Concepts of Modernity Current manifestations in the visual arts

Week 2 March 7 2011

Poetics of the unconscious- Personal Expression

Modernity lecture CAI202

Lecturer Caroline Rannersberger caroline.rannersberger@cdu.edu.au

Overview

• Recap of modernism

• Context of modernity in 21st century

• Snapshot of Expressionism

• Surrealism in Europe

• Contemporary painting and the poetic of the unconscious

• Surrealism and Australian modernism

SourcesPoetics of the unconscious- Personal Expression

(A focus on Surrealism)

Harrison, Charles, and Paul Wood, eds. Art in Theory1900-1990. Oxford: Blackwell, 1993:pp.440-450: (4)André Breton: Surrealism and Painting; (5)André Breton from the Second Manifesto of Surrealism

Hughes, Robert. The Shock of the New. London: BBCBooks, 1991: Chapter Five: The Threshold of Liberty

Artists: Max Ernst, Giorgio de Chirico, Henri Rousseau,Joan Miró, René Magritte, as well as contemporary Australian artists.

Extension: Find contemporary Australia artists working with similar ideas/methods. Refer Art Almanac http://www.art-almanac.com.au/ for overview of artists and follow the links to public/commercial galleries. Also refer electronic/hard copy art journals: Art Monthly, Art & Australia, Artlink, etc available in the CDU library/online database.

•Enlightenment and enlightened thinking •(contrast counter enlightenment: Isaiah Berlin 1901-1997)

•science, reason, truth= the basis of knowledge

•be free from established systems of thinking/ grand narratives

•break from the past and its romantic, emotive belief in god and religion

Recap: modernism and modern way of thinking

21st century = the banality of modernity

•Critique of the rise of industry and economic development and its manifestations of banality

•Indictment of the banality that characterizes modern life

•21stC slick, pretty, traditional surfaces critiquing aspects of modernism

•See through the superficiality and into a cultural analysis

Francisco Goya: ‘Father of modernity’ 1746-1828

Francisco Goya, "The Sleep of Reason Produces Monsters," published 1799

•Francisco José de Goya y Lucientes (30 March 1746 – 16 April 1828)

•Spanish romantic painter and printmaker

•last of the Old Masters

•first of the moderns

Thought/ the unconscious = new reality

Goya (Spanish romantic 18th/19thC): El sueño de la razón produce monstruos: When reasons dream, monsters are born (Hughes,p.213)

thought creates a parallel world = dreams

the irrational =human nature

mental derangement gives way to the dark side of the mind / locus of irrefutable truths about society

Adapted from: 1 Hughes, Robert. The Shock of the New. London: BBC Books, 1991.pp 212-216

•Is manifested in modernist movements including:

•Expressionism (means of personal /emotive expression through painterly methods)

•Surrealism (means of unconscious expression through rejection of realism and the rational)

Poetics of the unconscious- Personal Expression

Expressionsim: A snapshot

Edvard Munch; The Scream (or The Cry)

1893; 150 Kb; Casein/waxed crayon and tempera on paper (cardboard), 91 x 73.5 cm (35 7/8 x 29"); Nasjonalgalleriet (National Gallery), Oslo

Norwegian painter and printmaker; symbolist

“the study of the soul, that is to say the study of my own self” José María Faerna, Munch, Harry N. Abrams, New York, 1995, p. 16

icon of existential anguish; personal expression and the unconscious;intense, evocative paintings influence on German Expressionism early 20th century

The Scream; Edvard Munch 1863-1944

"I was walking down the road with two friends when the sun set; suddenly, the sky turned as red as blood. I stopped and leaned against the fence, feeling unspeakably tired. Tongues of fire and blood stretched over the bluish black fjord. My friends went on walking, while I lagged behind, shivering with fear. Then I heard the enormous, infinite scream of nature."

(Faerna, 1995, p. 1)

The Scream; Edvard Munch 1863-1944

“Man is crying out for his soul, the whole period becomes a single urgent cry.And art cries too, into the deep darkness, crying for help, crying for the spirit.That is Expressionism”(Hermann Bahr, Expressionism, Munich, 1916)

German Expressionist Painting 1905-1914

Born Austria

Self portrait 1912

Oil on wood, 42.3x33.8cm

German Expressionists: Egon Schiele 1890-1918

Männlicher Akt, Selbstporträt 1910

55,7 × 36,8 cmBleistift, Tempera aquarelliert auf Papier

German Expressionists: Egon Schiele 1890-1918

Germans:Max Beckmann,

Otto Dix,

George Grosz,

Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, August Macke,

Emil Nolde,

Max Pechstein;

the Austrian Oskar Kokoschka,

the Czech Alfred Kubin

the Norwegian Edvard Munch

the Russian Wassily Kandinsky

Expressionists include:

Surrealism

André Breton 1896-1966: First Manifesto of Surrealism 1924

‘SURREALISM,n. Psychic automatism in its pure state, but which one proposes to express –

verbally by written means of the word, 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’.

Harrison, Charles, and Paul Wood, eds. Art in Theory 1900-1990. Oxford: Blackwell, 1993.p. 438

‘Utter bankruptcy of art criticism, a bankruptcy that is really comic:...whether Chagall happens to be

considered a surrealist or not, are matters for grocers’ assistants’.

Harrison, Charles, and Paul Wood, eds. Art in Theory 1900-1990. Oxford: Blackwell, 1993.pp. 445

André Breton 1896-1966:

From ‘Surrealism and Painting’ 1928

André Breton 1896-1966: First Manifesto of Surrealism 1924

‘This summer the roses are blue; the wood is of glass. The earth, draped in its verdant cloak,

makes as little impression upon me as a ghost...Existence is elsewhere’.

Harrison, Charles, and Paul Wood, eds. Art in Theory 1900-1990. Oxford: Blackwell, 1993.p. 439

‘The case against the realistic attitude demands to be examined, following the case against the

materialistic attitude’.

‘We are still living under the reign of logic...But in this day and age logical methods are applicable only to solving problems of secondary interest’.

Harrison, Charles, and Paul Wood, eds. Art in Theory 1900-1990. Oxford: Blackwell, 1993.p. 433

André Breton 1896-1966: First Manifesto of Surrealism 1924

‘Freud very rightly brought his critical faculties to bear upon the dream’.

‘I have no choice but to consider [the waking state] a phenomenon of interference’.

‘The mind of the man who dreams is fully satisfied by what happens to him’.

Harrison, Charles, and Paul Wood, eds. Art in Theory 1900-1990. Oxford: Blackwell, 1993.p. 435

André Breton 1896-1966: First Manifesto of Surrealism 1924

Surrealism: Henri Rousseau (1844-1910)

The Dream 1910; Oil on canvas 80.5x117.5 inchesHughes, Robert. The Shock of the New. London: BBC Books, 1991. p. 229

Surrealism: 3 kinds of expression: Primitive

Child art, the art of the mad and primitive (naif) art

Rousseau, ‘the customs man’ : Primitive art, but:

Rousseau to Picasso: ‘We are the two greatest living painters, I in the modern manner you in the Egyptian’

Hughes: ‘The clarity of Rousseau’s vision further heightened its compulsive, dreamlike quality: there the image is, all at once, with no ambiguities, done

(as he would have insisted) from life.’Hughes, Robert. The Shock of the New. London: BBC Books, 1991. p. 227-9

Surrealism: 3 kinds of expression: child art

Joan Miró 1893-1983

Child art =outlet of the uncensored, polymorphous self

Child art = special cultural form which can disclose the nature of the mind

Seen through the mimicry of a child’s freedom by adults

The best pure painter of the Surrealists (Hughes)

Resisted the movement, but they joined him

For the assassination of painting; a dislike for the bourgeois

Hughes, Robert. The Shock of the New. London: BBC Books, 1991. p. 231

Surrealism: Joan Miró 1893-1983

The tilled field 1923-4; oil on canvas; 26x36.5 inches

Metamorphosis: ‘Everything in this landscape has the power to become something else’ (Hughes)

Hughes, Robert. The Shock of the New. London: BBC Books, 1991. p. 231-2

Surrealism: Joan Miró 1893-1983

The harlequin’s carnival 1924-5; oil on canvas; 26x36.5 inches

‘Miro claimed that hallucinations brought on by hunger and staring at the cracks in the plaster during those lean Paris years helped to loosen his imagery, as

mescaline might’ (Hughes)Hughes, Robert. The Shock of the New. London: BBC Books, 1991. p. 235

Surrealism: Joan Miró 1893-1983

The harlequin’s carnival 1924-5; oil on canvas; 26x36.5 inches

Miro: ‘There are tiny forms in vast empty spaces. Empty space, empty horizons, empty plains, everything that is stripped has always impressed me’

Hughes, Robert. The Shock of the New. London: BBC Books, 1991. p. 235

André Breton 1896-1966:

From ‘Surrealism and Painting’ 1928

‘In such a domain, [what I believe with my eyes], I dispose of a power of illusion whose limits, if I am

not careful, I cease to perceive’.

‘Let us not forget that in this epoch it is reality itself that is in question’

Harrison, Charles, and Paul Wood, eds. Art in Theory 1900-1990. Oxford: Blackwell, 1993.pp. 441,442

Magritte's La Trahison des Images (The Treachery of Images) (1928-9) or Ceci n'est pas une pipe (This is not a pipe). Oil on canvas 23.5x37 inches

René François Ghislain Magritte (1898 – 1967)

‘Picasso, creator of toys for adults, has caused man to grow up, and sometimes under the guise of exasperating him, has put an end to his puerile

fidgeting’.

‘I believe that men will long continue to feel the need of following to its source the magical river flowing from their eyes, bathing with the same

hallucinatory light and shade both the things that are and the things that are not.’

Harrison, Charles, and Paul Wood, eds. Art in Theory 1900-1990. Oxford: Blackwell, 1993.pp. 444

André Breton 1896-1966:

From‘Surrealism and Painting’ 1928

Pablo Picasso: Concepts of surrealism

Guernica 1937; Oil on Canvas; 349 cm × 776 cm (137.4 in × 305.5 in)‘...this bull is a bull and this horse is a horse... If you give a meaning to certain things in my

paintings it may be very true, but it is not my idea to give this meaning. What ideas and conclusions you have got I obtained too, but instinctively, unconsciously. I make the painting for

the painting. I paint the objects for what they are.’http://www.pbs.org/treasuresoftheworld/a_nav/guernica_nav/gnav_level_1/5meaning_guerfrm.html

Pablo Picasso: Concepts of surrealism

‘Picasso was never a member of the surrealist circle but was rightly admired by Surrealism for his sense of metamorphosis...’

Hughes, Robert. The Shock of the New. London: BBC Books, 1991. p.252

Surrealism: ‘a special part of its function is to examine with a critical eye the notions of reality and unreality, reason and irrationality, reflection

and impulse, knowledge and fatal ignorance, usefulness and uselessness’.

Harrison, Charles, and Paul Wood, eds. Art in Theory 1900-1990. Oxford: Blackwell, 1993.pp. 446-7 (Second Manifesto of Surrealism 1929)

André Breton 1896-1966:

From ‘Second Manifesto of Surrealism’ 1929

Europe after the rain 1940-2; Oil on canvas 21.5x58.25inches

Hughes: ‘A panorama of a fungoid landscape seen as though in the aftermath of an annihilating, biblical deluge. Ernst got away to America when the German armies rolled into

France.’

Frottage/decalcomania method of lifting off paint and putting it down creates illusionary effect of reality.

Hughes, Robert. The Shock of the New. London: BBC Books, 1991. p.255

Max Ernst

Europe after the rain 1940-2; Oil on canvas 21.5x58.25inches

‘Here [in early collage works] I discover elements of a figuration so remote that its very absurdity provokes in me a sudden intensification of my faculties of sight - a hallucinatory

succession of contradictory images...’

Ernst in Hughes, Robert. The Shock of the New. London: BBC Books, 1991. p.224-5

Max Ernst

The poetic unconscious and contemporary thought/painting

1920s

‘The region where the charming vapours of the as yet unknown, with which they are to fall in love,

condense, will appear to them in a lightning flash.’Harrison, Charles, and Paul Wood, eds. Art in Theory 1900-1990. Oxford: Blackwell, 1993.pp. 444

2009Jean-Luc Nancy identified a need to ‘rediscover, in an as yet unknown mode, what those who lived in myths knew in a totally different mode: there is a

universal communication and participation of beings, that is to say of bodies in the world’.

Nancy, Jean-Luc. "Making Sense." In Making Sense. University of Cambridge, UK, 2009. (Key note speaker, Making Sense Conference)

André Breton 1896-1966:

From‘Surrealism and Painting’ 1928

‘Just as in the physical world,a short circuit occurs when the two ‘poles’ of a machine are joined by a conductor of little or no resistance....Surrealism has done everything it can and more to increase

these short circuits’.

Harrison, Charles, and Paul Wood, eds. Art in Theory 1900-1990. Oxford: Blackwell, 1993.pp. 449 (Second Manifesto of Surrealism 1929)

André Breton 1896-1966:

From ‘Second Manifesto of Surrealism’ 1929: Short Circuits

‘Žižek is interested in the "parallax gap" separating two points between which no synthesis or

mediation is possible, linked by an "impossible short circuit" of levels that can never meet. From

this consideration of parallax, Žižek begins a rehabilitation of dialectical materialism. ’

Žižek, Slavoj. Parallax View. Cambridge, Massachusetts: MIT Press, 2006.

Short Circuits and Slavoj Žižek 2006

Parallax: Sigmar Polke

Seeing rays 2006; mixed mediums on fabric; 541⁄4 x 46 inches

Draws from an engraving by 17thC Johann Zahn that depicts two gentlemen observing the sky from different vantage points

Surrealism and Australian

modernism/modernity

Bushrangers and parrots 1960

Ivan Durrant: ‘Pearce, as painted by Albert Tucker, is the summary of all and more that is bad in humans. He is the ultimate destructive intruder... Just look at those viciously protruding, cutting and slicing shark teeth; what a

brutal axe-head, alien monster and the devil himself!’Albert Tucker Exhibition: The Intruder - The perfect Allegory, curated by Ivan Durant, June 1- August 10 2009

Art Monthly Australia; Issue 229, May 2010 pp.27-29

Surrealism and Australian modernism

Albert Tucker (1914 – 1999)

Truth:‘A day will come when we no longer allow ourselves to use [the truth] in such a cavalier fashion,...with its palpable proofs of existence

other than the one we think we are living’.

Harrison, Charles, and Paul Wood, eds. Art in Theory 1900-1990. Oxford: Blackwell, 1993.pp. 450 (Second Manifesto of Surrealism 1929)

André Breton 1896-1966:

From ‘Second Manifesto of Surrealism’ 1929

Angry Penguins, an Australian literary and artistic avant- garde movement of the 1940s

Early Australian exponents of surrealism and expressionism

John Perceval,, Arthur Boyd Sidney Nolan,Danila Vassileff, Albert Tucker, Joy Hester

The Ern Malley hoax

Surrealism and Australian modernism

Angry Penguins 1940s

Surrealism and Australian modernism

Angry Penguins 1940s

Truth:‘According to Australian curator Margie West, discussed in relation to Wamud Namok, the metaphysical world embodies spirits which exist “not just as metaphysical notions but as palpable

manifestations in the material world”.

West, Margie. "Bardayal Nadjamerrek: Wild Honey Painter." Art & Australia 46 Spring, no. 1 (2008): 120-25.

Wamud Namok AO / Margie West 2008

Truth and Myth/ The Metaphysical: Wamud Namok AO

Wamud Namok AO Dulklorrkelorrkeng and Wakkewakken; 2005Bark painting; natural earth pigments on stringy bark; 83x 151cm

“[...] I can see you all, I can see you here in my country you Wakkewakken [legless honey spirits]”

Wamud Namok in West, Margie. "Bardayal Nadjamerrek: Wild Honey Painter." Art & Australia 46 Spring, no. 1 (2008): 120-25.