Whimsical, subversive, creative genious, enfant terrible... all and none of these categories could fully describe Francis Picabia's complex personality. His Art and life were so intrinsically connected that it is fairly impossible to determine which came first: whether his Art as a projection of his life, or this latter as the reflection of his artistic perspectives. In any case, both in life and his creations he would not even bother to distinguish between intimate, public, private, trivial or serious feelings, thoughts and impulses. This obsession with searching for the most accurate and genuine way of expressing his interior state led him to some sort of race against status quo and artificially established ideas, guided by the principle: “The only way to be followed is to run faster than the others”.
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Even though I could just rewrite a biography, or simply go through her plays or nature of her relations with artistic and political figures, I have decided to go beyond facts and focus on Mary Wigman's teachings and legacy. There are countless lessons we can learn from her life and struggle, but I think it is essential to revisit them from a more contemporary point of view. That is to say: despite the fact that we tend to appreciate these avant-garde movements from the first half of the twentieth century, and regard them as "revolutionary", I personally think there are aspects we sort of take for granted. Having grown up "in the future", we tend to see these currents as a part of History, necessary to develop further lines of expression. However, we somehow detach ourselves from the deep philosophy lying beneath these revolutionary movements, circumscribing them to relevant portions of the past. In this article, it is my aim to bring Mary Wigman's lessons to the present, proving that revolutions are timeless and everlasting.
Always transforming, mutating, revolving, Fernand Léger's artistic search can be said to encompass such a wide spectrum as that which ranges from Impressionism to Pop Art. During his first steps as a painter, he adopted a technique which mixed Impressionism with Fauvism. Later on, he took a more Cubist approach, bending later this style into Tubism and its peculiar tubular, conical, and cubed forms. In the mid-1920s Léger adhered to the French formalist movement called Purism: a rational, mathematically based current which originated as an attempt to uproot Cubism from its impetuosity. This was subsequently revised in 1930s, when -influenced by Surrealism- his style evolved into a more curvilinear and unrestricted.
Deeply involved in the postwar Japanese unrest, soon after World War II Toshihio Hosoe decided to change his name to Eikoh, willing to symbolise a new Japan being born. Intrinsically linked to Japan's artistic movements of the second half of the twentieth century, Hosoe's struggle has always been to expose humanity itself. Instead of focusing on destruction and devastated landscapes, it seems as if the ravaging effects of the atomic bomb propelled him towards searching for authenticity in the human body and heart. Regarding photography as a mirror or window to the soul, dreams and desires, his avant-garde work aimed to fracture Japanese traditional cultural boundaries from within the body itself; even willing to penetrate beyond the most intimate suit, which is the skin. This was even more arduous, considering the particularly conservative tendency of the Japanese society, and the focus on collective formal values over personal choice and identity. His collaborations reflect this groundbreaking tendency, resulting in indefinable works of art with both Yukio Mishima and Tatsumi Hijikata.
Q: I understand that before becoming a photographer, you were a running trainer. To what extent do you think that this activity has had an impact on your perspective about dance? Have you been able to confirm certain specific differences between a moving body and a dancing body? A: Yes, before delving into photography I was at first an athlete since 1976 (400m runner in Marathon), but also a coach for 17 years. This experience has developed my sense of observation. In athletics -as in dance- we search for an accurate movement as well as a certain gestural perfection, which in sport will allow the athlete to improve their performance, and in dance will bring aesthetics. The approaches, even if they are very close in their implementation (training, repetition), can also be very different in their objectives. At the same time, the two worlds and lifestyles of athletes and dancers are quite similar: the strictness and discipline that they induce are omnipresent. I confess I was not particularly disoriented during my first confrontations with dance.
When going through Toshiko Okanoue's work (born in 1928, in Kochi), one can easily relate her style and dreamy aesthetic to the Surrealist Movement in Japan (1925-70). However, it was not until 1952 that she actually came accross the surrealist world, when her encounter with the artist and poet Shuzo Takiguchi in 1952 was decisive. It was he who -being impressed by the quality of her work- acknowledged her compositions as surrealist, introducing her to the works of Max Ernst. Even though after this concurrence she had some prolific six years -with over a hundred works in her portfolio-, her career was suddenly terminated by her marriage in 1957. Fortunately enough, in the mid-1990s her work was rediscovered, leading to a number of exhibitions around the world, as well as two monographs: Drop of Dreams (2002) and the portfolio The Miracle of Silence (2007).
Somehow, Oskar Shclemmer's lifework is inseparable from the history of the Bauhaus movement. Founded in Weimar in 1919, The Bauhaus School brought about new perspectives on the Arts: through the means of abstraction, its pursuit was to liberate the human being from the chaos of life. Within this unity of art and life, for the first time in history the elite arts -or high culture- were associated with craftwork, producing both the fracturing of the power structures of Art Schools and Art teaching, and the development of new ideas and concepts, in parallel with the experimentation with new techniques and technologies for its implementation. This usage of new construction materials, as well as the deeply geometrical outlines and the new ideas about design and colour, were established as an aperture towards new proposals sin the creation of spaces, where Art emerged as a way of directly influencing the life, quotidian, and prevailing social structures. Their vision on the artistic production was interdisciplinary and connective, hence their regard about life, space and society.
Described by André Breton as a "pre-Surrealist", one can say that Man Ray was a surrealist by nature, and that he was in consonance with the visions of the movement, even before its association. Inspired by Sigmund Freud's theories, Surrealism delved for a revolution against the oppressive rules and constraints of the rational mind and methodized society. Supporting the notion that the idea motivating a work of art is more important than the piece itself, this group encouraged experimentation in the search for each artist's way of expression. Man Ray was deeply influenced by these ideas, which seem to have articulated his visions. In his own words: "Of course, there will always be those who look only at technique, who ask 'how', while others of a more curious nature will ask 'why'. Personally, I have always preferred inspiration to information."
It is no news that women have historically found it harder to develop themselves as professionals in diverse male-dominated work environments. This is even truer in the case of female artists in the 1930s: Stern had to struggle against all imaginable and unimaginable odds, in order to become one of the pioneers of modern photography in Argentina and a referent of protest art in the world. Apart from having opened the prize-winning ringl+pit photography and design studio with her friend Ellen Auerbach in 1930 in Berlin, she was also able to present the first one-woman exhibition in Buenos Aires in 1943. Besides, from 1948 to 1951, she contributed weekly with a series of photomontages entiteld "Sueños" (Dreams) to the column "Psychoanalysis Will Help You". Published in the Argentine magazine Idilio (Idyll)-edited by sociologist Gino Germani, under the pen name Richard Rest-this distribution was widely read by a female audience; thus contributed to forge their identities through psychoanalitic views on the dreams of working-class women. Mobilized to social ascendance by the promises of President Juan Domingo Perón-as well as the figure of his first wife Eva Perón-these women found themselves with the urgency of understanding their role within their households and society.
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Nyx Blog
Butoh, Art, Tarot, Spirituality, Mythology, Philosophy & much more! Author
Luciana Sayanes is a performing artist, teacher and author, aiming to share perspectives on Butoh Art & Spitituality. Archives
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