Lecture Notes
THE FUTURISTS - Embraced new technology and urbanism as expressions of the modern. more important theoretically and ideologically, than formally or technically
- First Manifesto, Feb.20, 1909 on the front page of Le Figaro, Paris; important gesture for the future development of media art written by F.T. Marinetti (1876-1944), poet influenced by Walt Whitman, who offered "a vision of a world of grandiose individuality, a world where machinery was an accepted part of life." Marinetti mailed copies to his friends, thus using existing media to spread the message: "We declare that the splendor of the world has been enriched by a new beauty - the beauty of speed. A racing car with its bonnet draped with exhaust pipes like fire-breathing serpents - a roaring racing car, rattling along like a machine gun, is more beautiful than the winded victory of Samothrace."
"We will destroy all museums and libraries, and academies of all sorts; we will battle against moralism, feminism, and all vile opportunism and utilitarianism"; later the point about feminism was modified: a new kind of "unromantic woman"
- War as the great artwork: will wipe away the decadent world of the past; led many futurists towards Fascism
- Umberto Boccioni 1910: art must express the world transformed by "victorious science"; Luigi Russolo: Intonarumori, noise machines. Anton Giulio Bragaglia: "photodynamism"; films: Il Perfido incanto, Thais (1916, only one preserved)
DADAISM began in Zurich during the WWI. “Cabaret Voltaire” the first nexus: Hugo Ball, Tristan Tzara, Hans Arp, etc. Fame soon spread to other countries and other dadaist movements evolved (Paris, Berlin...)
- ambiguous relationship to machine; resistance & fascination; machine as counterforce to romantic tradition. Reaction to the destructiveness of WWI
- Duchamp, Ernst, Picabia and Man Ray all flirted with the machine as subject matter
- Films: Le retour à la raison (Man Ray 1921) Entr’Acte (Rene Clair, Picabia, 1924)
BERLIN DADA
- First Manifesto, Feb.20, 1909 on the front page of Le Figaro, Paris; important gesture for the future development of media art written by F.T. Marinetti (1876-1944), poet influenced by Walt Whitman, who offered "a vision of a world of grandiose individuality, a world where machinery was an accepted part of life." Marinetti mailed copies to his friends, thus using existing media to spread the message: "We declare that the splendor of the world has been enriched by a new beauty - the beauty of speed. A racing car with its bonnet draped with exhaust pipes like fire-breathing serpents - a roaring racing car, rattling along like a machine gun, is more beautiful than the winded victory of Samothrace."
"We will destroy all museums and libraries, and academies of all sorts; we will battle against moralism, feminism, and all vile opportunism and utilitarianism"; later the point about feminism was modified: a new kind of "unromantic woman"
- War as the great artwork: will wipe away the decadent world of the past; led many futurists towards Fascism
- Umberto Boccioni 1910: art must express the world transformed by "victorious science"; Luigi Russolo: Intonarumori, noise machines. Anton Giulio Bragaglia: "photodynamism"; films: Il Perfido incanto, Thais (1916, only one preserved)
DADAISM began in Zurich during the WWI. “Cabaret Voltaire” the first nexus: Hugo Ball, Tristan Tzara, Hans Arp, etc. Fame soon spread to other countries and other dadaist movements evolved (Paris, Berlin...)
- ambiguous relationship to machine; resistance & fascination; machine as counterforce to romantic tradition. Reaction to the destructiveness of WWI
- Duchamp, Ernst, Picabia and Man Ray all flirted with the machine as subject matter
- Films: Le retour à la raison (Man Ray 1921) Entr’Acte (Rene Clair, Picabia, 1924)
BERLIN DADA