Avant-Garde ~ Surrealism~ Dadaism By: Tabetha Vegas Vargas ENGG 630: Contemporary Literature Prof....
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Transcript of Avant-Garde ~ Surrealism~ Dadaism By: Tabetha Vegas Vargas ENGG 630: Contemporary Literature Prof....
Avant-Garde ~ Surrealism~ Dadaism
By: Tabetha Vegas Vargas
ENGG 630: Contemporary Literature
Prof. Lugo
Objectives: To define and develop the following
concepts: Dadaism Surrealism Avant-garde
Dada In the early part of the twentieth century, literary and
artistic reviews were the primary means by which the
creative community exchanged ideas and remained in
communication.
Journal
The journal was a vehicle for promoting emerging
styles, establishing new theories, and creating a
context for understanding new visual forms. These
reviews played a pivotal role in forming the spirit and
identity of movements such as Dada and Surrealism
and served to spread their messages throughout
Europe and the United States.
Zurich: The Birth of Dada
In February 1916, as World War I raged on, Dada
came into being in Zurich in a small tavern on
Spieglestrasse that became known as the Cabaret
Voltaire. Founded by the German poet Hugo Ball and
his companion, singer Emmy Hennings, Cabaret
Voltaire soon attracted artists and writers from across
Europe who fled their countries and went to neutral
Zurich to escape the war.
Purpose Its aim is to remind the world that there are people of
independent minds—beyond war and nationalism—
who live for different ideals.
Issue 4–5 of Dada was the final one Tzara published in Zurich.
Avant-Garde The work of questioning thought.
This term, taken from French military usage
designating the select corps which went out in
advance of the main body of troops, is applied to
the political and the cultural spheres (particularly
the visual arts) to describe those individuals or
groups whose ideas and work seem ahead of the
times.
Avant-Garde The Literature comes to define itself as writing that is
more advanced that the general sensibility and
linguistic practice of the age. The writer is cast in the
role of explorer and path breaker, leading the way for
others to follow. This being the product of a literary
evolution.
Mainly introduced into poetry.
As both a major poet and principal publicist of
modernism, Pound so successfully dominated the
movement that his version of it was reproduced by
academic critics as an official literary history of the
period beginning in 1910 with the publication of
Pound's The Spirit of Romance.
Surrealism A term borrowed from Apollinaire, in André Breton's
manifesto of 1924, the roots of the Surrealist
movement are to be found rather earlier with the
establishment in 1919.
Surrealism It included the following declaration: ‘Surrealism rests
in the belief in the superior reality of certain forms of
association neglected heretofore; in the omnipotence
of the dream and in the disinterested play of thought.’
It arose out of DADA, but was more ambitious and
internationally influential.
Like Dada, it declared the importance of the absurd,
the irrational and involvement in political anarchy as a
means of effecting social change. A literary as well as
artistic movement, by the end of World War II it had
largely disbanded as a coherent movement. A Breton, Manifestoes of Surrealism (Michigan, 1969)
Criticism of Surrealism Feminists: Have in the past critiqued the Surrealist movement,
claiming that it is fundamentally a male movement and a male
fellowship. Women are often made to represent higher values and
transformed into objects of desire and of mystery.
Freudian: Surrealist poems and other art works as direct
manifestations of the unconscious, when they were indeed highly
shaped and processed by the ego. In this view, the Surrealists may
have been producing great works, but they were products of the
conscious, not the unconscious mind, and they deceived themselves
with regard to what they were doing with the unconscious.
Two Distinct Groups Emerge The Automatists:
These artists interpreted it as referring to a suppression
of consciousness in favor of the subconscious.
This group, being more focused on feeling and less
analytical, understood Automatism to be the automatic
way in which the images of the subconscious reach the
conscience. They believed these images should not be
burdened with "meaning."
Faithful to this interpretation, the Automatists saw the
academic discipline of art as intolerant of the free
expression of feeling, and felt form, which had dominated
the history of art, was a culprit in that intolerance.
They believed abstractionism was the only way to bring to
life the images of the subconscious. Coming from the Dada
tradition, these artists also linked scandal, insult and
irreverence toward the elite's with freedom. They
continued to believe that lack of form was a way to rebel
against them.
The Veristic Surrealists Veristic Surrealists, saw academic discipline and form
as the means to represent the images of the
subconscious with veracity; as a way to freeze images
that, if unrecorded, would easily dissolve once again
into the unknown.
They hoped to find a way to follow the images of the
subconscious until the conscience could understand
their meaning. The language of the subconscious is
the image, and the consciousness had to learn to
decode that language so it could translate it into its
own language of words.
Food for Thought It would take fifty years for artists born after the Second
World War to discover how right this method is for helping
us all understand the architecture of the psyche.
Those who have understood the method, who have
faithfully followed the images of the subconscious and,
with patience, painted and analyzed them, have a lot to
teach us about the make up and interaction of the three
planes of the Spiritual, the psychological, and the physical.
Michel Leiris (1901-1990)
He wrote one of the first surreal novels, Aurora (1927-8).
References: http://www.fluther.com/disc/33414/what-is-dadaism/ http://www.kristisiegel.com/theory.htm http://www.faqs.org/theories/St-Sy/Surrealism.html http://www.articlearchives.com/humanities-social-science/
ethnic-cultural-studies/719277-1.html http://books.google.com.pr/books?id=pwnu_W8-
yuoC&pg=PA103&lpg=PA103&dq=what+is+surrealism+literary+theory%3F&source=bl&ots=PrOR1EBtlS&sig=rEdzQ0Xhszx9nuJbbTeCCXsGrQU&hl=es&ei=t2KsSeKSKZO5twfjh4GDBg&sa=X&oi=book_result&resnum=10&ct=result#PPP1,M1