ПРОЛАЗНОСТ И МЕТОДОЛОШКО ФИКСИРАЊЕ ДРУШТВЕНЕ СТВАРНОСТИ: СНИМАК КАО ПОДАТАК ИНТЕРПРЕТАТИВНЕ СОЦИОЛОГИЈЕ

Фернан Леже (Fernand Léger), француски сликар и режисер, сањао је о колосалном филму који ће тачно двадесет и четири сата снимати живот једног мушкарца и једне жене; њихов рад, њихово ћутање, њихову интим- ност. Ништа се не би изоставило, а двоје протагониста не би знали да је камера присутна. Леже је био свестан да би слике које је замислио морале садржати шокантне призоре, јер приказују обично скривени вртлог сиро- вог постојања. „Мислим“, приметио је, „да би то било толико ужасно, да би људи престрашено бежали и звали упомоћ, као да их је задесила ката- строфа светских размера“

Enchanted Catastrophe

This chapter rethinks Le Corbusier’s idea of New York as an “enchanted catastrophe” by focusing on related concerns about architectural elevation and capitalist “creative destruction” in critical writings about the rise of the modernist American metropolis. In particular, it considers essays by Louis Sullivan and Frank Lloyd Wright and novels by John Dos Passos as well as key French texts by Fernand Léger, Le Corbusier, Jean-Paul Sartre, Simone de Beauvoir, and Michel de Certeau, among others. In turn, it traces the post-World War II shift according to which Paris “lost its hegemony,” as Beauvoir put it, and New York appeared to replace it as the capital of the twentieth century.

Ο Tériade ως τεχνοκρίτης και εκδότης

Αντικείμενο μελέτης και ανάλυσης της διδακτορικής διατριβής αποτελεί η δράση και το έργο του ελληνικής καταγωγής τεχνοκρίτη και εκδότη τέχνης Tériade (Στρατής Ελευθεριάδης, 1897-1983), ο οποίος διέγραψε μια σημαντική πορεία στον παρισινό κόσμο της τέχνης από τα μέσα της δεκαετίας του 1920 μέχρι τα μέσα της δεκαετίας του 1970. Θέτοντας στο επίκεντρο της ανάλυσης το ερώτημα πώς η σταδιοδρομία του Tériade εγγράφεται στον κόσμο της τέχνης του 20ού αιώνα, η ιστορική προσέγγιση της διατριβής εμπλουτίζεται με τη χρήση μεθοδολογικών εργαλείων από την κοινωνιολογία και την κοινωνιολογία της τέχνης, κυρίως των εννοιών της μεσολάβησης, των κοινωνικών δικτύων και του συμβολικού και οικονομικού κεφαλαίου. Μέσα από τα κείμενά του στον μεσοπολεμικό παρισινό καλλιτεχνικό τύπο και κυρίως μέσα από τις εκδόσεις του Verve, που ιδρύθηκαν το 1937, και εκμεταλλευόμενος ένα ισχυρό επαγγελματικό δίκτυο που δημιούργησε, ο Tériade λειτούργησε ως ένας σημαντικός μεσολαβητής της μοντέρνας τέχνης που συνεργάστηκε και προώθησε καλλιτέχνες όπως οι Henri Matisse, Pablo Picasso, Henri Laurens, Marc Chagall, Fernand Léger και Joan Miró, οι οποίοι ανταποκρίνονταν στο αισθητικό ιδεώδες του. Το ιδεώδες αυτό συνίστατο σε μια μετακυβιστική αισθητική και συγκεκριμένα σε εκείνο που ο ίδιος αποκαλούσε λυρική πλαστικότητα, έναν συγκερασμό των καθαρών μορφοπλαστικών ιδεών με το συναίσθημα του καλλιτέχνη. Την αντίληψη αυτή τη διαμόρφωσε ως νεαρός τεχνοκρίτης και την υλοποίησε αργότερα μέσα από τις επιλογές και τη στρατηγική του ως εκδότης, όταν πια οι καλλιτέχνες με τους οποίους συνεργαζόταν καθιερώθηκαν ως ο κλασικός κανόνας του μοντερνισμού. Η διατριβή αποτελείται από τέσσερα μέρη. Στο πρώτο παρουσιάζονται και αξιολογούνται τα μεθοδολογικά ερμηνευτικά εργαλεία της διατριβής. Το δεύτερο είναι αφιερωμένο στη δράση και τις ιδέες του Tériade ως τεχνοκρίτη, καθώς και στη συγκρότηση του επαγγελματικού του δικτύου. Θέμα του τρίτου μέρους είναι η εκδοτική δραστηριότητα του Tériade, η οποία αναλύεται σε ό,τι αφορά τόσο την αισθητική πτυχή όσο και τα δίκτυα μέσω των οποίων διαμορφωνόταν και διακινούνταν η μοντέρνα τέχνη και την ανταλλαγή συμβολικού και οικονομικού κεφαλαίου ανάμεσα στα μέλη τους. Στο τέταρτο μέρος αναλύονται η αναγνώριση της οποίας έτυχε ο Tériade στα ύστερα χρόνια του βίου του και η υστεροφημία του, καθώς και ο «επαναπατρισμός» του μέσω της ίδρυσης του Μουσείου Θεόφιλου και του Μουσείου-Βιβλιοθήκης Στρατή Ελευθεριάδη- Tériade στη Λέσβο. Συνολικά, στη διατριβή χρησιμοποιείται η περίπτωση του Tériade για να αναδειχθεί η σημασία του ρόλου των μεσολαβητών και των δικτύων στην παραγωγή και τη διακίνηση της μοντέρνας τέχνης, καθώς και οι περίπλοκες σχέσεις αλληλεπίδρασης και αλληλεξαρτήσεων μεταξύ των διαφόρων παραγόντων του κόσμου της τέχνης στη βάση αισθητικών αρχών αλλά και της επίτευξης στόχων όπως η οικονομική επιτυχία και η κοινωνική αναγνώριση.

Fragmentation(s) and Realism(s): Has the Fragment Gone Mainstream?

This article tackles what seems to be a revival of fragmentary fiction in English in the 21st century. It briefly traces the lineage of critical interest in the fragment from German Romanticism through Bertolt Brecht and Modernism to postmodern film studies, in an attempt to highlight not only the temporal, but also the spatial and visual dimension of discontinuity evinced by recent fragmentary fiction. Six novels published between 2005 and 2017 are discussed sequentially, in a manner redolent of cinematic movement: Tom McCarthy’s Remainder 2005, Anne Enright’s The Gathering 2007, Yaa Gyasi’s Homegoing 2016, Mohsin Hamid’s Exit West 2017, Ali Smith’s Autumn 2016, and George Saunders’s Lincoln in the Bardo 2017. The formal fragmentariness of these novels is read in connection to their recurrent themes: trauma, loss, death, grief, exile, displacement, memory and violence. In the process, the opposition between fragmentariness on the one hand and realism on the other is challenged; the argument draws on William Burroughs, Tom McCarthy and Fernand Léger. Although they are fragmentary in very different ways, all of the novels under scrutiny are what one may term “mainstream” novels, most of them boasting large readerships and having either won or been shortlisted for literary prizes such as the Booker Prize, thus seemingly confirming Ted Gioia’s contention that “mainstream literary fiction is falling to pieces”.

Paris, Poets, and Poverty

Freelance income and frugality allowed Nell to embark on her first trip abroad in 1950. In Paris, she felt as though she had stepped into an Impressionist landscape. Bowled over by Chartres Cathedral and the museums, she also visited two of her art idols, Jean Hélion and Fernand Léger. She became involved with a German woman with whom she traveled to Florence and Rome. Back in New York, while living with Midi Garth, she enjoyed hanging out with several of the poets later known as the New York School: Frank O’Hara, John Ashbery, and Kenneth Koch. Bebop records played at her boisterous parties, which often included marathon games of poker. In her painting, she had embarked on a period of experimentation with figurative imagery. Midi and Brook evokes a pastoral scene in Vermont, where the women vacationed. Meanwhile, her freelance work included serving as designer of the Village Voice.

American Abstract Artists

The American Abstract Artists is a formally established organization of painters, sculptors, and printmakers that has been devoted to promoting abstraction in the United States since the late-1930s. The organization was established in New York City in 1936, at a time when American art was dominated by figurative, realistic styles, such as regionalism and social realism, which favored depicting everyday life and people and national historical subjects. It held several exhibitions over the subsequent years, including a large annual exhibition each winter from 1937 to 1941. It was most influential in the late-1930s through the mid-1940s. The membership grew to more than fifty artists at this time, and its most influential, its famous members have included Burgoyne Diller, Ilya Bolotowsky, George L. K. Morris, Balcomb Greene, Albert E. Gallatin, Alexander Calder, Suzy Frelinghuysen, Fernand Léger, Piet Mondrian, Josef Albers, Jean Hélion, Carl Holty, Ad Rinehardt, Gertrude Greene, Stuart Davis, Charles Shaw, Vaclav Vytlacil, Jean Xceron, and David Smith. The American Abstract Artists group is often thought to have advocated a rather homogenous abstract style that was geometric, linear, and planar, but this is a broad oversimplification of the diversity of its membership.

Archipenko, Alexander (1887–1964)

Alexander Archipenko studied painting and sculpture at the Kiev Art school from 1902 until 1905, when he was expelled for criticizing its conservatism. Outside formal schooling, he was interested in ancient art indigenous to Ukraine—stone sculptures of females known as "babas," Scythian works, as well as those from Neolithic Trypillian culture being excavated in the region at the time. These would inform his work throughout his career, as would ancient Egyptian, pre-Columbian and Byzantine art. His polychromed sculpture was exhibited in his first show in 1906 in a village outside Kiev. He moved to Moscow that same year, participated in group exhibitions, and saw French avant-garde art first-hand, particularly the first "Zolotoe runo" Salon in spring 1908. Later that year, he moved to Paris, and after two weeks at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts, decided to study independently from direct observation of art works at local museums. Archipenko opened a studio and built relationships with many artists of the cubist circle, particularly brothers Marcel Duchamp and Raymond Duchamp-Villon and Fernand Léger. He first exhibited with them in 1910 at the Salon des Independents XXVI, joining them regularly until their last group show in 1920.

Rendón, Manuel (1894–1980)

The French-born Ecuadorian painter Manuel Rendón Seminario (also known as Manuel Rendón) is credited for introducing Geometric Abstraction to Ecuador together with compatriot Areceli Gilbert de Blomberg. As a member of the Post-Cubist L’École de Paris in the 1920s, Rendón’s early oeuvre synthesized avant-garde styles, notably Cubo-Futurism, Purism, and Surrealism, reminiscent of the techniques of modern masters such as Juan Gris, Fernand Léger, Amédée Ozenfant, and Giorgio de Chirico, artists whom he greatly admired. In 1911, Rendón exhibited at the Café de la Rotonde (whose curator was Henri Matisse), followed by the Société Nationale des Beaux-Arts in 1916, the Salon des Indépendants, Société du Salon d’Automne, Salon des Tuileries, and the Salon des Surindépendants. He also exhibited with the vanguard "La Horde de Montparnasse" and joined "Clarté," the pro-Communist youth group commanded by the French novelist Henri Barbusse. Rendón’s indigenist works of the 1930s and 1940s, however, were painted in a Neo-realist figurative mode, depicting the exotic Ecuadorian landscape and the plight of the native population, while his mature practice of the 1950s to 1970s was characterized by geometric abstraction and pure linearity, culminating in kaleidoscopic color and rhythmical kinetic qualities, as in the manner of the Divisionists.

The Group of Ten (Onlar)

The Group of Ten (Onlar) was formed by ten students under the tutelage of prominent artist, critic, and poet Bedri Rahmi Eyüboğlu while at the Istanbul Academy of Fine Arts. Composed of Mustafa Esirkuş (1921–1989), Nedim Günsür (1924–1994), Leyla Gamsiz (1921–2010), Hulûsi Saptürk, Fahrünnisa Sönmez, İvy Stangali, Turan Erol (1927--), Orhan Peker (1927–1978), Mehmet Pesen (1923--), and Fikret Otyam (1926), the group was Active from 1947 to 1955. The Group of Ten argued that contemporary Turkish artists should engage with traditional Turkish folk and decorative arts including textiles, calligraphy, and architectural design. In doing so, the Group of Ten differed significantly from their immediate predecessors and contemporaries (the D Group and the Newcomers Group) with whom they had a common educational background from the Istanbul Fine Arts Academy and various Paris studios, including those of André Lhote and Fernand Leger. The D Group and the Newcomers charged themselves with reconciling local social realities with artistic styles associated with Western modernity, including impressionist, fauvist, and cubist painting techniques. In contrast, the Group of Ten argued that Turkey’s storied decorative arts tradition had earned it an integral place within a history of world civilization, and that such decorative modes should be carried through to art-making in the modern period.