Avant Garde: Engaging with the World

The dealer critic system is established causing the avant garde to become very popular. the dealer critic system still governs our art system today. the dealer needs money and space, they also need someone to bring hype to certain works or artist, this is where the critic comes in, they help the dealer to know what to chose to buy and sell. and this replaces the salon system, it presents a problem because it all determined by a circuit that depends on generating a profit and art is now a business. 

Surrealism and photography are a very appropriate pair, the less doctored and the more naive a photograph is, the more authoritative it will be. The idea of chance is very important and they welcome the uninvited and the disorderly. Man Ray’s Minotaur is actually made up of the torso of a nude woman’s body. The minotaur in greek mythology is kept imprisoned in a labyrinth on the island of crete, cretan youth were sacrificed to it. The minotaur and his labyrinth were another potent symbol for the surrealist due to the minotaur collapsing the human and animal instincts. symbols of the unconscious mind and also the bestial nature or those instincts within every human. They want to liberate suppressed repressed instincts. it is familiar but is made to be unfamiliar, we see this other imagery in it, dual imagery, makes you doubt what you are looking at. The figure of the woman is also very important to the surrealist she is a well spring or muse of creativity because she herself is irrational and emotional. She symbolizes the unconscious and irrational as well. Her body is creating the head of a monster with her nipples as the eyes and her arms its horns, beauty and monstrosity are made into one, suggesting they are projections of our own desires.    

Duchamp created Fountain as an assisted ready made in 1920. This is his most famous readymade, it was exhibited in 1916 in the 291 gallery a photographers gallery in new York. The show stated that all works would be accepted due to it being a nonjuried show. He submitted this work under the name, Richard Mutt, and after much debate, the board memebers hide it from veiw disregarding their previous statement. After that decision Duchamp resigned from the board. They found this work to be disgusting, not art. Dada was breaking away from orderly and perfectly placed items, allowing the viewer to be impulsive (Tzara).  Regardless of whether or not he made this with his own hands he chose it and creates a new thought for this item. Shifting art from being a physical craft to a mental interpretation. 

Picasso Guernica is the most famous response to the bombing of Guernica. At the time Picasso was living in Paris when he was approached to do a mural for the Paris Exhibition of 1937. The artist in this movement  weren’t necessarily political but when events happen at such an extreme it isn’t escapable. The official theme of the Paris exhibition was the celebration of technology, the organizers hoped that this would bring a vision of a bright future to break the nations out of their depression and social unrest, of course this is the very same technology that can cause results such as Guernica, providing a biting satyr just in its placement in this exhibition. The overall scene is suggestive of an interior room that seems to be crumbling down around the figures, allowing for peeks onto the outside world. On the left there is a wide eyed bull standing above a woman holding a dead child in her arms, in the center there is a horse that is falling in agony. Notice that the tongues of the horse and the bull are these knife like blades and the cubist fracturing seems to very much work for a scene of such destruction and anarchy. There is a large gapping wound in the horse’s side that seems to be the focus of the painting as it is falling in agony. There are supposedly two hidden images, skulls overlaying the horses body and a bull appears to gore the bull from underneath. Basically it is a scene of horror and terror. On the right there is a figure sweeping in holding a lantern, possibly a symbol of hope, bearing witness to this tragedy. She is a figure of ourselves, because if we witness this and remember it we still have hope. The limited palate was influenced by the numerous photographs taken after the bombing. The painting itself was kept away and put in a corner at the exhibition, following the exhibition it toured around the world, the only place it didn’t go was Spain. Picasso didn’t want it to return there until the entire country could enjoy public liberties and democratic institutions.

Avant-Garde: Challenging traditional definitions of the Art Object.

Dada is not unified by any single style and is an attack against  preconcieved notions, meant to challange the identification of art. This movement develops during the first world war and this is very significant in the development in Dada. The war crumbles the idea of civilized modernity, society, economics, and politics are all transformed as women enter the workforce. War is not an honorable and unifying thing in all cases, they begin to question technology for its responsibility in destroying human bodies and the scientific exploration that followed that began creating rudimentary prosthetics. Even though Duchamp vowed to give up painting he refuses to give up his interest in art he begins finding these objects called ready mades. The term ready made refers to any kind of prefabricated object that is isolated from its original context and elevated to the status of art. He is asking us how we define art and what we want from art, he is exploring the parameters that we have given to art, art is a cultural construction. He is questioning the role of an artist. Duchamp created Fountain as an assisted ready made in 1920. This is his most famous readymade, it was exhibited in 1916 in the 291 gallery a photographers gallery in new York. The show stated that all works would be accepted due to it being a nonjuried show. He submitted this work under the name, Richard Mutt, and after much debate, the board memebers hide it from veiw disregarding their previous statement. After that decision Duchamp resigned from the board. They found this work to be disgusting, not art. Dada was breaking away from orderly and perfectly placed items, allowing the viewer to be impulsive (Tzara).  Regardless of whether or not he made this with his own hands he chose it and creates a new thought for this item. Shifting art from being a physical craft to a mental interpretation.

The goal of the Bauhaus was to create a union between art and life that had been lost in Avant Garde art. This is the most successful Avant Garde movement in Germany and is sponsered by the government. Founded in 1919 by Walter Gropius, following the war and preceeding the Nazi Party, their two main interest were architecture and design. There was a rise in the middle class due to the florishing economic situation. during this time art flourishes and was geared towards this middle class. Gropius was taked with integreating traditional fine art with low art, such as arts and crafts, while remaining commited to functionalism. Their goal was to improve the workers enviroments will increase productivity by increasing the aethestic appeal of everyday objects. The Bauhaus reflected the unity of all arts wanting a utopian craft of a singlular expressive creation. Breuer was creating practical and functional art, made to suit the middle class when he created the Wassily Club Chair named after Wassily Kandinsky. This is one of the earliest examples made in the metal workshop, it is meant to be practical and functional in everyday life. This goal is achieved through reducing the chair to its most necessary elemants. Breuer said that the design was inspired by a bicycle in the sense that it is light weight and an easily mass produced product. All inessential details are subordinated to a great, simple representational form that finally, when its definitive shape has been found, must constitute the symbolic expression of the inner meaning of the modern artifact (Gropius). It is an important break through for The Bauhaus, it is light, cheap, and easy to make. There are a lot of different chair designs all lacking ornamentation with an affordable, streamlined function. Making it perfect for those of the middle class.

Surrealism is similar that of  dada sculpture, in that many of these are readymade. The purpose is to resolve the contradictory conditions of dream and fiction into absolute reality. the notion of the fetish comes into play, by dealing with objects that you can touch and feel. These artist are interested in the anti retinal and the accidental, bringing together unrelated elements in an unrelated space. Arp created Head with Three disagreeable objects as a biomorphic abstraction, which is anything rooted in the organic. We have to readjust our vision to think about this as an art object. It is not displayed on a pedestal perhaps it sits on the floor. The larger rock is actually a plaster object with three smaller objects sitting on top, that can be rearranged and are meant to be rearranged. Arp described this work in a story of waking up with these three annoying objects, a mustache, a mandolin, and a fly, on his face. There is a notion of physical reengagement, where the viewer is meant to finish the work. He is evoking a different kind of sensory perception, the hand rather than the eye. The point of this is the interaction. a level of chance, in an ideal world every viewer can interact and relate to these objects differently.