Art of the 20th Century. Dorothea Eimert

Чтение книги онлайн.

      From classical times until the end of the 18^th century, an artwork was evaluated according to its content. The material out of which the artwork was made played a subordinate role. One proceeded from the premise that an idea in its most complete and ideal state is immaterial. To a great extent, material had to be subordinate to the artistic form. Materials were placed in the hierarchical order that was determined by how little they would impinge upon the purity of the artistic premise. Only in the 20^th century did the aesthetics relating to materials take hold. Material justice now became one of the criteria for a good work of art. Materials rose in esteem. Out of this also developed the independence of the materials. Materials slowly became an independent medium of art.

      Edgar Degas was a forerunner for the appreciation of so-called ‘poor’ materials. At the 1881 Paris Impressionist exhibition of the Salon des Indépendents, he displayed The Small Fourteen-Year-Old Dancer, which he had completed in 1879–80. The flesh-coloured wax figure with a ponytail made of real red hair, and clothed in real clothes, a flax bodice, a white full-length dress and ballroom shoes, shocked the art world. In contrast to those critics who were reminded of the ‘young monster’ of a display at a fair, and specimen preparations for a zoological and physiological museum exhibit, the critic and poet Joris-Karl Huysmans vehemently defended Degas.

      A similar view can be taken from the letter Vincent van Gogh wrote at the end of February or beginning of March 1883 to his friend, van Rappard: ‘Tomorrow, I will get some interesting things from this rubbish dump.’ He would dream of the collection of discarded buckets, kettles, baskets, oil cans and wire, and this winter he would really have something to work with.

      In 1890, Maurice Denis reflected on the materiality and immaterialness of colour, space and technology: ‘A painting is essentially a tarpaulin surface covered by colours in a certain order.’ An example of this was Felix Vallotton with one of the many examples from 1897, Les Passants (scène de rue). The support for the painting is a reddish brown cardboard box with fine fibre inserts. Its colourfulness and graphic structure stand at several important places in the painting with broad surfaces unpainted and untreated. The beauty of the material has been brought forth.

      In the later works of Paul Cézanne, large parts of the canvas also remain untouched. The level of sensitivity regarding the material quality of the painting support is reflected in the way this is used. Pablo Picasso gave the colours their independence in his Blue and Pink Periods. The papiers collés were a logical consequence of this.

      The subjects and techniques of anthropology influenced the development of modernist art. The avant-garde pioneers systematically acquired new sources of inspiration and the categorical separation between art, folk art, and anti-art was lifted. Theodor Adorno specifically warned against limiting the insights of the modernist movement to similarities with older art. Only through the deliberate artistic use of techniques and material would the work become more than mere handicraft. It was only when Braque and Picasso first pasted pieces of paper in the papiers collés that the intellectual spark surpassed the effect and dexterity of the previous shapes.

      Edgar Degas, Little Dancer Aged 14, 1865–1881, restored between 1921 and 1931. Painted bronze, muslin and silk ribbon in its hair, 98 × 35.2 × 24.5 cm. Musée d’Orsay, Paris.

      Kurt Schwitters, Merzbild 32A (The Cherry Picture), 1921.

      Combination, 91.8 × 70.5 cm. The Museum of Modern Art, New York.

The Collage

      Two-dimensional paper assumed the role of the three-dimensional means of expression in the papiers collés. The traditional picture frame perspective was dissolved in space. Depending on colour, pattern, or material, the paper surface appeared in the foreground or in the background. The painting developed into a special flat relief. Picasso experimented at first with paper scraps that he had constructed into guitar box sculptures.

      Futurism incorporated the flat surface of the papiers collés, the rhythmic repetitions, and the associated dynamic spatial structure. Futurism created a dynamic relief of the world in a state of unrest. The processes did not develop sequentially, but rather in a state of simultaneity of the past, present, and future.

      Carlo Carrà pasted the prototype of a two-dimensional Futurist paper collage using paper and newspaper cut-outs. The Manifestazione Interventista appeared on 1 August 1914, shortly before the outbreak of World War I, in the newspaper Lacerba in Paris. From the central point, printed strips of paper rotate outwards from the painting in all directions with incredible force. For the Futurists, the collage became, for the first time, a document of the period, consisting of scraps of news, advertising and musical scores. As if liberated, words and letters rolled out making sounds and noises, juggling and tumbling with an overflow of simultaneous information into the painting. The Futurist collage for the most part uses the typography of printed paper.

      A short time later, Dadaism further developed the Futurist text and sound painting. Printed fragments of paper were now put together in new contexts of meaning; looked at separately, the images and symbols could illuminate radically different meanings. In reciprocal interaction, even unrelated levels of reality obtain a surprisingly deep significance.

      In the works of Kurt Schwitters, the collage became the leading focus. He did not aspire to a synthesis of the arts in the sense of Kandinsky. Instead, he wanted, much more resolutely than either the Futurists or the Dadaists, to put everything in interplay of time and wipe away the boundaries. For him, art meant the integration of everything, including technology. The natural result of this view of life was the collage, which brought together all the arts of all manifestations. In his Merz-paintings and Merz-objects, Schwitters utilised materials and papers of all types and origins.

      In the works of Max Ernst, collage played an essential role. Using already existing visual material, he opened up possibilities that completely changed the original meaning of the image elements. By 1919, Max Ernst began to expand the aesthetic background of the papiers collés. For him, collage was also ‘negation as a possible method of resistance against the overflow of images and their boundless blending.’ While staying at the home of the well-known Swiss criminal defence lawyer, Vladimir Rosenbaum and his wife, Aline Valangin, whose houses in Zurich and Comologno became the refuge for many of émigrés Ernst scandalised many by cutting up pages from the old books in his library to make collages out of them. For the art of the 20^th century, the СКАЧАТЬ