approach, all as a means of differentiating "concept" and "expression" within a broader umbrella of aesthetic experience not limited to the visible qualities of an art work.
Unfortunately, I left town for nine days and kind of lost track of what I was thinking about on this topic. Or, for that matter, how I was going to relate it to poetry.
If you're one of those rare people who find this topic interesting, then you might see where I get hung up: "aesthetics" presumably precludes "concept" as an integral aspect of aesthetic experience - at least according to Kant and like-minded others. And, from a different angle, there are probably those who work in conceptualist modes that would scoff at any notion of aesthetics when considering the significance of conceptual art.
All of which I find absurd. Why? Because my own idea of aesthetics involves the perceivable structure of patterns - not confined to meaning, beauty, or any of the human senses - that can be appreciated as art. And I think there is a huge amount of overlap, so an opposition between aesthetics and conceptualism is, quite frankly, a false dichotomy.
Or, as Henry James asserted in "The Art of Fiction" (concerning the validity of experimentation by novelists): “The only obligation to which in advance we may hold a novel, without incurring the accusation of being arbitrary, is that it be interesting.” To which I say (concerning the validity of artistic experimentation in general), Amen.
Beyond all this, I'd also like to argue that the "anti-art" of Dada might actually be considered "anti" only in the sense that it purposefully violates all preexisting notions of what art was supposed to be in its own particular era, i.e. that "art" was bound to formal appearance and craft (as fashioned by the artistic genius of notable individuals) even when the formal structures of these art works were highly innovative (as in the case of Impressionism, for example).
In other words, while Dada eschewed the conventions of craft, they still produced art which could be appreciated from an aesthetic point of view, i.e. "what meets the eye" is still the object of art. In Duchamp's case, however, he confounded the eye and directly engaged a world of human concepts and social dynamics that is only referred to by the art object. Which is to say, the "structure" of his art exists in the non-material (and very complicated) realm of human social experience as it is metonymically referenced by the object of art.
All of this, of course, constitutes a large mouthful of assertions that I don't currently know how to support. I also don't know if anybody else finds the subject half as interesting as I do. Still, it's a significant topic that is worth exploring, especially when considering the hegemonic realities of contemporary art and poetry. Or the fact that "conceptual" and "aesthetic" approaches don't appear to get along very well, at least not as well as they should.
In the process of studying this issue, I came across an essay by Marjorie Perloff that is far more interesting and relevant than anything I could personally write concerning the difference between Duchamp and the Dadas. If the topic interests you, I highly encourage you to click on this link and give it a ponder.
On a related note, Michael Solender and Lynn Alexander recently invited me to become a regular contributer to Full of Crow's On the Wing. The reason this is a related matter is that for my first essay there I want to explore conceptual art - focusing on Duchamp - as a type of "aesthetic" that -- while being neither visual nor representational -- still creates "beautiful" structures through a reflexive form of metonymy in which "what meets the eye" is considerably less important than what meets the interrelational core of a radically expanded concept of human subjectivity and social experience.
The challenge of course, is how to create a reputable argument for the appreciation of conceptual art as an aesthetic experience without making an intellectual fool of myself in the process. I'll post a link if and when it gets published.
In the meantime, I want to "re-boot" this blog and begin examining contemporary poetry as it is presently being written and published on the internet. Having recently posted the press release from VIDA concerning gender bias in established lit journals, I'll probably turn my attention toward writers who not only happen to be women but who also happen to be terrific poets.
Specifically, I'm thinking of writers like Kim Addonizio, Arlene Ang, Venus Khoury-Ghata, or Denise Duhamel. But if anyone wants to offer any other suggestions, I'm all ears - post it in the comment section and I'll take a serious look at the work of any poet you put forward. And, while you're thinking about that, why don't you take a look at a few varied works of creative brilliance and humor from Kimberly Kaye: Banjoetry
[Sometimes I hate it when people are waaay more creative than me ...]
Unfortunately, I left town for nine days and kind of lost track of what I was thinking about on this topic. Or, for that matter, how I was going to relate it to poetry.
If you're one of those rare people who find this topic interesting, then you might see where I get hung up: "aesthetics" presumably precludes "concept" as an integral aspect of aesthetic experience - at least according to Kant and like-minded others. And, from a different angle, there are probably those who work in conceptualist modes that would scoff at any notion of aesthetics when considering the significance of conceptual art.
All of which I find absurd. Why? Because my own idea of aesthetics involves the perceivable structure of patterns - not confined to meaning, beauty, or any of the human senses - that can be appreciated as art. And I think there is a huge amount of overlap, so an opposition between aesthetics and conceptualism is, quite frankly, a false dichotomy.
Or, as Henry James asserted in "The Art of Fiction" (concerning the validity of experimentation by novelists): “The only obligation to which in advance we may hold a novel, without incurring the accusation of being arbitrary, is that it be interesting.” To which I say (concerning the validity of artistic experimentation in general), Amen.
Beyond all this, I'd also like to argue that the "anti-art" of Dada might actually be considered "anti" only in the sense that it purposefully violates all preexisting notions of what art was supposed to be in its own particular era, i.e. that "art" was bound to formal appearance and craft (as fashioned by the artistic genius of notable individuals) even when the formal structures of these art works were highly innovative (as in the case of Impressionism, for example).
In other words, while Dada eschewed the conventions of craft, they still produced art which could be appreciated from an aesthetic point of view, i.e. "what meets the eye" is still the object of art. In Duchamp's case, however, he confounded the eye and directly engaged a world of human concepts and social dynamics that is only referred to by the art object. Which is to say, the "structure" of his art exists in the non-material (and very complicated) realm of human social experience as it is metonymically referenced by the object of art.
All of this, of course, constitutes a large mouthful of assertions that I don't currently know how to support. I also don't know if anybody else finds the subject half as interesting as I do. Still, it's a significant topic that is worth exploring, especially when considering the hegemonic realities of contemporary art and poetry. Or the fact that "conceptual" and "aesthetic" approaches don't appear to get along very well, at least not as well as they should.
In the process of studying this issue, I came across an essay by Marjorie Perloff that is far more interesting and relevant than anything I could personally write concerning the difference between Duchamp and the Dadas. If the topic interests you, I highly encourage you to click on this link and give it a ponder.
On a related note, Michael Solender and Lynn Alexander recently invited me to become a regular contributer to Full of Crow's On the Wing. The reason this is a related matter is that for my first essay there I want to explore conceptual art - focusing on Duchamp - as a type of "aesthetic" that -- while being neither visual nor representational -- still creates "beautiful" structures through a reflexive form of metonymy in which "what meets the eye" is considerably less important than what meets the interrelational core of a radically expanded concept of human subjectivity and social experience.
The challenge of course, is how to create a reputable argument for the appreciation of conceptual art as an aesthetic experience without making an intellectual fool of myself in the process. I'll post a link if and when it gets published.
In the meantime, I want to "re-boot" this blog and begin examining contemporary poetry as it is presently being written and published on the internet. Having recently posted the press release from VIDA concerning gender bias in established lit journals, I'll probably turn my attention toward writers who not only happen to be women but who also happen to be terrific poets.
Specifically, I'm thinking of writers like Kim Addonizio, Arlene Ang, Venus Khoury-Ghata, or Denise Duhamel. But if anyone wants to offer any other suggestions, I'm all ears - post it in the comment section and I'll take a serious look at the work of any poet you put forward. And, while you're thinking about that, why don't you take a look at a few varied works of creative brilliance and humor from Kimberly Kaye: Banjoetry
[Sometimes I hate it when people are waaay more creative than me ...]
Monday, February 21, 2011
Dada du jour: Hans Richter (1888-1976)
"Chance became our trademark. We followed it like a compass."
--Hans Richter
Rythmus 23 (1923)
excerpts from Dada Art and Anti-Art (Hans Richter, 1965)
--Hans Richter
Rythmus 23 (1923)
excerpts from Dada Art and Anti-Art (Hans Richter, 1965)
Dada's propaganda for a total repudiation of art was in itself a factor in the advance of art. Our feelings of freedom from rules, precepts, money, and critical praise, a freedom for which we paid the price of an excessive distaste and contempt for the public, was a major stimulus. The freedom not to care a damn about anything, the absence of any kind of opportunism, which in any case could have served no purpose, brought us all the closer to the source of all art, the voice within ourselves. The absence of any ulterior motive enabled us to listen to the voice of the "Unknown"--and to draw knowledge from the realm of the unknown. Thus we arrived at the central experience of Dada.
...
Dissatisfied with a drawing he had been working on for some time, Arp finally tore it up and let the pieces flutter to the floor of his studio on the Zeltweg. Some time later he happened to notice these same scraps of paper as they lay on the floor, and was struck by the pattern they formed. It had all the expressive power that he had tried in vain to achieve. How meaningful! How telling! Chance movements of his hand and of the fluttering scraps of paper had achieved what all his efforts had failed to achieve, namely expression. He accepted this challenge from chance as a decision of fate and carefully pasted the scraps down in the pattern which chance had determined.
...
The conclusion that Dada drew from all this was that chance must be recognized as a new stimulus to artistic creation. This may well be regarded as the central experience of Dada, that which marks it off from all preceding artistic movements ...
Jean (Hans) Arp, Tristan Tzara, Hans Richter (Zurich, 1917)
Ghosts before breakfast (1927)
... the new experience gave us new energy and an exhilaration which led, in our private lives, to all sorts of excesses; to insolence, insulting behavior, pointless acts of defiance, fictitious duels, riots--all the things that later came to be regarded as the distinctive signs of Dada. But beneath it all lay a genuine mental and emotional experience that gave us wings to fly--and to look down upon the absurdities of the 'real' and earnest world.
Ghosts before breakfast (1927)
Sunday, February 20, 2011
Dada du jour: Jean Arp (1887-1966)
"The morality of idiots and their belief in geniuses makes me shit."
--Jean (Hans) Arp
Kaspar Is Dead (1912, trans. Ralph Manheim)
alas our good kaspar is dead.
who will now carry the burning banner hidden in the pigtail of clouds to play the daily
black joke.
who will now turn the coffee mill in the primaeval barrel.
who will now entice the idyllic deer out of the petrified paper box.
who will now confound on the high seas by addressing them as parapluie and the winds
by calling them keeper of the bees ozone spindle your highnesss.
alas alas alas our good kaspar is dead. holy ding dong kaspar is dead.
the cattlefish in the bellbarns clatter with heartrending grief when his christian name
is uttered. that is why I keep on moaning his family name kaspar kaspar kaspar.
why have you left us. into what shape has your beautiful great soul migrated.
have you become a star or a watery chain attached to a hot whirlwind
or an udder of black light or a transparent brick on the groaning drum
of jagged being.
now the part in our hair the soles of our feet are parched and the fairies lie half-charred
on the pyre.
now the black bowling alley thunders behind the sun and there's no one to wind up
the compasses and the wheels of the handbarrows any more.
who will now eat with the phosphorescent rat at the lonely barefooted table.
who will now chase away the siroccoco devil when he wants to beguile the horses.
who will now explain to us the monograms in the stars.
his bust will adorn the mantelpieces of all truly noble men but that's no comfort that's snuff
to a skull.
excerpts from Dadaland (1938/1948, trans. Ralph Manheim)
Jean Arp in his studio (photo by Ida Kar, late 1950's, National Portrait Gallery, London.)
--Jean (Hans) Arp
Kaspar Is Dead (1912, trans. Ralph Manheim)
alas our good kaspar is dead.
who will now carry the burning banner hidden in the pigtail of clouds to play the daily
black joke.
who will now turn the coffee mill in the primaeval barrel.
who will now entice the idyllic deer out of the petrified paper box.
who will now confound on the high seas by addressing them as parapluie and the winds
by calling them keeper of the bees ozone spindle your highnesss.
alas alas alas our good kaspar is dead. holy ding dong kaspar is dead.
the cattlefish in the bellbarns clatter with heartrending grief when his christian name
is uttered. that is why I keep on moaning his family name kaspar kaspar kaspar.
why have you left us. into what shape has your beautiful great soul migrated.
have you become a star or a watery chain attached to a hot whirlwind
or an udder of black light or a transparent brick on the groaning drum
of jagged being.
now the part in our hair the soles of our feet are parched and the fairies lie half-charred
on the pyre.
now the black bowling alley thunders behind the sun and there's no one to wind up
the compasses and the wheels of the handbarrows any more.
who will now eat with the phosphorescent rat at the lonely barefooted table.
who will now chase away the siroccoco devil when he wants to beguile the horses.
who will now explain to us the monograms in the stars.
his bust will adorn the mantelpieces of all truly noble men but that's no comfort that's snuff
to a skull.
excerpts from Dadaland (1938/1948, trans. Ralph Manheim)
"The Renaissance taught men the haughty exultation of their reason. Modern times, with their science and technology, turned men towards megalomania. The confusion of our epoch results from our overestimation of reason. We wanted an anonymous and collective art. Here is what I wrote on the occasion of an exhibition we put on in Zurich in 1915: These works are constructed with lines, surfaces, forms, and colors. They strive to surpass the human and achieve the infinite and the eternal. They are a negation of man's egotism ... The hands of our brothers, instead of serving as our own hands, had become enemy hands. Instead of anonymity there was celebrity and the masterpiece; wisdom was dead ... To reproduce is to imitate, to play a comedy, to walk the tightrope ...
...
"I met Tzara and Serner at the Odéon and at the Café de la Terrasse in Zurich, where we wrote a cycle of poems: Hyperbole of the crocodile-barber and the walking cane. This type of poem was later baptized "Automatic Poetry" by the Surrealists. Automatic poetry issues straight from the entrails of the poet or from any other organ that has stored up reserves. Neither the Postillion de Longjumeau nor the Alexandrine, nor grammar, nor aesthetics, nor Buddha, nor the Sixth Commandment can interfere with it in the least. It crows, curses, sighs, stammers, yodels, just as it pleases. Its poems are like nature: they stink, laugh, rhyme like nature. It esteems foolishness, or at least what men call foolishness, as highly as sublime rhetoric, for in nature a broken twig is equal to the stars in beauty and importance, and it is men who decree what is beautiful and what is ugly."
