scholarly journals An Age of Transition: Restaging Brecht’s Encounter with Beijing Opera

2021 ◽  
Vol 12 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Jonah Dunch
Keyword(s):  
Chinese Culture ◽  
Bertolt Brecht ◽  
Theatre History ◽  
Avant Garde ◽  
Chinese Theatre ◽  
Alienation Effect ◽  
Dramatic Performance ◽  
Beijing Opera ◽  
The Aesthetic

The scene is Moscow, 1935. A who’s who of the European avant-garde has gathered to see the work of their foremost Chinese colleague: the Beijing opera master Mei Lanfang. Among them is the German playwright Bertolt Brecht, who sees in Mei’s performances the aesthetic effect he aims to develop in his own work: an effect he will soon call the ‘alienation effect.’ In 1936, Brecht pens his famous essay “On Chinese Acting,” in which he argues—approvingly—that Chinese theatre alienates the actor and audience from a play’s narrative by smashing the fourth wall and championing symbolism over realism. But did Brecht get it right? In this essay, I examine this remarkable episode in global theatre history. I argue that Brecht misunderstood Beijing opera’s theatre aesthetics, yet nonetheless meaningfully engaged with Chinese culture. A renewed encounter between Brechtian theatre and Beijing opera, I suggest, opens up intriguing possibilities in dramatic performance and theatre aesthetics.

scholarly journals Hook to the Chin

2009 ◽  
Vol 46 (1) ◽  
pp. 70-78
Author(s):  
Lev Kreft
Keyword(s):  
Early Stage ◽  
Bertolt Brecht ◽  
Physical Culture ◽  
Anglo Saxon ◽  
European Continent ◽  
Avant Garde ◽  
Weimar Germany ◽  
Philosophy Of Sport ◽  
Power And Energy

Hook to the ChinWithin historical avant-garde movements from the beginning of the 20th century, a curious taste and fascination for boxing burst out, and developed later into the claim that art must become more similar to boxing, or to sport in general. This fascination with pugilism in the early stage of its popularity on the continent included such charismatic figures of the Parisian avant-garde as Arthur Cravan, who was Oscar Wilde's nephew, a pretty good boxer and an unpredictable organizer of proto-dada outrages and scandals.After WWI, the zenith of artists' and intellectuals' love for boxing was reached in Weimar Germany. One of the well known examples connecting boxing with art was Bertolt Brecht with his statement that we need more good sport in theatre. His and other German avant-garde artists' admiration for boxing included the German boxing star May Schmeling, who was, at least until he lost his defending championship match against Joe Louis, an icon of the Nazis as well. Quite contrary to some later approaches in philosophy of sport, which compared sport with an elite art institution, Brecht's fascination with boxing took its anti-elitist and anti-institutional capacities as an example for art's renewal.To examine why and how Brecht included boxing in his theatre and his theory of theatre, we have to take into account two pairs of phenomena: sport vs. physical culture, and avant-garde theatre vs. bourgeois drama. At the same time, it is important to notice that sport, as something of Anglo-Saxon origin, and especially boxing, which became popular on the European continent in its American version, were admired by Brecht and by other avant-garde artists for their masculine power and energy. The energy in theatre, however, was needed to disrupt its cheap fictionality and introduce dialectical imagination of Verfremdungseffect (V-effect, or distancing effect). This was "a hook to the chin" of institutionalized art and of collective disciplinary morality of German tradition.

Theoretical Problems of Soviet Underground Culture

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mark Lipovetsky ◽  
Tomáš Glanc ◽  
Maria Engström ◽  
Ilja Kukuj ◽  
Klavdia Smola
Keyword(s):  
Communicative Practices ◽  
Avant Garde ◽  
Central Focus ◽  
Cultural Phenomenon ◽  
Relational Art ◽  
Theoretical Hypothesis ◽  
Historical Specificity ◽  
The Aesthetic

This article presents a spectrum of theoretical problems associated with the Soviet artistic underground as a historical and cultural phenomenon. The central focus is on constellating issues of terminology and definition around the borders of underground culture in the USSR, within scholarship about it. As a theoretical hypothesis of the handbook, the chapter introduces the concept of the lifeworld, which the volume editors and contributors interpret as a synthetic multimedia nexus of a given nonconformist circle’s activities, both artistic and cultural. The underground lifeworld manifests the aesthetic discourse idiosyncratic for each artistic circle and serves as the source of semi-spontaneous “relational art” that absorbs and generates artworks, along with performative and communicative practices. Through the concept of the aestheticized lifeworld, the authors of this article define the historical specificity of the Soviet artistic underground in relation to the Russian historical avant-garde and Western neo-avant-garde.

Conclusion

2020 ◽  
pp. 522-538
Author(s):  
Jonathan Walley
Keyword(s):  
Avant Garde ◽  
Medium Specificity ◽  
Expanded Cinema ◽  
The Aesthetic ◽  
Experimental Films

The conclusion argues that while expanded cinema might seem radically opposed to conventional, popular, and mainstream cinema, it nonetheless attempts to articulate and specify the aesthetic qualities that define all cinema. This parallels a trait of conventionally made avant-garde/experimental films; the assertion of cinema’s nature and essences, which constitute all forms of cinema regardless of how different one kind of film appears from another. The conclusion also draws upon the notions of the “essentially cinematic” explored across the book to counter theoretical arguments against such specificity positions (e.g. medium specificity) that have been advanced by critics and scholars in the worlds of cinema and art. The conclusion argues that these anti-specificity positions are overly simplistic, and that expanded cinema represents a more nuanced and sophisticated notion of what a medium specific theory—or work of cinema—can be.

Introduction

2019 ◽  
pp. 1-32
Author(s):  
Emma Cole
Keyword(s):  
Bertolt Brecht ◽  
Reception Studies ◽  
Antonin Artaud ◽  
Diverse Range ◽  
Avant Garde ◽  
History Of ◽  
Heiner Müller

This introduction makes the case for postdramatic classical receptions to be included within reception studies scholarship. It contextualizes the overall study by providing an overview of the role of the classics within the development of postdramatic theatre and by charting the history of postdramatic classical receptions. The chapter offers an alternative to the standard teleological approach of documenting the history of postdramatic theatre, and instead suggests that the form arose from a diverse range of international theatrical experiments led by highly influential avant-garde practitioners, which gained enough notoriety and exposure to influence a range of other theatre makers. It examines Antonin Artaud, Bertolt Brecht, Richard Schechner, Tadashi Suzuki, and Heiner Müller, alongside a range of broader contextual environments, to argue that an interest in the classical underpinned the development of postdramatic theatre.

Secessionist Movement

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael Johnson
Keyword(s):  
Fine Art ◽  
Art Nouveau ◽  
Avant Garde ◽  
The Status ◽  
The Aesthetic ◽  
Secessionist Movement ◽  
Applied Arts ◽  
Modern Movement

The Secessionist Movement is the name applied to a range of artistic splinter groups that began to emerge in the 1890s. Objecting to what they saw as the inherent conservatism of established academies, these groups ‘seceded’ or broke away from their parent institutions and launched their own, avant-garde approach. The first secessionist group appeared in Munich in 1892 under the leadership of Franz von Stuck and Wilhelm Trübner. Among the most influential secessionist groups was that founded in Vienna by a coalition of artists, architects and designers who resigned from the Association of Austrian Artists in 1897. United by the urge to elevate the applied arts to the status of fine art, members of the Vienna Secession produced exquisite work across a spectrum of creative disciplines. The aesthetic initially resembled the curvilinear Art Nouveau style, but it increasingly moved towards abstraction and geometric simplicity. The founding of the Vienna Secession thus marked the beginning of a new artistic era in Austria and heralded the birth of the Modern Movement.

Shklovsky, Viktor (1893–1984)

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Angeliki Spiropoulou
Keyword(s):  
Scientific Study ◽  
Poetic Language ◽  
Literary Critic ◽  
Vladimir Mayakovsky ◽  
Russian Formalism ◽  
Avant Garde ◽  
Epic Theater ◽  
Political Function ◽  
Alienation Effect

Born in St Petersburg, Russia, Victor Borisovich Shklovsky (or Shklovskii; Ви́ктор Бори́сович Шкло́вский) was a literary critic, autobiographical novelist, and a leading figure of Russian Formalism (1910–30). A charter founder of OPOYAZ (The Society for the Study of Poetic Language, 1917), he was also associated with the Moscow Linguistic Circle, and contemporary avant-garde writers, such as the Serapion Brothers and the Russian Futurists, especially the poet Vladimir Mayakovsky (1893–1930), all of whom similarly emphasized literature as language against the moralizing idealism of Symbolist poetics and Impressionist criticism prevalent in pre-Revolution Russia. However, Formalism was later attacked as "decadent" aestheticism, and Shklovsky was forced to compromise. In his much quoted essay "Art as Device" (1917), a "manifesto of the Formalist method" (Eichenbaum 1965: 113), Shklovsky posits the autonomy of literature and affirms the Formalist pursuit of the immanent, scientific study of the "literariness" of literature derived from its distinctive language and techniques instead of its content, resonating with modernist aesthetics. Here he develops the concept of "estrangement" or "defamiliarization" ( ostraneniye ) as both the aim and method of all art, self-reflexively impeding the automatism of our perception. Renamed as the "alienation effect" or "distancing effect" (Verfremdungseffekt) and endowed with a political function, "estrangement" became the foundational technique of Bertolt Brecht‘s epic theater.

Widersprüchliche Optionen: Stationen der Künste 1913

2013 ◽  
Vol 38 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Christoph Asendorf
Keyword(s):  
Avant Garde ◽  
The Rich ◽  
The Aesthetic

AbstractApart from their rather coincidental origin year, 1913, there is no apparent connection between a monument like the “Völkerschlachtdenkmal” in Leipzig (“Monument to the Battle of the Nations”) and the aesthetic manifestations of the avant-garde. These artistic expressions oscillate between opposite poles: weakness and desire for stability, refinement and primitivism, immanence and transcendence. It might be assumed that precisely these contradictory impulses lie at the heart of the rich and widely influential artistic outcome of this pre-war year.

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