Statements in Summary of excerpts from Art in Theory: 1900–2000. An Anthology of Changing Ideas, Blackwell Publishing: 2002.
Hugo Ball, 'Dada Fragments'
Ball's 'Dada Fragments' is a collection of thoughts and brief, often exclamatory statements about his idea of Dada as an art form and thinking methodology. Spread throughout a number of dates ranging from March 1916 to April 1917, the writings function as revelations about the workings of the Dadaist movement, and, for Ball, are specific to the era. He begins by addressing the goals and functions of the Dadaists in their practice, as well as defining what 'Dada' is in simple, yet metaphoric terms. He explains "the Dadaist loves the extraordinary, the absurd, even. He knows that life asserts itself in contradictions… the instincts and hereditary backgrounds are now emerging pathologically" (246). He continues these exclamations throughout the entries in poetic fashion, and finishes with a bold statement on Dada's importance in its era: "Dadaism - a mask play, a burst of laughter? And behind it, a synthesis of the romantic, dandyistic and - daemonistic theories of the 1 9th century" (248).
Tristan Tzara, 'Dada Manifesto 1918'
The 'Dada Manifesto' of 1918 provides an in-depth description of the major beliefs and tenets of Dadaism in the time and place of Tristan Tzara. The writing is, in Dada fashion, concise, blunt, and at times, meandering into absurd, poetic language. Throughout the entire manifesto, Tzara asserts several key elements of Dadaist thinking: that logic is detrimental to art, that criticism is welcomed, that lack of understanding in the work is encouraged, that all works that emphasize philosophy as a question (such as painting and poetry) should be related, that systems and rules are worthless and contradictions are the truth, and that conscious action in the grand scheme of life is irrelevant. The writing, in these cases, has an existentialist and rebellious tone. He explains, "Dada means nothing…Dada was born of a need for independence, of a distrust toward unity. Those who are with us preserve their freedom. We recognize no theory. We have enough cubist and futurist academies: laboratories of formal ideas. Is the aim of art to make money and cajole the nice nice bourgeois?" (249). He finishes with a grand description of Dada through lofty, sprawling comparisons and free-form language surmounting in "Dada, a roaring of tense colors, and interlacing of opposites and of all contradictions, grotesques, inconsistencies: LIFE" (253).
Richard Huelsenbeck, from En Avant Dada
Huelsenbeck's writing on German Dadaism is a strong statement for Dadaist beliefs, and a poignant criticism of German culture in its time. He begins the essay by distinguishing between the "ethical man" and the "psychological man," and awarding the title of the psychological man to the Dadaist. He defines the Dadist in this sense as someone who is indifferent to moral codes, self-improvement efforts. He explains, "he should be devoted, yet maintain an attitude of rejection...it is in this very anomaly that life itself consists, naive, obvious life, with its indifference toward happiness and death, joy and misery. The Dadaist is naive" (258). He alludes to German culture as shit, and to Dada as German Bolshevism, recognizing the capitalism and heroicism of recent abstract art as a blasphemy. He states, "The German is unnaive, he is twofold and has a double base" (259). He claims the Dadaists considered their attack on German culture carefully, and made every effort to undermine its spirit through demonstrations. He finishes by stating that Dada sees its end in the near future, and will meet it with indifference and fully prepared as Germany's artists assume a Dada position and the talent subsides.
Marcel Duchamp, "The Richard Mutt Case"
Marcel Duchamp's Fountain is a quintessential artwork in American history, and like much revolutionary work, was initially detested by the system it first entered. This piece of writing, described within as a description for the Fountain, plainly defines the artistic function of the work at hand. By submitting the Fountain, a readymade urinal strategically placed upside down, signed R Mutt and entered into the 1917 Worlds Fair exhibition, Duchamp initiated a new means of artistic conceptualization for the coming century that would emphasize intention over fabrication. Simply put, "he CHOSE it. He took an ordinary article of life, placed it so that its useful significance disappeared under the new title and point of view - created a new thought for that object" (254).
Richard Huelsenbeck, 'First German Dada Manifesto' ('Collective Dada Manifesto')
Huelsenbeck's 'First German Dada Manifesto' functions as a clarifying testament of the practices and beliefs of "The Dada Club." The manifesto begins with Huelsenbeck's opinions on the appropriate efforts and purpose of art, asserting that expressionism was unsuccessful in discussing the conflicts of contemporary society. He explains, "under the pretext of turning inward, the expressionists...have banded together into a generation which is already looking forward to honorable mention in the histories of literature and art and aspiring to the most respectable civic distinctions" (254). He then addresses the definition of Dadaism, referencing Futurism and Cubism in the process as other unsuccessful attempts at moving beyond Impressionism. Huelsenbeck states, "Dadaism for the first time has ceased to take an aesthetic attitude toward life, and this it accomplishes by tearing all the slogans of ethics, culture and inwardness, which are merely cloaks for weak muscles, into their components" (254-5). He continues to give explanation of Dadaism, defining it as a club to which anyone is a member who holds its shared mindset. In true Dada fashion, he ends the manifesto in a contradictory statement: "To be against this manifesto is to be a Dadaist!" (255).
Francis Picabia, 'Thank you, Francis!'
The short essay 'Thank you, Francis!' Is an aggressive, unabashed attack on the world surrounding international Dada, at a time when Classicism was gaining speed and the world was full of a multitude of influences. Francis Picabia takes a moment to address what he finds troubling about the approach to thinking (and, subsequently, art making) in his contemporaries. He begins by asserting he is virtueless, moral-less, and therefore not afflicted by the issues surrounding other artists who do not prescribe to this Dada mentality. He explains, "What I like is to invent, to imagine, to make myself a new man every moment, then forget him, forget everything" (272). He then calls out those artists he feels preach their practice and philosophy to naive others, who, he says, are fearful-- "the man who sets himself up as a school disgusts me...writers, painters, and other idiots have passed on the word to fight against the 'monsters,' monsters who, naturally, do not exist" (272). He names Matisse, Picasso, Braque, and several others as subscribers to a fear of a stall in progress. Picabia finishes by calling morality a disease, and asserting that he and the rest of the Dadaists will continue, for the time, to live peacefully and unafflicted by fears, moral codes, or "stupidities" (272).
Marcel Duchamp, 'The Creative Act'
Duchamp's writing serves as a studied analysis of the artistic process as a whole. He considers the multiple steps through which something may be deemed an artwork. In the beginning of the essay, Duchamp names "two poles of the creation of art," being the artist and the viewer. He asserts that together they make up the "creative act" that allows for something to become an artwork. Duchamp clarifies, however, that an artwork is an artwork whether deemed "good" or "bad" by a spectator, and defines it by the process it takes in its creation. He explains, "the artist may shout from all the rooftops that he is a genius: he will have to wait for the verdict of the spectator in order that his declarations take a social value and that, finally, posterity includes him in the primers of Artist History." He concludes that in this transference there is a gap "representing the inability of the artist to express fully his intention," and that a work is made complete when the viewer offers his/her critical analysis, which is further exemplified when, as good artwork, it is recollected by art history.
Alexei Gan, from Constructivism
Alexei Gan's essay on Constructivism is a text that works to strengthen an understanding of the movement's inner system. The Constructivists, according to Gan, have three major components to consider in making artwork in a Communist society and frame of mind. The first discussed is called Tectonics, which Gan describes as being "based on the one hand on the characteristics of Communism, and...on the expedient use of industrial materials" (318). The secondary element Gan details is Factura, the processing of working a raw material. The significance lies in that "the transformation of this raw material into one form or another continues to remind us of its primary form and conveys to us the next possibility in its transformation" (319). The final component Gan considers is Construction, or the actual assembling of the materials into its utilitarian form. He finishes the writing by re-asserting, in Communist fashion, "Our Constructivism has declared unconditional war on art, for the means and qualities of art are not able to systematize the feelings of a revolutionary environment" (319).
Osip Brik, 'Photography versus Painting'
In Osip Brik's essay 'Photography versus Painting,' he makes an argument for photography in the light of Soviet Russia's return to realism in painting. Throughout the entire essay, he makes comparisons between the two mediums, and essentially supports photography as the new means of realistic representation. He begins by describing photography's advantages over painting: "precision, speed, cheapness... Here they could compete with painters. Even the most gifted painter cannot achieve the degree of faithful reproduction of which the camera is capable...cannot supply a portrait within minutes. The cheapest painting is more expensive than the most expensive photograph" (454). Brik claims the painters recognized their competition, and that painting's strength was undoubtedly in its use of color. However, he shuts this defense down by explaining even the most considered painting will have variations from reality in each hue. He argues that "Life cannot be represented in a painting, it would be senseless to imitate it; that means it must be recreated on canvas in a separate, painterly way. This is the idea behind the theories and schools of painting which have emerged since the middle of the 19th century...Impressionism, Cubism, Suprematism and many others" (455). Here he claims is the divide between the mediums, and continues to applaud photography's innate ability to capture realism more perfectly. Another argument made by the AKhRR to defend the "resurrection of realism" he claims is "completely hopeless," as it relies on photography's primitivism and artisinal focus to survive; something inherently temporary (455). To conclude, Brik references Rochenkov, who is, at the time, delving into photography in an effort to develop its own artistic rules and practice, and foresees him as and example of the future of photographic artwork.
Johannes Itten, "Analyses of Old Masters"
Itten's "Analyses of the Old Masters" is a riddled piece of writing that works not necessarily to describe any particular "Old Master" artist, but is instead a mapping of what Itten believes to be the definitive "experience" of an artwork. He begins his essay by describing the result of an experience of a work, stating "to experience a work of art means to re-experience it; means to awaken the essential in it, to bring the living quality which is inherent in its form to independent life...[it] is reborn within me....to experience a work of art is to re-create it." Itten describes a person's ability to embody an experience is inherent in them, and not something that can be given to someone by an artist, but simply pulled from those who possess it naturally. He then explains that movement is equal to form, and to life, and that because of movement nothing is dead. Itten then details the three facets of the experience of movement: physical, psychic, and mental. He elaborates: "If I draw the line with my hand, then I am physically moved...If I move my senses along a line, then I am in the second, the psychic degree 'being moved.' If I mentally visualize a line, then I am in the third, the mental degree ''being moved." The physical degree is an act of being moved outwardly; the mental degree is an act of being moved internally; the psychic degree is a combined act of being moved, internally and outwardly." This explanation by Itten of variations in the experience of movement are presumably his way of assessing the success and possible goals of an old masterful painting.
Walter Gropius "The Theory and Organization of the Bauhaus"
Gropius's "The Theory and Organization of the Bauhaus" serves as a statement of intent for the school's mission and curriculum. In the process of outlining the code and structure of the Bauhaus, Gropius highlights the communist-friendly, utilitarian approach to art education and training in the era. He begins by acknowledging a rise in "the idea of a universal unity in which all opposing forces exist in a state of absolute balance." He states that this world must have work that is a reflection of the inner spiritual self, and that "So long...as machine-economy remains an end in itself rather than a means of freeing the intellect from the burden of mechanical labor, the individual will remain enslaved and society will remain disordered. The solution depends on a change in the individual's attitude toward his work." With this in mind, he lays out the ideology of the Bauhaus, comparing it to the academic structure beforehand. He describes the system as having separated the various mediums of art making into factions for different learning, with no real crossover for students. This, he says, dilutes the potential of a developing artist, and depletes the chance of creating a utilitarian, unified system of builders and creators. Consequently, "the Bauhaus strives to coordinate all creative effort, to achieve, in a new architecture, the unification of all training in art and design. The ultimate, if distant, goal of the Bauhaus is the collective work of art - the Building - in which no barriers exist between the structural and the decorative arts." In the process, the students would be encouraged to collaborate effectively, with spiritual intuition and technical training in mind, and to engage in every work with a full understanding of "the meaning and origin of the principal theme." Gropius closes the essay by predicting the future success of (and reliance upon) the Bauhaus alumni in the art world: "They will compel industry to serve their idea and industry will seek out and utilize their comprehensive training."
George Grosz, 'My New Pictures'
'My New Pictures' is a slightly journalistic, explanatory piece of writing concerning the state of art making in the epoch of George Gropius. He discusses his newest photographic works in reference to his concerns for the current state of art making, and outlines the artists experience of such. He begins by claiming "art is something which demands a clearcut decision from artists. You can't be indifferent about your position in this trade;" leading to his evaluation of his own position (270). He discusses the contemporary artist as a mercenary, "bought by the best-paying jobber...this business of commissions is called in a bourgeois state the advancement of culture" (270). He then discusses the problem of his contemporaries in their recycling of old, tired symbols of art (namely Christian iconography) and lack of interest in the masses, explaining that they are essential in the rebuilding of society. Gropius says to the reader, "Go to a proletarian meeting; look and listen how people there, people just like you, discuss some small improvement of their lot. And understand - these masses are the ones who are reorganizing the world. Not you!" (270). He then addresses his own work in this regard, claiming "man is no longer an individual to be examined in subtle psychological terms, but a collective, almost mechanical concept...I would like to create absolutely simple sport symbols which would be so easily understood that no commentary would be necessary" (271). Gropius predicts the future of artistic production, in which painting becomes akin to artisanal manual labor, photography with its efficiency grows in importance, and "artists - instead of scrubby bohemian anarchists - will be clean, healthy workers in a collectivistic community" (271).
George Grosz, from 'My Life'
George Grosz's 'My Life' offers the reader a digestible response to the criticism Grosz received for making artworks that did not align with the propaganda machine of German Communism. His argument comes from a difference in perspective on the growing, yet still downtrodden working class of Germany. Grosz elaborates, "I don't think it is necessary to meet the requirements of a 'Hurrah Bolshevism', that sees the proletariat as always neatly brushed and combed in the old hero's dress...I still see them as oppressed, at the bottom of the social scale, badly dressed, badly paid, in dark, stinking housing and very often dominated by the bourgeois desire to 'get to the top.'" He insists upon rendering the lower social class in this more realistic fashion. He finishes the excerpt by noting that the proletariat is partly unaware of their own suffering, thanks to the infectious propaganda they've been fed, calling the reader to "awaken their self-confidence and stir them to the class war, that is the task for art, and it is the task I serve".
George Grosz and Wieland Herzfelde, "Art Is in Danger"
Grosz and Herzfelde address the evolution of art making and its relation to socio-political conflict in mid-1920s Germany in this detailed, yet concise essay. They structure their writing into almost chronologically considered chapters, examining the course of artistic production and philosophy. They begin by discussing Dada's significance, stating "through this movement all the 'isms' of art became yesterday's inconsequential studio affairs. Dada was not a 'made' movement, but an organic product" (450-1). They discuss its importance in relation to its unabashed acknowledgement of and interaction with the chaos of the revolution, claiming that, to a Dadaist, art is not serious because life is serious, and nothing is relevant in the way the war and tragedy of the epoch are. With the revolution, they say, Dada split into this who became "lost," and those who began to make "Tendency Art"-- work that undoubtedly takes a socio-political standpoint (451). The authors claim those who do not take up tendencies "work in vain through ignorance and ineptitude" (451). In this regard, they give the artists of the day two choices in their continued path: "Either he enrolls as an architect, engineer, or advertising artist in the army... which develops industrial powers and exploits the world; or, as a reporter and critic reflecting the face of our times, a propagandist and defender of the revolutionary idea and its partisans" (451).
Andre Breton, from "the First Manifesto of Surrealism"
Breton's initial manifesto for Surrealism is a detailed explanation of how the concept, and, subsequently, the movement, came about. The manifesto focuses primarily on Breton's influence from dreams, relating them back to Freud's study of the ego. He begins by describing the plight of the insane as being troubled, at least in part, by their imaginations, and punished when their actions and reactions do not abide by common laws of rationality. He relates this subjection to one's imagination to the dream state, in which free flowing thought may be experienced without the boundaries of logic. He considers this to be the perfect subject for the study of true experession, and opposes "the realistic attitude, inspired by positivism, from Saint Thomas Aquinas to Anatole France, [which] clearly seems to me to be hostile to any intellectual or moral advancement" (433). He describes a session he had with Phillippe Soupault in creating a free form, fifty-page monologue , in which they discovered "the speed of thought is no greater than the speed of speech, and that thought does not necessarily defy language, nor even the fast-moving pen" (436). From this recognition, and from a desire to "solve the fundamental questions of life" through such means as dreaming, they develop the principles of Surrealism (436). Breton finishes by defining Surrealism as "Psychic automatism in its pure state, by which one proposes to express...the actual functioning of thought. Dictated by thought, in the absence of any control exercised by reason, exempt from any aesthetic or moral concern" (438). In the end, Breton foresees Surrealism as the supreme path to true abstract though, and to be victorious in ideology over those who value structured logic.
Andre Breton, from "the Second Manifesto of Surrealism"
Breton's second Surrealist manifesto is a much weightier, politically driven piece of literature than his first. Written in the epoch of Stalinist Communism, Breton uses this manifesto as an opportunity to readjust and realign Surrealism as a movement in strong opposition to the dominant political party. The writing, therefore, feels less like a manifesto and more like a socio-political digest. Breton begins by asserting his strong views on Surrealism in the wake of Stalin, and redefining Surrealism for the reader: "The entire aim of Surrealism is to supply it with practical possibilities in no way competitive in the most immediate realm of consciousness.[1] I really fail to see...why we should refrain from supporting the Revolution, provided we view the problems of love, dreams, madness, art, and religion from the same angle they do[2] " (447). From this jumping point he delves into his political viewpoints (in regards to Surrealism's connection to Communism) by answering two rhetorical questions: "1. Do you believe that literary and artistic output is a purely individual phenomenon? Don't you think that it can or must be the reflection of the main currents which determine the economic and social evolution of humanity? 2. Do you believe in a literature and an art which express the aspirations of the working class? Who, in your opinion, are the principal representatives of this literature and this art?" (447). He replies by answering yes to the first question, but with the hesitation that if artistic output is an individual's job, then it would be impossible to represent a group of other individuals in economics or social reflections. The second question he answers, "I do not believe in the present possibility of an art or literature which expresses the aspirations of the working class...in any pre-revolutionary period the writer or artist, who of necessity is a product of the bourgeoisie, is by definition incapable of translating these aspirations[3] " (478). Breton concludes his thoughts by discussing Lautreamont and Freud in relation to Surrealism, and requests their findings become the more prevalently recognized as contributions to the movement, as well as re-asserting the benefits of Surrealism: "these products [of psychic activity] which automatic writing and the description of dreams represent offer at one and the same time the advantage of being unique in providing elements of appreciation of great style to a body of criticism which, in the realm of art, reveals itself to be strangely helpless, of permitting a general reclassification of lyrical values, and of proposing a key capable of opening indefinitely that box of many bottoms called man" (478).
AKhRR, 'Declaration'
The Declaration of the Association of Artists of Revolutionary Russia is both an artistic pledge to the propaganda of Communism, and an attack on the artistic groups before the revolution, who are, at the time, still working and not directly aligned with (and perhaps even opposed to) the Stalinist party. This short prose addresses first the Revolution following the civil war, and proclaims artists to be the "spokesmen of the people's spiritual life." With this in mind, they take up a supposed duty to represent "artistically and documentarily, the revolutionary impulse of this great moment of history. We will depict the present day[4] : the life of the Red Army, the workers, the peasants, the revolutionaries, and the heroes of labor." From this assertion, the authors criticize the efforts of other groups, whose abstraction they claim does no justice to the people. They continue, "the old art groups existing before the Revolution have lost their meaning, the boundaries between them have been erased in regard to both ideology and form," claiming that theses groups are simply bound together by personal connection and no real, lasting methodology. In conclusion, the AKhRR declares it will create a continuation of art that they will title "heroic realism," with the effort of creating "the art of a classless society."
Andre Breton, Diego Rivera and Leon Trotsky, 'Towards a Free Revolutionary Art'
This text by Breton, Rivera, and Trotsky (primarily the first and last) serves as a call to assemble all those who are opposed to the regime of Stalin. It first comments on the stare of affairs in Soviet Russia in the time, opening with the sentence "we can say without exaggeration that never has civilization been menaced so seriously as today" (526). They continue on to say that they cannot "remain indifferent" to the constraints which have been placed upon "creative activity" in Stalinist Russia. They plainly state that Hitler's regime has, at this point, eliminated any artists or writers who spike against him or his creative interests, and that the same is now occurring in Soviet Russia. With this in mind, they call upon the artists of the world. The authors state, "true art is unable not to be revolutionary, not to aspire to a complete and radical reconstruction of society...The official art of Stalinism mirrors with a blatancy unexampled in history [cowardly artists'] efforts to put a good face on their mercenary profession[5] " (527). They finalize their writing by calling for a unification of all opposed to the creatively oppressive Soviet Union, requesting a joining of even opposing ideologies in the light of a greater cause. "We believe that aesthetic, philosophical and political tendencies of the most varied sort can find here a common ground. Marxists can march here hand in hand with anarchists, provided both parties uncompromisingly reject the reactionary police patrol spirit represented by Joseph Stalin" (529). They promise the reader a quick response once all potential advocates are reached in an effort to radicalize against the Red Army.
Diego Rivera, 'The Revolutionary Spirit in Modern Art'
Rivera's essay is a blatant commentary on the socio-political climate of Soviet Russia, and a strong defense of a and call for a Communist revolution. He begins the writing by stating that "ART is a social creation," and that is is directly linked to and produced by and for the various classes and groupings in a society (406). He asserts his belief that "the man who is truly a thinker, or the painter who is truly an artist, cannot, at a given historical moment, take any but a position in accordance with the revolutionary development of his own time[6] ," and follows this with a reasoning that artists are born to be the natural receptors and communicators of the masses, the small groups, and the individuals, at different intersections in life. Rivera then discusses Russia's need for proletariat art, produced by them and for them, to help to radicalize their company. He cites Russian folk art as being a potentially successful point of departure for such a group of artists, and laments over the efforts of other contemporary groups who have "worked under conditions of famine, the strain of revolution and counter revolution, and all the material and economic difficulties imaginable, yet they failed completely in their attempts to persuade the masses to accept Cubism, or Futurism, or Constructivism as the art of the proletariat" (406). Rivera claims they were not radically modern enough to represent the proletariat. He commends Super-Realism for aligning itself with the revolution, but notes the were not fully, ideologically communist, and that "no painting can reach its highest development or be truly revolutionary unless it be truly Communist" (407). Rivera concludes by asserting that all artists have been propagandists, for one cause or another, one ideology or another, and that he wishes to work for Communism as a propagandist, to "use [his] art as a weapon" (407).
David A. Siqueiros, 'Towards a Transformation of the Plastic Arts'
Siqueiros's essay is a declaration of intent for a future method of both teaching and creating works of art for the Mexican (and international) proletariat. He first states that this movement is "based on critical analysis of the two great contemporary art experiences: the Paris movement and the modern Mexican movement usually known as the Mexican Renaissance[7] " (412). The essay focuses on critiquing the bourgeois- fueled academic painting, sculpture, and various arts of Europe and the socialist, opportunistic murals of Mexico, examining what Siqueiros determines as a failure to produce his desired efforts; "art which will be physically capable of serving the public through its material form. True art forms which will reach far and wide" (413). This in mind, Siqueiros asserts, "we must rid ourselves of the European Utopia of art for art's sake, and also of Mexican demagogic opportunism" (413).[8] He next attempts to outline a new methodology of conceiving, teaching, and producing new works for the masses, stating that "art must no longer be separated into units, either pure painting or pure sculpture, it must find a new, more powerful, more modern language which will give it much greater repercussion and validity as an art expression. We must use new, dialectic forms, rather than dead, scholarly, mechanical ones" (413). He expresses a desire to create workshops, not unlike the Bauhaus, that emphasize the re-definition of academic art training in an effort to create more well-rounded artists with the pure intention of artistic expression of the proletariat. Siqueiros finishes by addressing the many methods the movement will use to create publicity, and subsequently acquire an international interest in producing artwork that speaks for the masses.