Art 330 essay

World War I broke the back of everything the modern person hitherto knew to be true. There was no precedent in the arts, no readymade expression, for what total, mechanized war could do to the land, the body or the mind; artists would have to create a new language to fit this new world. Though the artistic languages expressing the horror of war and this generation’s shell-shocked vision of the future vary widely, our survey of this period will reveal the one commonality between them all: be they painters or composers, filmmakers or writers, the work these people made qualifies them as members of the lost generation.

The first to grapple with this new world were the Dadaists; they literally came up with a new language! Listen to the nonsense words and sounds of Ursonate by Kurt Schwitters by going to the Webliography and visiting the link Ursonate.

 

Many rejected the absurdist agenda of the Dadaists. Hemingway was one of these; instead of revealing the irrationality of existence he sought truth at its most elemental level. The result: spartan sentences that fly as straight and true as a bullet. The Russian Suprematists also rejected Dadaism; they preferred to create a new world based on rigid order. Their abstracted images of perfect geometric shapes in primary colors are both the building blocks of a new ideology and a rejection of a decadent past corrupted by delusional notions of glory and honor. Filmmaker Sergei Eisenstein would find voice for unspeakable atrocity by showing a rapid succession of images; his “Odessa Steps” montage from The Battleship Potemkin (1925) does not depict a scene from World War I, but his cinematic vision perhaps comes the closest to encapsulating the horror, injustice, and waste of the Great War.

This module explores what is left when the joyful sense of the promise of modernity and the optimism born of the machine, two of the foundational pillars of the Belle Epoque (1871-1914), have been utterly destroyed and how art staggers to its feet once more to serve the purpose it has always served: to hold up a mirror to the society which has produced it so that we may truly see who we are.

Chapter 35 in The Humanities: Culture, Continuity, and Change by Sayre, H. M

The beginnings of Dada were not the beginnings of art, but of disgust.” - Tristan Tzara

 

When we see the dissected images of men showing up in Dadaist art, it’s important to realize that all too often these artists were drawing from real life examples of terribly wounded people. The Dadaists were not simply going for the sensational gross-out; they were doing as artists throughout time have done: they were holding up a mirror to society so that we could see a vision of ourselves and thereby, perhaps, fulfill the command etched in stone on the Temple of Apollo at Delphi to know ourselves.  

We have discussed the origins of cinema. In this module, the contributions of filmmaker Sergei Eisenstein (1898–1948) are explored. Specifically, the first ever use of montage (the cutting together of disparate shots to create a new meaning) is explored. The most famous use of montage by Eisenstein is the Odessa Steps sequence in his Battleship Potemkin (1925). The scene depicts the massacre of civilians by Tsarist troops.

 

Explore the Odessa Steps sequence in greater depth by clicking on myhumanitieskit.com in the Course Home Menu. After logging on, select Chapter 42; click on Interact and then on Closer Look; you will find an interactive web page on Eisenstein’s Battleship Potemkin.

Additional points on Jacob Epstein at the Tate Museum:

 

· Jacob Epstein, Mrs. Mary McEvoy, Bronze, 1909

· Jacob Epstein, The Rock Drill, Bronze, 1913-1914

-Of this work Epstein said, “It is the sinister armoured figure of today and tomorrow. Nothing human, only

the terrible Frankenstein’s monster into which we have transformed ourselves.”

· Jacob Epstein, Jacob Kramer, Bronze, 1921

-Jacob Kramer (1892-1962) was born in Russia to successful artistic parents; his father was a court

painter and his mother a trained singer who performed in theaters all over Russia. His family was forced to immigrate in 1894 when Tsar Nicholas II came to power and instituted drastic laws restraining the freedoms of Jews. The family eventually settled in England in 1900. The elder Kramer’s were never able to regain their former status or wealth. Jacob Kramer became a painter, but poverty and alcoholism stole much of his potential.

Learn more about Dada by going to the Museum of Modern Art and listening to these four short audio files. Also, read the National Gallery of Art’s Student Guide on Dada provided in an online PDF file.

 

Go to the Links tab under More Tools  to visit the following information:

 

· Dada by Glenn Lowry. Introduction to the exhibition by Glenn Lowry.

· Origins of the Word Dada.

· Hannah Höch. Cut with the Kitchen Knife through the Last Weimar Beer-Belly Cultural Epoch in Germany (Schnitt mit dem Küchenmesser durch die letzte Weimarer Bierbauchkulturepoche Deutschlands)]. 1919-1920.

· Johannes Theodor Baargeld. (Alfred Emanuel Ferdinand Greunwald). Typical Vertical Mess as Depiction of the Dada Baargeld (Typische Vertikalklitterung als Darstellung des Dada Baargeld). 1920.

The images featured under “Cases” show World War I soldiers who have sustained head wounds and who received reconstructive plastic surgery. Often, a jaunty photograph of the soldier in uniform before he went to the Front is shown. The contrast between the Before and After photographs is devastating.

 

The purpose of viewing these photographs is two-fold. One, it brings the true horror of World War I to the forefront of our minds. Secondly, when we see the dissected images of men showing up in Dadaist art, it’s important to realize that all too often these artists were drawing from real life examples of terribly wounded people. The Dadaists were not simply going for the sensational gross-out; they were doing as artists throughout time have done: they were holding up a mirror to society so that we could see a vision of ourselves and thereby, perhaps, fulfill the command etched in stone on the Temple of Apollo at Delphi to know ourselves.  

 

Go to the Links tab under More Tools to visit the following information:

 

· Project Façade by Paddy Hartley, 2005