SpatialStudies 7c:

Lecture 3
Strategies of the Avant-Garde
(from R. Krauss, Passages in Modern Sculpture)

A. 1) Cubism, 2) Futurism, 3) Constructivism, comparison of

Gabo + Tatlin, 4) Dada, 5) Surrealism, 6) Abstract Concretion
B. A comparison: Brancusi + Duchamp (Rosalind Krauss)
C. An avant-garde legacy- video The Way Things Go

D. Finish ‘Creativity: BBC, The Creative Brain, How Insight Works’

Jonathan Schooler, Dr. Simon Ritter, John Kounos
Pouring plaster for current project
Extra credit offering – play with food and photograph
(1pt. on exam, could depict scenario based on real life)
Midterm
Feb. 3 during lecture
30 True/False questions, T/F = 60pts.
13 Multiple Choice = 26pts.
2 essay questions = 20pts.
(I subtract the three questions that most people missed).

T/F
Sergei Eisenstein, who filmed ‘October,’ thinks sculpture lacks inherent
ideology.
Gotthold Lessing asserts that sculpture is about portraying bodies in
space and that sculpture is distinct from poetry and music in that it is
static and nonsequential.
A)
R. Krauss challenges the myth of originality in the Avant-garde – starts with
Rodin – moves to Modernism in Passages in Modern Sculpture

Your reading for this lecture:

1) Naum Gabo’s writings on Constructivism: (new norms for
sculpture: Mass, Space, and Time 1937)
•Space as medium
•Material – expressive qualities – determine limits
•Any material is o.k.
•Problem of time – sees it as necessitating kinetics

2) Arthur Danto: Playthings and

Boris Groys: The Speed of Art

Fischli and Weiss, legacy to avant-garde

A.This lecture: Strategies of the Avant-Garde
(from R. Krauss, Passages…):
Avant-garde definition:
new and unusual or experimental ideas, esp. in the arts, or the people
introducing them."works by artists of the Russian avant-garde”
synonyms: innovative, original, experimental, left-field, inventive,
ahead of the times, cutting/leading/bleeding edge, new, modern,
innovatory, advanced, forward-looking, state-of-the-art, trend-setting,
pioneering, progressive, Bohemian, groundbreaking, trailblazing,
revolutionary;

Cultural conditions for the Avant-Garde:

Industrial Revolution
Movement from an agrarian-based society to urban
Two world wars
20th century ideological experimentation
and conflicts re: role of art

objectivity vs. subjectivity

orthodoxy (convention) vs. absurd

autonomy vs. applied/utilitarian

real time and space vs. transcendent t & s

 End of the 19th Century A.
Advent of photography. Industrial Revolution:
the Machine Age - a new plasticity, mechanization
of material and form

Into the 20th Century

1900 Sigmund Freud - Psychoanalysis
1914 World War I Begins
1917 Russian Revolution
New social orders and shifting realities embodied
in ideology and aesthetics

Cubism: (Central Europe) Picasso, Braque

Futurism: (Central Europe) Marinetti, Boccioni
Constructivism: (Russia) Tatlin, Gabo, Pevsner

Dada: (Zurich, Cabaret Voltaire) Tristan Tzara,

Duchamp, Arp

Surrealism: Giacometti, Ray, Dali,

Oppenheim, Duchamp

Abstract-Concretion: Arp, Moore, Hepworth

Nude Descending a Staircase, Marcel
Duchamp, 1912
 A.1) Cubism: (Central Europe) Picasso

early 1900s
many young artists hear about and travel to see
his painting, collage, and sculpture

Nude Descending a Staircase, Marcel

Duchamp, 1912 Head of a Woman, Picasso
A.1) Cubism: (Central Europe) Picasso

Planar break-down
eliminates traditional perspectival
space - not illusionistic, autonomous
object
accepts photography as recording
tool
 A.2) Italian Futurism: Marinetti (manifesto 1909),
Boccioni

“Oh, maternal ditch, half full of

muddy water! A factory gutter! I savored
a mouthful of strengthening muck which
recalled the black teat of my Sudanese
nurse!
As I raised my body, mud-
spattered and smelly, I felt the red hot
poker of joy deliciously pierce my heart.
A crowd of fishermen and gouty
naturalists crowded terrified around this
marvel. With patient and tentative care
they raised high enormous grappling
irons to fish up my car, like a vast shark
that had run aground. It rose slowly
leaving in the ditch, like scales, its heavy
coachwork of good sense and its
upholstery of comfort.” Marinetti, 1909

Umberto Boccioni, The Unique Forms

of Continuity in Space, 1913
 A.2) Italian Futurism: Marinetti (manifesto 1909),
Umberto Boccioni

 grows out of Cubism

 added implied motion to the shifting
planes and multiple observation
points of Cubists
 celebrated natural as well as mechanical
motion and speed
 glorified danger, war, and the machine
age (in keeping with the martial
spirit developing in Italy at the time)

“Marinetti, thrown from his automobile one

evening in 1909 into a factory ditch filled with
water, emerges as if from amniotic fluid to be
born - without ancestors - a futurist. This
parable of absolute self-creation that begins the
first Futurist Manifesto functions as a model for
what is meant by originality among early 20thC
avant-garde.” RK

Umberto Boccioni, The Unique Forms of

Continuity in Space, 1913
 A.2) Italian Futurism: Marinetti, Boccioni

Italian Futurism: Umberto Boccioni (1882-1916) Development of a Bottle in Space, 1912.

Drawing and Bronze, 15" x 24”
 a kind of synthetic vision (x-ray vision)
 introducing movement to planar study
 remains within traditional materials/means
 A.2) Italian Futurism

Greek, 3rdC b.c.

“… We declare that the splendor of the world has been enriched by a

new beauty: the beauty of speed. A racing automobile with its bonnet
adorned with great tubes like serpents with explosive breath ... a roaring
motor car which seems to run on machine-gun fire, is more beautiful than
the Victory of Samothrace.”
 A.3) Constructivism: comparing Naum Gabo, Vladimir Tatlin

vs.

Vladimir Tatlin, Counter-Relief, 1915

Naum Gabo, Model for Constructed Torso,

1917
 A.3) Constructivism: Naum Gabo

VOLUME OF MASS VOLUME OF SPACE

Naum Gabo, volumetric cube
I, stereometric cube II
A.3) Constructivism: Naum Gabo

Stereometric figure sculpture

from flat cardboard and plywood
shapes (1915-17).

An “interlacing of shapes in 3
dimensions through the interior, or
structural core, of the normally closed
volume.…”

rt. Jacques Lipchitz

1916, bronze
 A.3) Constructivism: Naum Gabo

Light Space Modulator, Laszlo Moholy-Nagy

http://www.sfmoma.org/explore/multimedia/videos/1

Naum Gabo, left, Construction in Space

1938-40, right, Linear Construction no. 2,
• All materials can be used for sculpture
1970
• Sculptural space has become a malleable
material element (Not dematerializing
sculpture)
• Space perception as new concept
• Non-narrative ideal forms
 A.3) Constructivism: Vladimir Tatlin
Context for Tatlin’s career: (1885-1953)
1910: Martinetti’s Futurist
Manifesto translated into Russian.

1913: at age 28, goes to Europe to

meet Picasso.

,
1915: Begins work on corner reliefs
in the spirit of “Productivism”.

 radical perceptual shift:

 sculptures bring attention to the
specific situation they inhabit
 real time and real space

1917: Russian Revolution

Corner Counter Relief, Vladimir Tatlin,

1914-15
A.3) Vladimir Tatlin
Corner Relief, 1915, iron, aluminum, primer, 31”x60”x30” (original
destroyed. Reconstruction 1966-70 by Martyn Chalk from photographs).
A.3) Tatlin’s corner reliefs:

radical because they reject transcendent

(imagined) space in two ways:

1. Anti-illusionism of situation in space. Real time and space

(meeting of two real architectural walls).
2. Attitude manifested toward the materials of which they are
made. Real materials (truth to materials + their inherent
characteristics)
A.3) Tatlin’s
monument:

Plans for real monument:

Taller than Eiffel Tower

Meant to be center of
Proletariat*
communications
and activities

Each section rotates

*proletariat – industrial wage

earners – not bourgeoisie
A.3) Tatlin’s monument:
Scaled-down London version

Plans for real monument:

Taller than Eiffel Tower

Meant to be center of
Proletariat* communications
and activities

Each section rotates

*proletariat – industrial wage earners – not bourgeoisie

A.3) Gabo’s column:
Idealizing tower – like structure
Never meant to be built
Transcendent space and time
A.3)
Naum Gabo - ideology of art as autonomous: Column, 1923, plastic wood and
metal: structural/material essense of object – transcendent time + space. A
summary of vantage points. Toward an immediate legible geometry,
transparency. (Pevsner, Gabo, Malevitch, Kandinsky, El Lissitzky)
Vladimir Tatlin - ideology of art as “of and for the people:” Monument to the Third
International, 1919-20. Factual Reality. Steel Girders, 1/3 higher than Eiffel
Tower. An aesthetic technology in real time, real space, real materials.
Technology placed in service of revolutionary ideology. (Rodchenko, Tatlin)
 A.4) Dada: Tristan Tzara, André Breton, Jean
Arp, Marcel Duchamp, Man Ray
(gives rise to Surrealism 1924)
Surrealism: Giacometti, Man Ray, Dali,
Oppenheim, Duchamp
Born out of the horror of WWI
“Dada: abolition of logic, the dance of
the impotents of creation; Dada:
abolition of all the social hierarchies
and equations set up by our valets to
preserve values; …

Dada: abolition of archaeology; Dada:

abolition of the prophets; Dada:
abolition of the future; Dada: absolute
and unquestionable faith in every god
that is the product of spontaneity.” TT

DADA: nihilistic, absurdist, shocking, unorthodox, decries bourgeois

rationalism
 Hausmann, Mechanical
Head Spirit of Our Time, Duchamp,
1919 Bottle Rack,
1914

Surrealism
found object, readymade, altered
readymade

Degas, Little Dancer,

Degas, late 1800s A.5) Marcel Duchamp, above, Bicycle Wheel, 1913, right,
1881
A.5) Surrealism: Andre Breton, Giacometti,
Man Ray, Dali, Oppenheim, Duchamp 1924

Meret Oppenheim, Luncheon in Fur,

1936
 a means of joining dream and fantasy to
everyday reality to form “an absolute reality,
a surreality.”
Man Ray, Indestructible
 influenced by Sigmund Freud, the unconscious Object, 1923
was the wellspring of the imagination.

 “beautiful as the chance encounter of an

umbrella and a sewing machine on a
dissecting
Degas, table.” Lautreamont
Little Dancer,
1881
 A.6)
Jean Arp:
“Abstract
Concretions”
converts inert
matter to living
form….
Art belongs to a
species of natural
form

Head with Annoying

Objects, Jean Arp, 1930
 A.6) Abstract-Concretion: Arp, Moore, Hepworth

Henry Moore, Reclining Figures

 B. Case study of two contemporaries:
Duchamp/Brancusi (RK)

Marcel Duchamp (1887-1968):

un-worked, anti-representational,
cerebral…

Princess X, Brancusi,
1916
Constantin Brancusi: (1876-1957)
representational, raw material labored +
polished to perfect reflectivity.
Like Duchamp, his polished surfaces
“impenetrable” to analysis (narrative) -
no relationships between parts exist.

In Advance of the Broken Arm, Duchamp,

B. Marcel Duchamp (1887-1968):

The
Beginning
of the
World, 1924

Constantin Brancusi: (1876-1957)

Duchamp’s Bicycle Wheel

B. Marcel Duchamp (1887-1968)
Rrose Selavy (Eros, c’est la vie):
Selected serial objects that did not bear the
stamp of an act of creation from personally
held ideas or emotions
Readymades beg the question: What is a
work of art? Why do we think of art as
statements that must convey or embody a
certain content?
Not intended to hold the object up for Constantin Brancusi: (1876-1957)
examination, but to scrutinize the act of “There is a purpose in all things. To get
aesthetic transformation itself. RK to it one must go beyond oneself.” CB
Arduous and patient labor, reducing to
refined elegant craft
Glossy surface deflects surface
1.Odd similarity btwn. Duchamp and interpretations - courting the finish of
Brancusi - both end up with works that machine-made objects
appear machine made
2.Both men stand out from movements
C. Der Lauf der Dinge, (The
Way Things Go), Fischli and
Weiss:

Cause and effect - celebrating the

banal
Element of play (opposite of Freud),
politics of childhood - calculated to
annoy

The thingness of the thing

(non-rep.) + things at hand -
Heidegger, Tatlin, Duchamp

Found object inversion since

Duch.:
Trompe l’oeil

Andy Warhol’s Brillo Boxes,

1964
Jasper Johns, Ale Cans, 1960
Arthur C. Danto –
“…as The Way Things Go
makes manifestly clear, ordinary
objects have their dark side, and
the bland peaceful world of
orderly routine which facilitates
the conduct of ordinary life, is
achingly fragile.”
C. Fischli and Weiss:
Plötzlich diese Übersicht
(Suddenly This Overview), 1981-
2012
Unfired clay

above, Small and Large

rt. Freeway
C. Fischli and Weiss:
Plötzlich diese Übersicht
(Suddenly This Overview), 1981-
2012
C. Fischli and Weiss:
Plötzlich diese Übersicht
(Suddenly This Overview),
1981-2012

above, Mick Jagger and Brian

Jones Going Home Satisfied
after Composing “I Can’t Get
No Satisfaction”

rt. Mr. and Mrs. Einstein Shortly

After Conceiving Their Genius
Son Albert
D. BBC video (58 minutes):
http://www.dailymotion.com/video/xy9ag1_bbc-
horizon-the-creative-brain-how-insight-works_tech

Horizon: The Creative Brain, How Insight Works

Jonathan Schooler, Simone Ritter

Divergent Thinking