Art as Abstract Machine: Guattari's Modernist Aesthetics

2012 ◽  
Vol 6 (2) ◽  
pp. 224-239 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stephen Zepke
Keyword(s):  
Contemporary Art ◽  
Modern Art ◽  
Felix Guattari ◽  
Institutional Critique ◽  
Abstract Machine ◽  
Political Condition ◽  
Avant Garde ◽  
Immanent Critique ◽  
Conditions Of Possibility ◽  
To Come

Felix Guattari was a modernist. He not only liked a lot of modernist artists, but his ‘aesthetic paradigm’ found its generative diagram in modern art. The most important aspect of this diagram was its insistence on the production of the new, the way it produced a utopian projection of a ‘people to come’, and so a politics whose only horizon was the future. Also important for Guattari's diagram of the ‘modern’ were the forces of abstraction, autonomy and immanent critique. Together these elements construct an artwork that is radically singular and separate, composed of a-signifying, a-temporal and invisible forces, sensations that go beyond our human conditions of possibility. In this Guattari's modernism must be understood as being quite different from his co-option by contemporary art theorists influenced by post-Operaist thought. Post-Operaism understands politics as ‘being-against’, a dialectical form of negation that finds its political condition of possibility in what already exists. Because such thought sees modern art as being entirely subsumed by the institutions and markets that contain it, art itself must be negated in order for aesthetic powers to become political. This has lead post-Operaist thought to align itself strongly with the avant-garde positions of institutional-critique and art-into-life, or ‘non-art’. Guattari's modernism takes him in a very different direction, affirming modern art despite its institutional enframing, because art is forever in the process of escaping itself. This makes modern art the model in Guattari's thought for politics itself.

scholarly journals L’Educational Turn. L’éducation comme média artistique: À la recherche d’une interactivité nouvelle

2016 ◽  
Vol 43 (1) ◽  
pp. 40
Author(s):  
Rébéca Lemay-Perreault
Keyword(s):  
Public Participation ◽  
20Th Century ◽  
Contemporary Art ◽  
Museum Education ◽  
Knowledge Dissemination ◽  
Institutional Critique ◽  
Relational Aesthetics ◽  
Avant Garde ◽  
Interaction Mode ◽  
Artistic Medium

Abstract: “Educational Turn”, an expression used for a decade by museology and various contemporary art environments, by artists as well as curators (Rogoff, 2008; O’Neill & Wilson (Eds.), 2010; Wilson & O’Neill, 2010; Wesseling (Ed.), 2011).  Derived from artistic avant-garde tendencies of the second half of the 20th Century, including institutional critique and relational aesthetics, it immediately brings forward the issues of interactive modalities of the exhibited artwork, public participation, and knowledge dissemination.  But this expression actually goes further since the concept of “educational turn” is not only rooted in the artwork as a mediation tool, but to cite Podesva (2007), in education as an artistic medium, fudging the disciplinary limits of art, museology, and museum education.  What is new about this turn and how does it transform museum practices?  This essay aims to define a new interaction mode embodied by these productions by analyzing the historiographical corpus theorizing the movement. KEYWORDS: Educational Turn; contemporary art; interactivity; museum; postmodernismRésumé: « Educational turn », un terme qui, depuis dix ans, a su se faire connaître dans différents milieux de l’art contemporain et de la muséologie, tant chez les artistes que chez les conservateurs (Rogoff, 2008; O’Neill & Wilson (Eds.), 2010; Wilson & O’Neill, 2010; Wesseling (Ed.), 2011). Issu des avant-gardes artistiques de la deuxième moitié du 20e siècle, notamment de la critique institutionnelle et de l’esthétique relationnelle, il pose d’emblée la question des modalités d’interactivité de l’objet d’exposition, de la participation des publics et de la transmission des savoirs. Mais l’expression va plus loin puisque l’idée d’un « educational turn » prend non seulement ancrage dans une conception de l’œuvre d’art comme dispositif de médiation, mais aussi, pour reprendre l’expression de Podesva (2007), de l’éducation comme un médium artistique, brouillant les frontières disciplinaires de l’art, de la muséologie et de l’éducation muséale. En quoi ce tournant est-il nouveau et quelles transformations apporte-il à la pratique muséale ? À travers une analyse du corpus historiographique théorisant le mouvement, cet essai vise définir un nouveau mode d’interactivité incarné dans ces productions.MOTS CLES: Eductional Turn; art contemporain; interactivité; musée; postmodernité

Yoo, Young Kuk (1916–2002)

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Min Kyungso
Keyword(s):  
South Korea ◽  
Contemporary Art ◽  
First Generation ◽  
Modern Art ◽  
Three Dimensional ◽  
Abstract Art ◽  
The Sun ◽  
Dynamic Tension ◽  
Oil Painting ◽  
Avant Garde

As one of the pioneers in Korean abstract art, Yoo Young Kuk constructed a unique modernist aesthetic using simplified motifs drawn from Korean nature and abstraction. Yoo was born in Uljin, South Korea, and enrolled in the oil painting department at Tokyo Bunka Gakuin, Japan, at the age of twenty. In Japan, he absorbed European modernist styles and participated in Japanese avant-garde group shows, including Jiyu-ten [自由展] and Neo Beaux-arts Group (NBG) exhibitions, until his return to Korea in 1943. The works of his Japanese period were wide-ranging, from geometrical abstract paintings, to three-dimensional collages, to experimental photographs. In 1947, Yoo created the Neo Realism School [신사실파] with Kim Whanki [김환기] (1913–1974) and Lee Kyusang [이규상] (1918–1964), fellow members of the first generation of Korean abstractionists. From the late 1950s, he organized group exhibitions focusing on modern and contemporary art, such as the Modern Art Society [모던아트협회], the Invitational Exhibition of Contemporary Artists [현대작가초대전], and Sinsang-hoe [신상회]. Although rendered in a highly abstract way, Yoo’s work uses some natural motifs, including mountains, the sea, and the sun. The contrast between submerged dark and rising bright colors, along with the irregular wide lines contouring each shape, add dynamic tension and harmony to the pictorial plane.

scholarly journals Kunst, kapitalisme, revolution og kommunisering

2010 ◽  
Vol 25 (64) ◽  
Author(s):  
Mikkel Bolt
Keyword(s):  
Everyday Life ◽  
Contemporary Art ◽  
Modern Art ◽  
Capitalist Society ◽  
Complex Relationship ◽  
Avant Garde

Mikkel Bolt: "Kunst, kapitalisme, revolution og kommunisering - Om overskridelsen af kunsten som betydning uden virkelighed"AbstractMikkel Bolt: “Art, Capitalism, Revolution and Communisation: On the Transgression of Art as Meaning Without Reality”The article argues that modern art has always had a complex relationship to the idea of revolution: It embodies and articulates a critique of modern capitalist society at the same time as it consolidates that very society. From romanticism onwards art has sought to transgress the discursive and institutional limits of the art institution seeking to transcend the separation of art and everyday life. Much of what today goes under the name of contemporary art is rarely able to continue this destructive project. A notable exception is the milieu that has published Tiqqun andL’insurrection qui vient combining elements from the revolutionary tradition as well as avant-garde art working towards a communisation of everyday life under conditions of spectacle.

Contemporary Art and the Problem of Music: Towards a Musical Contemporary Art

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-26
Author(s):  
G. DOUGLAS BARRETT
Keyword(s):  
Contemporary Art ◽  
Contemporary Music ◽  
Conceptual Art ◽  
Social Process ◽  
Theoretical Concept ◽  
Sound Art ◽  
Art Theory ◽  
Avant Garde ◽  
Absolute Music ◽  
Art Form

Abstract This article elaborates the art-theoretical concept of ‘the contemporary’ along with formal differences between contemporary music and contemporary art. Contemporary art emerges from the radical transformations of the historical avant-garde and neo-avant-garde that have led to post-conceptual art – a generic art beyond specific mediums that prioritizes discursive meaning and social process – while contemporary music struggles with its status as a non-conceptual art form that inherits its concept from aesthetic modernism and absolute music. The article also considers the category of sound art and discusses some of the ways it, too, is at odds with contemporary art's generic and post-conceptual condition. I argue that, despite their respective claims to contemporaneity, neither sound art nor contemporary music is contemporary in the historical sense of the term articulated in art theory. As an alternative to these categories, I propose ‘musical contemporary art’ to describe practices that depart in consequential ways from new/contemporary music and sound art.

Pop as Translation Strategy: Makishi Tsutomu's Political Pop in Okinawa

ARTMargins ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 7 (2) ◽  
pp. 42-71
Author(s):  
Hiroko Ikegami
Keyword(s):  
Vietnam War ◽  
Contemporary Art ◽  
Economic Benefits ◽  
Pop Art ◽  
Cocktail Party ◽  
Lingua Franca ◽  
Avant Garde ◽  
Japanese Imperialism ◽  
Translation Strategy ◽  
The Vietnam War

This essay makes the first sustained study of the Okinawan artist Makishi Tsutomu (1941–2015) who used American Pop Art vocabularies to describe the complex realities of US-occupied Okinawa. Focusing on his 1972 installation Commemorating the Reversion to the Great Empire of Japan, the essay examines the critical ambivalence of Makishi's Political Pop as a translation strategy. Despite his critique of both American and Japanese imperialism, Makishi was aware that Okinawa was inseparably entangled in it, especially in the context of the Vietnam War, which brought violence, but also economic benefits, to Okinawa. Despite his use of the American Pop idiom as a new lingua franca for contemporary art, Makishi's work did not reach either mainland or international audiences as the artist exhibited almost exclusively in Okinawa. By comparing Makishi's artistic strategies with those of a representative Okinawan novelist, Ōshiro Tatsuhiro, especially as articulated in his 1967 novella The Cocktail Party, the essay situates the significance of Makishi's project within the emerging discourse on the global neo-avant-garde.

On the “Odoresque” and “Aero-Perfumes”: Smell Related Neologisms in Avant-garde and Contemporary Art and Scholarship

2021 ◽  
Vol 9 (2021-2) ◽  
pp. 120-133
Author(s):  
Caro Verbeek
Keyword(s):  
Embodied Cognition ◽  
Contemporary Art ◽  
Doctoral Dissertation ◽  
Historical Sources ◽  
Avant Garde ◽  
Literary Sources ◽  
The Hague

For her doctoral dissertation “In Search of Lost Scents,” art and scent historian Caro Verbeek (Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, Kunstmuseum, The Hague) collected olfactory neologisms or newly invented smell related words from (art) historical sources ranging from 1855 to 1975, which she categorised according to the themes poetry, mind, concepts, material and synaesthesia. Three never-before-published artistic illustrations by the author help establish a more embodied cognition of the meaning of some of these concepts, as including “smell images” is impossible. In addition, she has created a “synaesthetic odour wheel” based on literary sources (2021).

scholarly journals Nomos akumulacji pierwotnej i anomos dóbr wspólnych w dobie niewczesnej nowoczesności

2020 ◽  
Vol 26 ◽  
pp. 47-70
Author(s):  
Łukasz Moll
Keyword(s):  
Gilles Deleuze ◽  
Political Order ◽  
Carl Schmitt ◽  
Felix Guattari ◽  
Global Order ◽  
Good Opportunity ◽  
The Earth ◽  
The Commons ◽  
Conditions Of Possibility ◽  
Geopolitical Discourse

The article aims to challenge the narrative on modernity, which was presented by Carl Schmitt in his book The Nomos of the Earth. The publication of Polish translation of this classic book is a good opportunity to re-think the conditions of possibility of Schmitt’s philosophical and geopolitical discourse. The German jurist described the formation of Eurocentric and stato-centric global order (nomos) in a way, that delegitimized the practices of resistance as unlawful (anomos). The author proposes – following Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari – to re-interpret the terms nomos and anomos in order to present anomos in positive way, as a potentiality to form an alternative political order. In conclusion the author tries to convince that the order of anomos is based upon the development of the commons and its contemporary manifestations express themselves in the practices of social movements, which disturb linear vision of history.

Abstract Machine – Geographical Information Systems (GIS) for literary and cultural studies: ‘Mapping Kavanagh’

2010 ◽  
Vol 4 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 17-37 ◽  
Author(s):  
Charles Travis
Keyword(s):  
Information Systems ◽  
Cultural Studies ◽  
Geographical Information Systems ◽  
Practical Work ◽  
Geographical Information ◽  
Abstract Machine ◽  
Epic Poem ◽  
Spatial Dimensions ◽  
To Come ◽  
Gis Software

Drawing upon previous theoretical and practical work in historical and qualitative applications of Geographical Information Systems (GIS), this paper, in Giles Deleuze and Félix Guattari's terminology, conceptualizes GIS as ‘an abstract machine’ which plays a ‘piloting role’ which does not ‘function to represent’ something real, but rather ‘constructs a real which is yet to come.’ To illustrate this digital humanities mapping methodology, the essay examines Irish writer Patrick Kavanagh's novel The Green Fool (1938) and epic poem The Great Hunger (1946) and their respective contrasting topophilic and topophobic renderings of landscape, identity and sense of place under the lens M.M. Bakhtin's ‘Historical Poetics’ (chronotope) to illuminate GIS's ability to engage in spatio-discursive visualization and analysis. The conceptualizations and practices discussed in this paper reconsider GIS software/hardware/techniques as a means to engage subjects of concern to literary and cultural studies commensurate with the recent strong interest in the geographical and spatial dimensions of these cognate areas.

Steeped in Modernism: The Teapot as Manifesto in Early 20th Century Art

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Maya Bielinski
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
20Th Century ◽  
Political History ◽  
Modern Art ◽  
The Other ◽  
Early 20Th Century ◽  
Avant Garde ◽  
Small Window ◽  
Time Period ◽  
20Th Century Art

The art manifesto, a written political, social, and artistic proclamation of an artistic movement, surged in popularity among avant‐garde art groups in the first half of the twentieth century. Many of the manifestos featured declarations for the synthesis of art and life as well as a call for social and political power for artists of both 'high' and 'low' art forms. Concurrently, new artistic interpretations of the humble teapot became suddenly ubiquitous. This inquiry explores how the teapot emerged as a dominant symbol for the goals of Modern Art movements, and includes an analysis of the teapot's socio‐political history, its ambiguous status between high and low art, and its role in the commercial sphere. By examining the teapots of Suprematism's Kazimir Malevich, Constructivism's Mariane Brandt,and Surrealism's Meret Oppenheim, this presentation will track ideas of functionality, the teapot as symbol, and aesthetics from 1923 to 1936. This small window in time offers an analysis of the extraordinary developments in teapots, and perhaps a glimpse of the paralleled momentum that occurred more generally in design, architecture, and the other arts in this time period.

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