Post-Impressionism to World War II (Blackwell Anthologies in Art History)

432 Pages·2005·8.16 MB·English

by  Debbie Lewer

Post-Impressionism to World War II
BLACKWELL ANTHOLOGIES IN ART HISTORY
The Blackwell Anthologies in Art History series presents an unprecedented set of
canonical and critical works in art history. Each volume in the series pairs previ-
ouslypublished,classicessayswithcontemporaryhistoriographicalscholarshipto
offerafreshperspectiveonagivenperiod,style,orgenreinarthistory.Modeling
itself on the upper-division undergraduate art history curriculum in the English-
speaking world and paying careful attention to the most beneficial way to teach
art history in today’s classroom setting, each volume offers ample pedagogical
material created by expert volume editors – from substantive introductory essays
and section overviews to illustrations and bibliographies. Taken together, the
Blackwell Anthologies in Art History will be a complete reference devoted to the
best that has been taught and written on a given subject or theme in art history.
1 Post-Impressionism to World War II, edited by Debbie Lewer
2 Asian Art: An Anthology, edited by Rebecca Brown and Deborah Hutton
3 Sixteenth-century Italian Art, edited by Michael Cole
4 Architecture and Design in Europe and America, 1750–2000, edited by
Abigail Harrison Moore and Dorothy Rowe
Forthcoming
5 Fifteenth-centuryItalianArt,editedbyRobertManiura,GabrieleNeher,and
Rupert Shepherd
6 Late Antique, Medieval, and Mediterranean Art, edited by Eva Hoffman
Post-Impressionism to World
War II
Edited by Debbie Lewer
Editorialmaterialandorganization(cid:1)2006byDebbieLewer
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Post-ImpressionismtoWorldWarII/editedbyDebbieLewer.
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Contents
Series Editor’s Preface viii
Preface ix
Acknowledgments xii
Part I: Programs and Manifestos ––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––
Introduction 1
1 Post-Impressionism 13
Roger Fry
2 Why Are We Publishing a Journal? 18
Ver Sacrum editorial
3 Notes of a Painter 21
Henri Matisse
4 The Founding and Manifesto of Futurism 28
F. T. Marinetti
5 Dada Manifesto 33
Hugo Ball
6 The Work Ahead of Us 35
Vladimir Tatlin
7 First Manifesto of Surrealism 36
Andre´Breton
8 Introduction to ‘‘New Objectivity’’: German Painting
since Expressionism 50
Gustav Hartlaub
v
Contents –––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––
Part II: Spirit and Subjectivity –––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––
Introduction 53
9 Gustave Moreau 69
Joris-Karl Huysmans
10 Symbolism in Painting: Paul Gauguin 71
G.-Albert Aurier
11 From Abstraction and Empathy: A Contribution to the
Psychology of Style 79
Wilhelm Worringer
12 From On the Spiritual in Art 93
Wassily Kandinsky
13 Mystery and Creation 128
Giorgio de Chirico
14 From Cubism and Futurism to Suprematism: The New
Painterly Realism 130
Kazimir Malevich
15 Neo-Plasticism: The General Principle of Plastic Equivalence 146
Piet Mondrian
Part III: Mass Culture and Modernity –––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––
Introduction 155
16 The Mass Ornament 165
Siegfried Kracauer
17 The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction 174
Walter Benjamin
18 Avant-Garde and Kitsch 188
Clement Greenberg
19 Modernism in the Work of Art 201
Victor Burgin
20 The Hidden Dialectic: Avantgarde–Technology–Mass Culture 218
Andreas Huyssen
Part IV: Politics and the Avant-Garde ––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––
Introduction 231
21 The Politics of the Avant-Garde 240
Raymond Williams
vi
–––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––– Contents
22 From Theory of the Avant-Garde 253
Peter Bu¨rger
23 Jugglers’ Fair Beneath the Gallows 265
Ernst Bloch
24 Towards a Free Revolutionary Art 270
Andre´Breton, Diego Rivera, and Leon Trotsky
25 The Birth of Socialist Realism from the Spirit of the Russian
Avant-Garde 274
Boris Groys
Part V: Identity and Appropriation –––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––
Introduction 297
26 Going Native 304
Abigail Solomon-Godeau
27 Virility and Domination in Early Twentieth-Century
Vanguard Painting 320
Carol Duncan
28 Men’s Work? Masculinity and Modernism 337
Lisa Tickner
29 What the Papers Say: Politics and Ideology in Picasso’s
Collages of 1912 349
David Cottington
30 Dada as ‘‘Buffoonery and Requiem at the Same Time’’ 366
Hanne Bergius
31 Surrealism: Fetishism’s Job 381
Dawn Ades
Index 400
vii
Series Editor’s Preface
The Blackwell Anthologies in Art History series is intended to bring together
writingonagivensubjectfromabroadhistoricalandhistoriographicperspective.
Theaimofthevolumesistopresentkeywritingsinthegivensubjectareawhileat
the same time challenging their canonical status through the inclusion of less
well-used texts, including relevant contemporary documentation and commen-
taries, that present alternative interpretations or understandings of the period
under review.
Post-ImpressionismtoWorldWarIIskillfullynavigatesoneofthemostcomplex
and frequently taught periods in art history. The well-chosen selection of texts,
some of which appear for the first time in English, brings together key primary
sources and ‘‘canonical’’ criticism as well as more recent critical interventions
from a range of methodological perspectives.
The thematic structure is extremely coherent and useful and the introductory
essays to each of the five parts set out the historical and cultural origins of the
texts as well as exploring the methodological approaches represented. Conse-
quently,theanthologyprovidesavaluable,stimulating resourceforstudentsand
teachers alike and offers new perspectives on the established canon, as well as
being a useable anthology of interpretations of modernism. As one of the initial
volumes to be published it is an important standard-bearer for the series.
Dana Arnold
2004
viii
Preface
Thisanthologyisintendedtoprovideteachersandundergraduatestudentswithan
accessible, stimulating, and diverse collection of texts to support study of the
period in European art from Post-Impressionism to World War II. It brings
togetherthreemainkindsoftext,inthematicsectionsthathavebeencomposed–
it should be emphasized – to be suggestive rather than prescriptive. First, there
areprimaryhistoricalsources.Theseincludetextswrittenbypractitioners,suchas
the manifestos so central to avant-garde practice, and other statements and
reflections by individual artists. They appear along with relevant examples of
contemporary criticism, in Parts I and II, loosely thematized as ‘‘Programs and
Manifestos’’ and ‘‘Spirit and Subjectivity,’’ (though the manifesto genre also
resurfaces in Part IV, ‘‘Politics and the Avant-Garde’’). These texts have been
selected to provide a ‘‘core’’ of sample material and are included because such
primary sources are immensely valuable for the light they shed on the interplay
between theory and practice in the period. They allow for readers to make
comparisons between their content and between the different ways in which
texts functioned (and continue to function, not least through anthologies
such as this one) as part of the wider discourse of modernism and the avant-
garde.Theycanbereadinisolation,butitisespeciallyhopedthattheirselection
will encourage students to explore the interrelationships between different
groups, tendencies, working methods, and concepts. Examples of productive
comparisons in this manner might include reading F. T. Marinetti’s Futurist
manifesto, Hugo Ball’s Dada manifesto, and Wassily Kandinsky’s Concerning
the Spiritual in Art. In this case they could be used, for example, to consider
the relationship between Futurism, Dada, and Expressionism. Alternatively, in a
more specialized context they might suggest focused investigation of the impact
that the ideas of both Kandinsky and Marinetti had on Ball and the origins of
DadainZurich.Fromotherperspectives,Tatlin(PartI),Malevich(PartII),and
Groys (Part IV) or Aurier (Part II) and Solomon-Godeau (Part V) would be
similarly fruitful combinations that could well be used as a basis for seminar
ix
Preface ––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––
discussion, and there are many other such possibilities offered by the materials
collected here.
The secondkind of textis ofinfluential contemporary criticism. The inclusion
of criticism by writers such as Roger Fry, G.-Albert Aurier, Wilhelm Worringer,
Gustav Hartlaub, and Clement Greenberg allows students to consider the often
decisive role of the critic in the development and affirmation of aesthetic terms
and categories. Some of these writers – Worringer is a glaring case in point – are
frankly unfashionable objects of art-historical investigation, but their influence
has been very powerful in their historical contexts. Nonetheless, the categories
and concepts such texts have produced are often strikingly arbitrary: Post-
Impressionism, Symbolism, Expressionism, the so-called ‘‘New Objectivity’’
(Neue Sachlichkeit), and the ‘‘avant-garde’’ are among the most problematic.
Meanings for the latter term, contested and promiscuous as it is through this
period,areexploredinseveraltextsinthisvolume,providing,itishoped,another
levelfordiscussion.Thevexednatureofmanysuchconceptsishighlightedfroma
range of historical and critical perspectives by other texts in this volume.
The third kind of text in this anthology is the broadest and most heteroge-
neous.Theseessaysaregrouped,again,inthematicconstellationsintendednotto
imposedivisions,buttosuggestcrosscurrents,inPartsIIItoV.Rangingintheir
analysis across visual culture, from painting and sculpture to film and photog-
raphy, these essays date from the 1920s to the 1990s. Methodologically, they
involvearange,andsometimesacombination,ofMarxist,feminist,structuralist,
psychoanalytical, and other theoretical procedures. The texts in Parts III and IV
are specialized in their focus on (mainly) the visual culture of the 1920s and
1930s, but they have been selected to encourage informed consideration of key
issuesrelevanttowiderstudyoftheperiod;first,ofthedialecticbetweenmodern
art practice and mass culture and, second, what constitutes the ‘‘avant-garde’’ in
respect of cultural and state politics. Part V, finally, brings together a small
selection of essays, which can be read either discretely as case studies, or as a
means for considering different methodological approaches to the practice of art
history. Included here are important, but now fairly well-rehearsed, consider-
ationsofissuesofraceandgender,forexample.Thesehavebeenselectedfor the
clarity of their arguments’ emphasis, along with other essays concentrating in an
accessible manner on key considerations of market, taste, and appropriations of
concepts from wider culture, making them particularly appropriate for, for ex-
ample, seminar discussion with students beginning study in history of art.
The introductory essays to each section are less intended to provide blanket
‘‘background information’’ or biographical details than to highlight some of the
key points of each text and, in places, to point to unusual or more commonly
overlooked elements. They also seek to suggest interesting ways in which their
arguments may be seen to confirm or challenge those in other texts in the
volume. It is hoped that this may lead students themselves to recognize further
commonalities and contradictions between the various interpretive methods
and critical positions represented. Finally, the commentary seeks to encourage
x