“That Saves Them the Blessings of Civilization”

2021 ◽  
pp. 194-219
Author(s):  
Michael Valdez Moses
Keyword(s):  
Liberal Democracy ◽  
American West ◽  
German Expressionism ◽  
Literary Naturalism ◽  
Avant Garde ◽  
The Arts ◽  
Wild West ◽  
American Vernacular

The classic Hollywood Western is generally taken to be the antithesis of avant-garde art, a popular genre unaffected by modernism. However, John Ford’s Stagecoach (1939) provides an illustrative example of middlebrow American modernist cinema. Influenced by French literary naturalism and German expressionism, Ford’s Western obliquely engages with the ills of modern urban existence and the interrelated “crises of modernity” that characterized the interwar years, when the global viability of liberal democracy was cast into doubt. In Stagecoach, the problems of modernity are treated (diegetically), though not fully cured, by a transformative if dangerous journey into the American Wild West. By integrating the formal innovations of F. W. Murnau’s expressionist style with his own epic and monumental vision of the American west, Ford epitomized an underappreciated form of American vernacular modernism that emerged across the arts in the 1910s, flourished in the 1920s and 1930s, and survived into the post-WWII era.

Multisensory Modalities and Modernist Translation

CounterText ◽  
2016 ◽  
Vol 2 (3) ◽  
pp. 283-306
Author(s):  
Tamara Brzostowska-Tereszkiewicz
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Reader Response ◽  
Sensory Integration ◽  
Cultural Anthropology ◽  
Sensory Perception ◽  
Cross Cultural ◽  
Avant Garde ◽  
Artistic Production ◽  
High Modernism ◽  
The Arts

Multisensory and cross-modal perception have been recognised as crucial for shaping modernist epistemology, aesthetics, and art. Illustrative examples of how it might be possible to test equivalences (or mutual translatability) between different sensual modalities can be found in theoretical pronouncements on the arts and in artistic production of both the avant-garde and high modernism. While encouraging multisensory, cross-modal, and multimodal artistic experiments, twentieth-century artists set forth a new language of sensory integration. This article addresses the problem of the literary representation of multisensory and cross-modal experience as a particular challenge for translation, which is not only a linguistic and cross-cultural operation but also cross-sensual, involving the gap between different culture-specific perceptual realities. The problem of sensory perception remains a vast underexplored terrain of modernist translation history and theory, and yet it is one with potentially far-reaching ramifications for both a cultural anthropology of translation and modernism's sensory anthropology. The framework of this study is informed by Douglas Robinson's somatics of translation and Clive Scott's perceptive phenomenology of translation, which help to put forth the notion of sensory equivalence as a pragmatic correspondence between the source and target texts, appealing to a range of somato-sensory (audial, visual, haptic, gestural, articulatory kinaesthetic, proprioceptive) modalities of reader response.

Stream of Consciousness

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jane Hu
Keyword(s):  
Mental State ◽  
Visual Art ◽  
William James ◽  
Thought Processes ◽  
Stream Of Consciousness ◽  
Dramatic Monologue ◽  
German Expressionism ◽  
Avant Garde ◽  
Human Thought ◽  
Narrative Mode

The term ‘stream of consciousness’ was first coined by psychologist William James in The Principles of Psychology in 1893, when he describes it thusly: "consciousness as an uninterrupted ‘flow’: ‘a ‘river’ or a ‘stream’ are the metaphors by which it is most naturally described. In talking of it hereafter, let’s call it the stream of thought, consciousness, or subjective life" (243). The term quickly came to mean a narrative mode that seeks to give the written equivalent of a character’s thought processes, and is sometimes described in terms of an ‘interior monologue’. As such, it differs from the ‘dramatic monologue’ or ‘soliloquy’ where the speaker addresses the audience or an implied receiver. Stream of consciousness style is often identified by fictional techniques such as lack of punctuation, long and sometimes agrammatical sentences, and a series of unrelated impressions. Stream of consciousness technique tries to represent a character’s general mental state before it is condensed, organized, or edited down into narrative coherence or sense. While stream of consciousness is often read as an avant-garde technique, its aims were to get closer to the ‘reality’ of human thought processes. As a narrative technique, stream of consciousness maintains affiliations with other modernist art forms, such as the visual art of German expressionism, Cubism, and modernist film.

Erin Espelie

2019 ◽  
pp. 275-294
Author(s):  
Scott MacDonald
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
Digital Technologies ◽  
Cornell University ◽  
Avant Garde ◽  
University Of Colorado ◽  
Lanthanide Series ◽  
The Arts ◽  
Short Films ◽  
History Of ◽  
The University

Artist/scientist Erin Espelie was trained at Cornell University as a biologist, but turned down opportunities to study biology at the graduate level at Harvard and MIT in order to explore the New York City theater scene, before finding her way into independent, “avant-garde” filmmaking, first exploring her interests in biology and the history of science in a series of short films, then producing the remarkable essay-film The Lanthanide Series (2014), which explores the importance of the “rare earths” (the elements with atomic numbers 57–71) for modern communication and informational technologies. The imagery for The Lanthanide Series was recorded, almost entirely, off the reflective surface of an iPad. In her work as a moving-image artist, Espelie combines poetry, science, environmental politics, and modern digital technologies within videos that defy traditional knowledge categories. She is currently editor in chief for Natural History magazine and a director of the NEST (Nature, Environment, Science & Technology) Studio for the Arts at the University of Colorado-Boulder.

Diasporic Dialogues in Mid-Century New York: Stefan Wolpe, George Russell, Hannah Arendt, and the Historiography of Displacement

2012 ◽  
Vol 6 (2) ◽  
pp. 143-173 ◽  
Author(s):  
BRIGID COHEN
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
Hannah Arendt ◽  
Abstract Expressionism ◽  
Boundary Crossing ◽  
Avant Garde ◽  
The Arts ◽  
Cultural Boundary ◽  
George Russell ◽  
Political Philosopher ◽  
German Jewish

AbstractThis article explores mid-century New York intellectual scenes mediated by the avant-garde émigré composer Stefan Wolpe (1902–72), with special emphasis on Wolpe's interactions with jazz composer George Russell (1923–2009) and political philosopher Hannah Arendt (1906–75). Cross-disciplinary communities set the stage for these encounters: Wolpe and Russell met in the post-bop circles that clustered in Gil Evans's basement apartment, while Wolpe encountered Arendt at the Eighth Street Artists’ Club, the hotbed of Abstract Expressionism. Wolpe's exchanges with Arendt and Russell, long unacknowledged, may initially seem unrelated. Yet each figure shared a series of “cosmopolitan” commitments. They valued artistic communities as spaces for salutary acts of cultural boundary crossing, and they tended to see forms of self-representation in the arts as a way to respond to the dehumanizing political disasters of the century. Wolpe and Arendt focused on questions of human plurality in the wake of their forced displacements as German-Jewish émigrés, whereas Russell confronted dilemmas of difference as an African American migrant from southern Ohio in New York. Bringing together interpretive readings of music with interview- and archive-based research, this article works toward a historiography of aesthetic modernism that recognizes migration as formative rather than incidental to its community bonds, ethical aspirations, and creative projects.

““Di una pretesa scuola napoletana””: Sowing the Seeds of the Ars nova at the Court of Robert of Anjou

2007 ◽  
Vol 24 (2) ◽  
pp. 272-296 ◽  
Author(s):  
CARLA VIVARELLI
Keyword(s):  
Sacred Music ◽  
Second World War ◽  
Local History ◽  
Literary Texts ◽  
Musical Culture ◽  
Avant Garde ◽  
The Arts ◽  
Ars Nova ◽  
Important Center ◽  
Second World

The presence of two famous exponents of the French and Italian ars nova in Naples in 1318––respectively Petrus de Sancto Dionysio and Marchetto da Padova––substantiates Nino Pirrotta's hypothesis that the Angevin capital was an important center of musical culture in the early Trecento and a setting for avant-garde debates. It also aids in reconstructing the elusive biography of the Paduan musician and clarifies the much debated dating of his Pomerium. Pirrotta ultimately abandoned his Neapolitan hypothesis for lack of evidence, a difficulty caused and aggravated by the thorough destruction of Angevin chancery documents during the Second World War. Evidence has been found, however, in indirect sources, such as literary texts, works of local history, and documentary transcriptions and summaries that predate the archival losses. In addition to placing the two prominent musicians at the Angevin court in Naples, these sources confirm the presence there of minstrels (evidence for secular music within the court's recreational sphere), vouch for the continuity of the institution of the royal chapel (evidence for sacred music at court, clearly connected to the liturgy), and testify to Robert of Anjou's catalytic patronage of the arts and his passion for music in general. Thus Naples regains its status as a capital on the map of 14th-century music.

scholarly journals Tanztheater und filmische Ästhetik. Cineastische Einflüsse und Gestaltungsweisen in den Kompositionen für die Ballets Suédois 1920–1925

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Fabian Kolb
Keyword(s):  
Creative Potential ◽  
Avant Garde ◽  
The Arts ◽  
Ballet Music

The central role that avant-garde music and dance theatre played in the interplay and synthesis of the arts and media in the 1920s, particularly in Paris, is well known. However, the creative potential of ballet has hardly been recognized in its manifold relationships with film and cinematic-inspired expression. The extent to which especially ballet music interacted with the latest cinematographic principles and techniques and referred to cinematic aesthetics in a variety of ways can instructively be seen regarding the productions of the Ballets Suédois. This is discussed in this article with an exemplary look at Les Mariés de la Tour Eiffel (1921), Within the Quota (1923), Skating Rink (1922) and Relâche (1924). By that it becomes clear that the transmedia inclusion of cinematographic ideas not only inspired the vocabulary of avant-garde dance and modern choreography, but was also distinctively reflected in the conception and composition of film-affected music.

scholarly journals Le Corbusier y Charles Lasnon: De las maquetas blancas de los Salones de Otoño a los plan-reliefs del nuevo urbanismo

2015 ◽  
Author(s):  
Miguel Angel De la Cova Morillo
Keyword(s):  
Three Dimensional ◽  
Le Corbusier ◽  
Arts And Crafts ◽  
New Techniques ◽  
Avant Garde ◽  
The Arts ◽  
Palabras Clave ◽  
Scale Models ◽  
Siglo Xx ◽  
Made In

Resumen: El “mouleur” Charles Lasnon representa la convivencia que durante el primer tercio del siglo XX se dará entre las Artes y Oficios y las nuevas técnicas de representación vinculadas a la fotografía. Lasnon realizará para Le Corbusier una serie de maquetas que presentarán sus propuestas a escala doméstica y urbana, primera aproximación a una expresión tridimensional de sus teorías: los modelos 1:20 de los Salones de Otoño en 1922 y 1923, a camino entre el objet-type y la escultura de vanguardia, y las del “Urbanisme á trois dimensions” del Plan Obus y Nemours. Las maquetas de las Villas se establecerán como “manifiestos estéticos y arquitectónicos”. En ellas se ensayarán principios teóricos plásticos, previos incluso a una idea de construcción, indagaciones que abren la puerta a transferencias entre la representación a escala realizada en yeso y la arquitectura a realizar. Por otra parte, la vinculación de Lasnon con el Service Geographique de l’Armée le familiarizará con las nuevas técnicas de representación del territorio. Así, realizará los Carte-Relief de Argel coetáneamente a la ejecución de las maquetas de las propuestas urbanas argelinas de Le Corbusier, garantes no sólo del rigor geométrico de sus postulados: quedan en ellas registradas el paisaje original, cuya topografía se modela y manipula como si de un trabajo plástico se tratara. Utopías en busca de un lugar imaginado sobre un trozo de yeso. Abstract: Charles Lasnon, "mouleur",represents the coexistence between the Arts and Crafts and the new rendering techniques related to photography that took place in the first quarter of the twentieth century. Commissioned by Le Corbusier, Lasnon made in those years several models that represent his new proposals at a domestic and urban scale. That was the first approach to a three-dimensional expression of his theories –the scale models of 1:20 from "Salon d'Automne" in 1922 and 1923, which were halfway between objet-types and avant-garde sculptures, and the theories of "L'Urbanisme à trois dimensions" from Plan Obus and Nemours. The scale-models of "Villas" were established as “aesthetic and architectural manifestos”. They were used to test theoretical and plastic principles, formulated before the idea of construction. These tests resulted in "transfers" between plaster-craft scale models and the architecture to be built. Additionally, the links between Lasnon and the “Service Geographique de l’Armée” enabled him to be familiar with new techniques to represent landscape. Thus, Lasnon made the Carte-Reliefs d'Argel at the same time as Le Corbusier made the models for the urban proposals in Alger. These models not only guarantee the geometrical accuracy of his proposals, but also capture an original landscape whose topography is modeled as if it was a plastic craftwork. Utopias seeking an imaginary place on a plaster slice.  Palabras clave: maqueta; moulage; Charles Lasnon; urbanismo; plan-relief; Salón de Otoño. Keywords: model; "moulage", Charles Lasnon; urbanism; plan-relief; Salon d'Automne. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.4995/LC2015.2015.729

Aisthēsis

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Vichnar ◽  
Louis Armand
Keyword(s):  
20Th Century ◽  
Technological Condition ◽  
Marshall Mcluhan ◽  
Avant Garde ◽  
Artistic Activity ◽  
The Arts ◽  
History Of ◽  
Formed Part ◽  
Political Imaginary ◽  
And Function

Etymologically and conceptually linked with sense perception (as opposed to, in the Platonic tradition, noēsis or intellection) in ancient, medieval, and early-modern thought, aisthēsis formed part of theorizing not only questions surrounding beauty and art, but also perception, epistemology, and even ontology (in, for instance, the work of Plato, Aristotle, and Thomas Aquinas). During the Enlightenment and its project of subdivision and categorization of the “humanities,” aisthēsis became subsumed, in the work of Alexander Baumgarten, by “aesthetics,” the study of beauty in the narrower sense. However, by the beginning of the 20th century and the Marxist/Freudian/Saussurean revolution in humanist inquiry and the “avant-garde” revolution in the arts, aisthēsis resumed its place and function as a central node in a vast network of concerns: for the Marxists, the history of aisthēsis follows the pattern of social development of progressive mastery over nature by humankind, described as a process of rationalization (the Frankfurt School of Critical Theory); in psychoanalysis and phenomenology, artistic activity is regarded as the “sublimated” expression of socially objectionable energies, taking place in a world conceived of as indefinite and open multiplicity (John Dewey, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, et al.); in poststructuralist theory, the image not simply “acquires” a politico-aesthetic function by way of an act of judgement, but rather accedes in its very technological condition to a political imaginary, to an aesthetics as such (Roland Barthes, Jacques Derrida, et al.). In the second half of the 20th century, with the progressive technologization of society, aisthēsis formed the backbone of media studies, which examines how technological innovation overthrows a settled political and aesthetic order, with special attention paid to the effects of electronic media and the hypertext: non-linearity, repetitiveness, discontinuity, intuition (e.g., Marshall McLuhan and Jay David Bolter). At the dawn of the 21st century, in the aesthetico-mimetic doubling of the mediasphere, from teletext and satellite TV to the World Wide Web and GPS, a critical, ecological mode of thinking aisthēsis assumes the ideal function of an “avant-gardism” in affecting the structure of how things come to mean, how meaning is virtualized, and how the virtual is lived.

Chicago School

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Joanna Merwood-Salisbury
Keyword(s):  
20Th Century ◽  
American West ◽  
Chicago School ◽  
Commercial Buildings ◽  
Office Buildings ◽  
New Objectivity ◽  
Avant Garde ◽  
International Style ◽  
Select Group ◽  
The Subject

While contemporary scholars question the existence of a cohesive “Chicago School” of architecture, there is no doubt that by the mid-1890s Chicago came to be recognized nationally and internationally for the technological and aesthetic innovation evident in a number of commercial buildings erected in the downtown business area known as the Loop. These buildings serviced the rapid growth of a city founded earlier in the century as a major trading hub linking the East Coast and the American “West.” Principally office buildings, some were erected for particular companies while others were built as speculative ventures. These innovations were known first as the “commercial style,” then simply as “tall office buildings”; the term “skycraper” came into popular use around 1895. In order to find the correct expression for this unprecedented building type, local architects adapted historical styles including the neo-Gothic, the Romanesque, the Venetian, and the neoclassical. In their published writings, they positioned their work as the development of an indigenous American style particular to the region. By the 1920s, critics described this style as the product of an identifiable “Chicago School.” The idea of such a school played, and continues to play, a significant role in histories of modern architecture. For much of the 20th century, the term referred to a select group of commercial buildings erected between roughly 1883 and 1910. During that period, the Chicago School was positioned as precursor to the modern or International style, prefiguring the functionalism and “new objectivity” of the early-20th-century European avant-garde. Since the 1980s, scholars have dismantled the narrow and monolithic view of the subject, placing its key monuments back within the specific social and economic concerns of the late 19th century, introducing a wider range of projects and typologies for consideration, and including projects constructed up until about 1920. There is less emphasis on aesthetic commonality, and more on the diversity of built responses to the forces of industrialization, urbanization, and capitalism that shaped the American city. The texts listed here survey the Chicago School as it was defined during the 20th century as well as more recent scholarship that questions the canonical view.

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