Blogpost 1: Carol Bales
Revolutionary art
The mid-late 19th century was a time of cataclysmic social upheaval in Europe. The Industrial Revolution had displaced millions of agricultural workers, revolutionary thinkers like Marx, Freud and Darwin established new schools of thought that influenced thinking into the next century. The social unrest that culminated in the first World War was brewing, and in the zeitgeist was a vigorous desire to break from the constraints of the past. In the arts, public exhibitions could cause scandals and riots, and Impressionism kicked off a series of explosions in the art world that eventually redefined subject matter, technique, visual perception of art, the relationship between artist, the public and the art work, and the act of art-making itself.
We find a kind of euphoric if bombastic energy in the writings of Wagner, the Futurists and Bauhaus movements. Their writings articulated clear intention of breaking from the past and defined new approaches to art making that went on to influence mid-late 20th century art practices.[1] Perhaps less passionate, but no less lofty, Vannevar Bush’s 1945 vision statement, “As We May Think”, acted as a sort of manifesto for engineers inspired by the desire to enhance human innovation and provide democratic, self-directed access to information. Within 50 years of publication of “As We May Think”, personal computers and the Internet were invented and had become household items.
Embracing new media and new methods
The artistic revitalization described by Wagner, the Futurists and the Bauhaus break with the past by using new combinations of media, establishing a new relationship between the viewer and the art work and in some cases, using new technologies. Wagner, describes the “Artistic Man” who can only be free to reach his potential through the “common art work”, something he describes as a unification of different media (visual art, drama, music, and the human himself).[1] The Futurists, having revolutionized theater in early 20th century Italy, move on to the technology of the cinema with bold plans for complete breaks with the past, a new visual vocabulary and distancing their art form from “mere photographed logic.”[1] The Bauhaus pay special attention to the existing cultural and community forms of popular entertainment – circus, operetta, vaudeville, clowns – and accept the test of the “much disdained masses” despite their “academic backwardness.” These statements are quite revealing. First, it is the statement of desire on the part of the artist to not elevate him/herself above the public, or the “common man.” Second, it is a statement of faith in the common sense and taste of less educated people. If artistic practices preceding the 20th century were by the elite (educated, artistocratic artists) and for the elite (patrons), it is indeed a radical notion. Culmination of this egalitarian view of art comes with participatory art of the mid-20th century where the viewer is drawn into the art not only to participate, but to instill value into the art work itself.[2]
Embracing experimentation
While Wagner, the Futurists, and Bauhaus discussed revolutionary methods and philosophies for creating art, they were still largely dependent upon the linear narrative of drama and literature for content. Wagner, embracing narrative, considered drama “the highest conjoint work of art.”[1] The sources of his artwork were literature and mythology and his art works told stories in a linear, narrative fashion. Considered the embodiment of Wagner’s Gesamtkunstwerk theory of “total art work”, the Ring Series was based upon Norse mythology and the Nibelungenlied. The Futurists too appeared to be still highly influenced by narrative story telling. While describing fresh and unusual visual depictions of inner thoughts or poetic interpretations, they still referenced “protagonists”, “speeches”, dramatized states of mind, and suggestions of narrative such as discovering a cheating spouse. Their subject matter and approach differs drastically from Wagner however, in its playfulness. While the Futurists also contain a certain worrisome views of hierarchy and superiority, they also incorporated humor and playfulness with unusual juxtapositions of image and word. In some examples, they describe using the unique affordances of the medium of film itself to see how film can be used to express ideas with “unreal reconstructions of the human body” (referencing the human body as a component of the art work), and “words-in-freedom movement” where seemingly, the graphic quality of words is explored. Embracing collaboration
The idea of creating a “total art work” gave rise to collaborations between practitioners of different media and could be seen as foreshadowing later 20th century collaborations between artists and engineers. Starting in the 1950’s, engineer Billy Kluver’s collaborative work with artists embodies some of the playfulness of the Futurists and Bauhaus, while embracing artistic experimentation as equal to scientific experimentation, worthy of doing without necessarily having a goal in mind.[1] In Kluver’s E.A.T., artists and engineers partnered as equals in aesthetic exploration.[3] Some of the principles echo earlier manifestos – freedom of exploration, collaboration between different disciplines to create a robust experience, creating experiences that invoke greater awareness. In collaborations with artists such as Robert Rauschenberg, technology was used as a means of artistic expression. Kluver was very interested in providing a technological resource for artists’ exploration. The artists in the E.A.T.and in the Fluxus movements looked outside of traditional forms of artistic expression and traditional media for art-making. Some of these artists used technology to provide a recontextualization of the art object, to insert randomness into the art experience, or to explicitly explore the nature of technology and the relationship between humans and technology. John Cage’s performance in the E.A.T. event “9 Evenings” pushed the boundaries of musical composition and performance by using random sounds derived from technology within the performance space (phone lines, microphones, etc.). Technology was lampooned by Jean Tinguely’s “Homage to New York", a mechanized sculpture that when activated destroyed itself.
Embracing participation
Along with recontextualization of the art object, playfulness and embracing experimentation, Fluxus artists of the mid-late 20th century sought to redefine the experience of art by the viewer. Not satisfied with the fractured endeavor of creating an art work in isolation then shucking it out into the public to survive on its own merits, Fluxus artists began facilitating the creation of art works that were actually constructed by the viewer. “Fluxkits” were given to the viewer to assemble and create their own art, thereby transforming the viewer from a passive to an active role, and transforming the artist from a creator to a co-creator or facilitator role. In other works, such as Yoko Ono’s conceptual “Cut Piece”, audience members interact with the artist and the performance by cutting away pieces of clothing from Ono while she is on stage. By the 1960’s, the “fourth wall”, the division between audience and drama, challenged by the Bauhaus movement, is gone and viewers walk right up on stage and become the art work.
While participatory art does not require technological support, if the aim is to, as the E.A.T. Pavilion exhibit exemplifies, create a whole environment for the participant, then technology can certainly support it. In the visions of 20th century engineers Vannevar Bush, Douglas Englebart and Alan Kay, each person has the capability of interacting with, and shaping information in a way that parallels the artistic goals of drawing the viewer in as an active participant. The viewer’s relationship to information and art is no longer passive – they are architects of their own experience.
1. Packer, R. and K. Jordan, Multimedia : from Wagner to virtual reality. 1st ed. 2001, New York: Norton. xxi, 394 p.
2. Frieling, R. and San Francisco Museum of Modern Art., The art of participation : 1950 to now. 2008, New York: Thames & Hudson. 212 p.
3. Wardrip-Fruin, N. and N. Montfort, The NewMediaReader. 2003, Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press. xv, 823 p.
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