The Concordia Undergraduate Journal of Art History

XI

CUJAH Volume 11

The Concordia Undergraduate Journal of Art History

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CUJAH. The Undergraduate J History. XI. Volume The Concordia U Jo u r n a l of A r t Volume Eleven .

Concordia Und Jo u r n a l of A r t Volume Eleven .

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he Concordia te Journal of Art ume Eleven. CUJAH. a Undergraduate A r t H i st o r y. X I . en . CUJAH . The Undergraduate A r t H i st o r y. X I . en . CUJAH . The Undergraduate print.indd 3

XI

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CUJAH VOLUME XI

Mandate The Concordia Undergraduate Journal of Art History is a student-run annual publication that aims to showca se the talents of Concordia University’s undergraduate Art History and Fine Arts students. CUJAH is composed of an executive committee of editors, copy editors, feature writers, and is assisted by faculty members in the Department of Art History.

As a journal, we strive for academic excellence. CUJAH only selects essays for our published volumes which have received an A- to A+ letter grade from an undergraduate Art History class at Concordia University. We have been publishing since 2004/2005, and have just released our eleventh volume.

In addition to the publication of our annual journal and web publication of features, CUJAH hosted Concordia University’s 4th Annual Undergraduate Art History Conference. The theme of this year’s conference was Ar t and the E xhibition Space with keynote speaker Johnathan Shaughnessy (Assistant Curator of Contemporary Art from the NGC).

In addition to our eleventh publication, CUJAH & FA SA will be launching their first joint publication called The Voice of… A publication aimed at showcasing the talent and work of student artists at Concordia as well as CUJAH writers.

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Table Of Contents 5

CUJAH Mandate

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Letter From the Editor

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Volume XI Team

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Staff Biographies

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Donatello’s Judith and Holofernes: a Symbol of Tyranny and Virtue in Renaissance Florence Rebecca Proppe Edited by: Ashlee Elizabeth Rose Griffiths

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From Far and Wide: The Icon of the World’s Largest Coin on the Secular Pilgrimage of the Canadian Road Trip Ellen Belshaw Edited by: Jera MacPherson Habitat ’67 and The Sound Object: Creative Structure in the Modern Era Devon Hansen Edited by: Jennifer Rassi The Creative Act of Effacement: Erasing in the Art of Robert Rauschenberg and William Kentridge Stéphanie Hornstein Edited by: Mattia Zylak

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How to Weigh a Poster: The Restitution of the Hans Sachs Poster Collection.

Zoë Wonfor Edited by: Shany Engelhardt

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Conceptual Fashion, An In-Depth Look at Hussein Chalayan and His Monumental Designs Marnie Guglielmi-Vitullo Edited by: Jennifer Rassi

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Roland Barthes and the Influence of the Autobiographical Christine Walsh Edited by: Vincent Mercier

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The Sensual & The Surreal: Johnson Tsang and Ronit Baranga’s Contemporary Investigations of Anthropomorphic Tableware Sarah Amarica Edited by: Karen Lee Chung

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Narcissisme hystérique et réflexivité: I’m Not the Girl Who Misses Much de Pipilotti Rist Anne-Marie Trépanier Edited by: Vincent Mercier

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On the Funny Side of the Street Catriona Schwartz Edited by: Mattia Zylak

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Letter from the Editor Ever since my first semester at Concordia, I was eager to get involved in student initiatives and be a part of the Fine Arts community which was my reasoning for joining CUJAH. Three years later, I am now the Editor-in-Chief of the journal which wasn’t a part of my initial plan but I’m eternally grateful for the opportunity. Though this year had its fair share of challenges and exhausting moments, the journey has been full of growth and accomplishments that I’m glad to have shared with such a great group of individuals.

Volume XI wouldn’t have been possible without the work and dedication of all those who were a part of CUJAH, this year. I would like to thank Daniel Santiago Sáenz, our conference coordinator and incoming Editor-in-Chief, you are an amazing individual and I honestly don’t know what I would have done without you – we made a great team. To the super duo, Mattia Zylak and Jennifer Rassi, both of you have done such an incredible job and I cannot thank you enough. When it comes to obtaining image rights, Jera MacPherson, you are the guru and I’m glad to have had you on the team. Thank you to Vincent Mercier, Karen Lee Chung, and Shany Engelhardt for your keen eye for detail and always lending a helping hand. I would like to express my gratitude to CUJAH’s selected writers, feature writers, and copy editors – you’ve all done a great job. To Katrina Carusco, I would like to thank you for your counsel and mentorship. I wholeheartedly thank all the Fine Arts students for your continuing support – you are all kindred spirits. Finally, I would like to thank our faculty advisor and chair, Anna Waclawek and Cynthia Hammond for your advice and constant encouragement.

On behalf of the CUJAH team, we would also like to thank our families and friends for their never ending support.

This year’s volume is a testament to the hard work of the CUJAH team and is what we’ve all been working towards throughout this past year. With the help, work, and dedication of such an amazing group of individuals, I’m confident that CUJAH will keep to grow for years to come.

We did it TEAM. Ashlee Elizabeth Rose Griffiths Editor-in-Chief CUJAH Volume XI

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CUJAH VOLUME XI

Volume XI Team CUJAH EXECUTIVE COMMITEE Editor-in-Chief: Ashlee Elizabeth Rose Griffiths Permissions Editor: Jera MacPherson Senior Copy Editor: Karen LeeFrench Editor: Vincent Mercier Events Coordinators: Mattia Zylak Jennifer Rassi Associate Editor: Shany Engelhardt Conference Coordinator: Daniel Santiago Sáenz CUJAH DESIGN Print Publication Designer and Illustrator: Louise Heng Promotional Materials Designer: Louis Roy Website Building/Managing: Ashlee Elizabeth Rose Griffiths CUJAH TEAM Feature Writers: Catherine Bergeron Eliza Nguyen Tiffany Le Copy Editors: Johanne Durocher Norchet Sarah Amarica Nathalie Agostini

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Staff Biographies CUJAH EXECUTIVE TEAM ASHLEE ELIZABETH ROSE GRIFFITHS is in her fourth and final year at

Concordia University; majoring in Art History with a minor in Spanish. The hidden narration within works of art is what Griffiths strives to decipher and explore. From the complex relationship between the artwork and the viewer to the diversity within the art world, Griffiths yearns for knowledge wherever she can find it. Her interests include Royal monumental art, Victorian architecture, paintings from the Dutch Golden Age, and vintage advertising posters. Her writing has been published in both the 2013 and 2014 edition of Combine. She currently oversees CUJAH as Editor-in-Chief.

DANIEL SANTIAGO Sﾃ・NZ is pursuing a B. A . Honours in Religion with a

Minor in Art History. His main interests include sacred art, Queer Theory and its application to Christian Theology, and, more recently, the visual and religious cultures of Early Modern Europe and Colonial Latin America.

His inquiries in these areas are complemented by his interest in sexuality and body studies. He served as the coordinator of the 4th Annual Concordia University Undergraduate Art History Conference, titled Art and the Exhibition Space.

MATTIA ZYLAK is a second-year undergraduate student majoring in Art

History with a minor in Sociology and is also a member of the Co-operative program at Concordia University. While her interest in art is as immense as it is diverse, she is consistently drawn to new modes of visual expression, especially those that deal with issues regarding gender, sexuality, and culture. Mattia has been published in Combine 2014 and is an executive member of Yiara, an annual publication that discusses feminist art and art history. Mattia currently serves as Co-events Coordinator for the Concordia Undergraduate Journal of Art History (CUJAH). . JENNIFER RASSI is in her third and final year at Concordia University studying Art History. Rassi is always on the lookout for new artistic inspirations in her life to combine with her studies. Her interests, although

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always developing, include photography and the connection to ephemerality, architecture and design, and curatorial practices. Her writing has been published in Combine and volunteered for the Art Matters Festival for the past two years. She is currently an executive member of the Concordia Undergraduate Journal of Art History (CUJAH) as Co-events Coordinator.

CUJAH JERA MACPHERSON is in the final year of her undergraduate degree in

VOLUME XI

Concordia’s combined Art History and Studio Arts program. Her interest in curatorial studies is rooted in both an attraction to the thematics of the gallery space and to the underlying importance of institutional critique.

Her own practice intends to blend art history research with art creation in the pursuit of a research-art aesthetic closely connected to craft and process based endeavours.

KARE N LE E CHUNG is a senior undergraduate student at Concordia

University, majoring in Art History and Studio Art (BFA) with a minor in Classical Languages and Literature. Her art historical interests lie primarily in narrative and figurative artworks, with a strong interest in works that address issues of identity, history, and memory at the intersection of literature and the visual arts, such as artist books, graphic novels, and personal sketchbooks. Karen currently serves the senior copy editor for the Concordia Undergraduate Journal of Art History (CUJAH).

SHANY ENGELHARDT is a second year undergraduate student majoring

in Art History with a minor is English Literature. She is also a member of the Co-Operative Program at Concordia University. Her interests lie in eighteenth-, nineteenth-, and twentieth-century art produced in Europe and the United States of America; specifically in the Avant-Garde and the depiction of gender politics in art. With a background in the sciences, Shany currently serves as associate editor for the Concordia Undergraduate Journal of Art History (CUJAH).

VINCENT ERIC MERCIER is an individual who loves learning. From Montreal,

Mercier is drawn to incorporating oral histories and lived experience in their own writing about material culture. The student also enjoys gardening and the performing arts. In their final year of undergraduate study in art history, Vincent hopes to keep telling stories about art and the world around it for the foreseeable future.

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CUJAH DESIGN TEAM LOUISE HENG is in the final year of her undergraduate degree at Concordia

S TA F F BIOGRAPHIES

University studying Graphic Design. Originally from Calgary, she made the move to Montreal after starting her design education at the Alberta College of Art and Design. Her interests include wine, books, photography and travelling. As a new transplant to the east coast, Louise looks forward to exploring what this side of the country has to offer. She is currently the print publication designer and illustrator for the Concordia Undergraduate Journal of Art History (CUJAH).

LOUIS ROY is studying in the Film Animation program at Concordia University.

He is currently in an exchange program at Geneva University while working on different advertising projects as a freelance animator and designer. He is currently the promotional materials designer for the Concordia Undergraduate Journal of Art History (CUJAH).

FEATURE WRITERS CATHERINE BERGERON is currently studying and practicing photography as a third-year Photography major (BFA) at Concordia University. Throughout her academic journey, she has completed a Bachelor’s degree in Cinema and Literature at University of Montreal, with a specialization in Script and Creative Writing. As a theoretical writer, she has been published for two consecutive years in the Concordia Undergraduate Journal of Art History, in which she is now a Feature Writer for the year of 2014-2015. Her work with CUJAH made her one of the lecturers at the 3rd Annual Concordia University Undergraduate Art History Conference that took place in January 2014 at Concordia.

Born in Toronto, ELIZA ANNE NGUYEN grew up in Vancouver and now resides in the city of Montreal. She is in her second year at Concordia University studying Design where she also curates bi-weekly exhibitions at Gallery X, a student-run café/gallery. Aside from writing, designing and curating, she is an avid traveler and enjoys learning new languages especially French. Her most favourite cities visited this past year are New Orleans, Essaouira, and Berlin. She is currently a feature writer for the Concordia Undergraduate Journal of Art History (CUJAH).

TIFFANY LE is in her last year at Concordia University studying Art History.

In addition to authoring a text for Concordia’s collaborative exhibition

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COMBINE 2014 , which unites students from different disciplines within the Fine Arts faculty. She is a feature writer for the Concordia Undergraduate Journal of Art History (CUJAH) and will curating in Art Matters 2015 this upcoming spring. Themes that interest her or motivate her research include the study of pictorial semiotics, creation and function of collective and private memory, space and interaction in the built environment and contem- C U J A H porary issues dealing with cultural property.

VOLUME XI COPY EDITORS JOHANNE DUROCHER NORCHET is a certified freelance translator (Honours

BA in Translation, Concordia; member OTTIAQ, ATA). Currently pursuing a BFA in Art History as well as a Masters in Translation Studies (Terminology and Literary Translation), she has published three books of translations including two on photography and Montreal, and works with the Gail and Stephen Jarislowsky Institute for Studies in Canadian Art under Prof. Martha Langford. Her areas of interest are: ekphrasis and the intersection of text, translation and image; the history of Canadian photography, material culture, European pottery and porcelain, fashion, world fairs, Expo 67 and provenance and restitution.

NATHALIE AGOSTINI DE FR ANCISCO is a second-year at Concordia

University studying Western Culture and Society with a minor in Art History. Her research interests include the relation of mythology to ritual, the representation of psychological spaces within art and literature, and the intersection of aesthetics and ethics with particular regard to curatorial practice. She is currently a copy editor for the Concordia Undergraduate Journal of Art History (CUJAH).

SARAH AMARICA , a native Montrealer, is in her third year at Concordia

University studying Art History. She currently works as co-Director of the VAV Gallery and hopes to pursue a career in the contemporary art field after completing her studies. In addition to studying art theory, Sarah also dabbles in studio arts including, but not limited to, painting, textiles, ceramics, and design. Sarah enjoys binge-watching television, cooking, and hates writing personal bios.

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“As a woman, Judith was a more suitable figure to be a physical portrayal of virtues, particularly those of chastity and humility.�

REBECCA PROPPE is in her fourth and final year at Concordia University studying Art History and Studio Arts program. Her interests lays in researching artistic movements of the 19th to 21st century, and examining how contemporary art is visually, thematically and socially influenced by works from the past. Through her own work, she aims to demonstrate the relevance of older works of art to present day society. The scope of her research is focused mainly on the roles of women in art history, as artists, patrons, and subjects.

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Donatello’s Judith and Holofernes: a Symbol of Tyranny and Virtue in Renaissance Florence Throughout the fifteenth century, the Republic of Florence was a place which relied heavily on perception. In a society that was divided primarily by class, and where most families knew each other through either marriage or political ties, how one was seen by one’s peers was of critical importance.

During the fifteenth century this was exceptionally important to the Medici family, who, led primarily by Cosimo de’Medici, functioned as the de facto rulers of Florence, from approximately 1434 until 1494- when the family was expelled from the city. 1 The Medici family had few ties with the old oligarchical form of government, but by forming diplomatic ties across Italy, creating alliances with new friends and, most importantly, establishing an air of legitimacy, they were able to grasp and maintain a hold on power.

The visual arts played a prominent role in the establishment of a legitimized public persona. Sight was the most important sense to Renaissance Florentines, who visualized the Republic as a physical (female) body. 2 All of these social conventions created an environment in which a symbol could have incredible potency, and art could be used effectively to craft an identity, which the Medici family did with the collection of art objects throughout their palace.

The Medici family was famous for its patronage to artists throughout the Renaissance, which helped them create new friends and allies. 3 Expensive art objects, like the multitude found throughout their palace, displayed their incredible wealth. The family was particularly close with

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By: Rebecca Proppe Edited by: Ashlee Elizabeth Rose Griffiths

(Opposite) Fig. 1. Donatello, Judith and Holofernes, bronze, Museum of the Palazzo Vecchio, Photo courtesy of the Polo Museale Fiorentino.

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D O N AT E L L O ’ S JUDITH AND HOLOFERNES: A SYMBOL OF TYRANNY AND VIRTUE IN RENAISSANCE FLORENCE

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the artist Donatello, 4 from whom they commissioned several sculptures, including two bronze figures which were placed in the semi-public garden of the Medici Palace: Donatello’s David (fig. 1) and, what will be the focus of this paper, his Judith and Holofernes (fig. 2). Donatello not only interacted with the family on a personal, friendly level, but would have been motivated to accommodate any requests from the powerful family who kept him almost constantly employed. Thus the family’s close relationship with one of the most prolific sculptors in Florence ensured the creation of works of art which were both technically and aesthetically astounding, as well as reflective of values and ideas the Medici family wished to project onto the public about themselves.

Though both of these sculptures played of f one another due to their similar themes and their placement in the garden, it was Judith and Holofernes which eventually became the Republic’s symbol of their triumph over the Medici family; this sculpture was then moved and installed in front of the Palazzo Vecchio. 5 I will attempt to explain how this image fit into the political and visual context of fifteenth century Florence, and how the sculpture was used in an attempt to craft a civic identity, first by the Medici and later by the Republic. To properly understand the impact Judith and Holofernes was meant to have, it is important to examine the social and political landscape of early fifteenth-century Florence, as the Medici’s hold on power came to its climax.

The Medici’s rise to power as de facto rulers of Florence was almost accidental, as Cosimo de’Medici did not seem to develop any intent to position his family as the effective rulers of Florence until a sudden dramatic shift in Florentine politics took place. The city was run by an oligarchy: a small group of men of prestigious patrician families with established names and histories within the city. The opposing class was composed of “new men,” coming from newly wealthy families who had virtually no previous political establishment. 6 It must be emphasized that what was most important in this class structure was not only wealth, but also prestige, or “charisma”, which established the importance of identity and legitimacy in order to hold power. 7 The Medici grew to be incredibly wealthy after the Alberti family (until that point the major banking family in Florence) was exiled in 1393. 8 Their consequent rise to power came from the unusual situation of a new rising class, and the failing oligarchic system, of which many families were no longer wealthy and relied on each other for financial support. 9 The Medici allied itself with old patricians as well as “new money” families through a complex marriage network which spanned several Italian states. 10

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The establishing event of Medici rule in Florence came when Rinaldo Albizzi, patriarch of one of the elite oligarchical families, organized a coup and had Cosimo de’Medici briefly incarcerated for treason. What rescued him was his network of friends, who came to Florence and argued for his release. 11 Rather than being executed, Cosimo was exiled; he eventually amassed enough support to return to Florence one year later in 1434 to exile Albizzi and his co-conspirators. 12 As de facto ruler of Florence, Cosimo was noted by contemporaries as being fairly passive in business and political affairs, though Machiavelli notes that he “conducted himself with more zeal and boldness,” more so than his father, Giovanni, had. 13 The oligarchic rule of Florence had essentially been overturned due to public opinion in favour of the Medici, and now the family, with no precedent experience as rulers of Florence, no court of their own, and no legitimate claim to power had to continue to maintain their position through the masnipulation of public opinion 14 In this society, where vision and perception were so important, public art and art patronage was an important tool for crafting identity; patrons like the Medici were able to use established iconography to create visual programs that communicated something meaningful about the patron, yet did not reveal their intentions too blatantly. 15 For example, after Cosimo had established the Medici family’s power upon his return to Florence, he had paintings commissioned depicting Rinaldo Albizzi and his co-conspirators hanging upside down in front of the Palace of the Podestà. 16 These images effectively functioned as a punishment for the convicted, even though the real people they represented were no longer present in the city due to their exile. This speaks to the power of images during this period, as these images were meant to function as a real punishment, as if it were their actual, physical bodies being hung upside down publicly. Works such as these, which would typically have been commissioned by the Medici or their supporters, also reinforced the power structure in Florence at this time, serving as a reminder of possible consequences for attempting to overthrow the family. Thus, the Medici’s need for crafting an ideal public persona — one which promoted the values of the Republic of which they were now in charge — is clear,

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Fig. 2. Donatello, David, bronze, National Museum of the Bargello, Photo courtesy of the Polo Museale Fiorentino.

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as is the important use of imagery in creating such an identity. However, it is important to ask how the iconography of Judith, and Donatello’s very particular vision of the heroine, functioned in a positive way for the family, and why they would choose to associate themselves with the heroine Judith in particular.

Judith and Holofernes, placed in the Medici garden by at least 1469, 17 is a large bronze sculpture of the Jewish heroine Judith, about to triumph over Holofernes, an Assyrian general leading an army who would conquer her town of Bethulia. In the Biblical story, Judith is a widow living a chaste life when the Assyrian army lays siege to her town. As the leaders wait for God to intervene, Judith decides to take action by asking God to grant her the power to deceive and kill Holofernes. She dresses herself to make her appearance desirable to the general and then plies him with wine until he is drunk, at which point she decapitates him with two blows from his own sword; Then she came to the pillar of the bed, which was at Holofernes’ head, and took down his fauchion from thence, And approached to his bed, and took hold of the hair of his head, and said, Strengthen me, O Lord God of Israel, this day. And she smote twice upon his neck with all her might, and she took away his head from him. 18 Due to the awkward angle of Holofernes’ head in the sculpture, it has been assumed by most scholars that in the moment Donatello has captured Judith as already have stricken Holofernes once, and is about to strike him the second time, which will sever his neck from his body. 19 The sculpture therefore demonstrates Judith in the middle of a violent action. It should be noted that most depictions of Judith up until this point showed her only after she had taken Holofernes’ head, thus eliminating the need to directly show Judith, a woman, being violent and aggressive towards a man.

The heroine was already featured in a very public work of art (Lorenzo Ghiberti’s Gates of Paradise) and Donatello’s statue in the Palace garden was commended for its technical accomplishments by contemporaries. 20 The sculpture was prominently placed within a semi-public area controlled by the Medici family, demonstrating their desire to project something about themselves to visitors and passerby. Because documentation surrounding the commission of the sculpture is lost, 21 the exact purpose of the work is still debateable (though it is generally dated to the mid-1460s). However, by examining the sculpture within the context of the politics and visual imagery of the period, we can establish that the Medici wanted to project an image of themselves as humble, just, and all-around virtuous defenders of Florentine liberty.

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Judith and Holofernes has primarily been discussed within the political context of late fifteenth century Florence, when the city was almost constantly at war and consistently resisted being conquered. 22 Scholars like Sarah Blake McHam have discussed Judith and Holofernes and the other bronze statue, David, as tyrannicides: an ancient Roman type of sculpture meant to evoke themes of resisting and conquering tyranny. 23 These themes seem somewhat obvious when we look at the sculptures, both of which depict a biblical figure, who conquer a formidable evil force. Thus it has also been suggested by many that this reading is too simple, and is not sufficient to explain why the Medici would associate themselves with the troubling iconography of Judith, instead of solely representing David. 24 Therefore the Judith and Holofernes sculpture has been placed by many scholars within the Medici’s plan for a broader, more unified image for their family to maintain an air of legitimacy and to create pleasant associations with a family that was becoming increasingly tyrannical themselves. The Medici family was suffering from factionalism in the mid-fifteenth century; a threat which could have potentially removed the family from their position of immense power, and which already had already been the primary cause behind the failure of the Albizzi coup. 25 Judith and David as tyrant slayers created an image of the family as protectors of freedom and the Republic, and their actions created virtuous associations with the family. 26 However, Judith’s gender separates the narrative of her story and her iconography from David’s in important ways, which adds deeper meaning to the Medici family’s self-crafted image. As a woman, Judith was a more suitable figure to be a physical portrayal of virtues, particularly those of chastity and humility. Her humility is stressed through the first inscription on the base: “Kingdoms fall through luxury, cities rise through virtue; behold the neck of pride severed by humility.”27 This wildly luxurious sculpture was used here (somewhat ironically) by the Medici to claim their humility, and thus their moral superiority over their enemies, who, represented by Holofernes, would be seen as prideful and even evil. Judith’s chastity is also highlighted in this sculpture, particularly by the physical proximity of the figures. Judith steps viciously on Holofernes’ hand and grabs a handful of his abundant hair, which was seen as a sign of sexual virility at the time. She is heavily covered by swaths of fabric, which add movement to the composition but do not draw attention to the contours of her body. While she is visibly female, she is not explicitly gendered in a sexual manner. Judith’s chastity is highlighted not only in her coverings, but is emphasized when viewed in contrast to Donatello’s David. David’s nudity and sensual appearance

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D O N AT E L L O ’ S JUDITH AND HOLOFERNES: A SYMBOL OF TYRANNY AND VIRTUE IN RENAISSANCE FLORENCE

Fig. 3 . Follower of Fra Angelico, Justice, pen and brown ink, brush and brown wash, ca. 14 40, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. Photo courtesy of Open Access for Scholarly Content.

starkly contrast against Judith’s portrayal; narratively speaking, after their victorious moments, David becomes a king, while Judith famously returns home to Bethulia, highlighting gender expectations of this time. 28 Thus the Medici aimed to represent themselves as the humble, pious protectors of Florence, using charged, violent imagery, while simultaneously accusing enemies of conveying lewd behaviour and poor moral standards. 29 While this imagery makes the sculpture exciting and effective, it is also troubling in that it features a woman physically victorious over a man, which was highly unusual for the time. 30 This was especially troublesome for the city of Florence whose patron saint, John the Baptist, was famously beheaded by another Biblical woman: Salome. This of course makes the consequent success of Judith as an icon of the city all the more puzzling. Both Judith and Salome are typically defined by these beheadings. However, the way the women are usually depicted separates their narratives and how they are read. For example, Salome is typically seen dancing, presenting the head of John the Baptist to her father

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Herod, or simply holding the platter with his head, and is defined by her sexuality and her luxurious lifestyle. Conversely, Judith is typically shown holding the head of Holofernes and is always hoding a sword.

A woman holding a sword would have been a familiar image to Florentines in the form of “Lady Justice,” a female embodiment of the virtue of Justice who is frequently shown holding a sword (fig. 3). 31 Thus, Judith’s actions have an immediate visual link to the virtue of justice and suggest that her actions are in fact justified. This correlation was especially effective during this time when the Republic of Florence was envisioned physically as a woman, and this enabled Judith to be viewed as a Florencetype, 32 becoming a physical embodiment of the Republic, which made her a more potent symbol after the exile of the Medici family.

In spite of these associations to themes of justice, it seems risky for the family to attempt to associate themselves so closely with the idea of decapitation. However, it has been suggested that Judith was such a potent figure specifically because her meaning could be destabilized and interpreted in a variety of ways. Indeed it seems scholar have never interpreted her in the same way twice. 33 The Medici family changed the city’s unpleasant association with beheading — that of John the Baptist — into one of justified violence, by linking Judith and David’s heroism and by highlighting Judith’s various virtues which contribute to her moral character. Judith’s violent actions are justified, just as the Medici wished to justify their aggressive actions to the citizens of Florence.

After the death of his father Cosimo, Piero de’Medici had a second inscription added to the sculpture, reading: “Piero, son of Cosimo, has dedicated the statue of this woman to that liberty and fortitude bestowed on the republic by the invincible and constant spirit of the citizens. 34 ” This makes the political intent of the sculpture clear and emphasizes the Medici’s desire to appeal to the citizens of Florence (whom Machiavelli describes as civic-minded “conquerors 35), at a time when Medici power was waning.

Ultimately, the sculpture failed to identif y the Medici as humble protectors of freedom and instead came to be associated with the family as a symbol of their hypocrisy and luxurious taste. By 1494 , the Medici, claiming to protect the Republic from tyrants, were now seen to be tyrannical themselves.36 They were exiled and the newly established government claimed many of their luxurious possessions. Judith and Holofernes was seized; inscriptions were effaced and the sculpture was installed in front of the Palazzo Vecchio, the seat of the new government and an extremely public location within the city. A new inscription was set onto the sculpture,

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D O N AT E L L O ’ S JUDITH AND HOLOFERNES: A SYMBOL OF TYRANNY AND VIRTUE IN RENAISSANCE FLORENCE

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reading: “An exemplar of the public good. The citizens installed it here in 1495. 37 ” In this case, Judith became a symbol of the city’s triumph over the Medici; the new inscription placed emphasis on Judith’s civic duty 38 and it also proclaimed a Republic in which all citizens participated in public decisions.

This treatment of the sculpture demonstrates how closely it had been linked to the Medici in the eyes of the people, as it now came to function as a sort of trophy for their defeat. The installation in a new environment and the removal of the inscriptions call to mind the practice of damnatio memoriae in ancient Rome, in which a ruler would command all public works associated with the previous ruler to be physically destroyed, “damning” the subject from memory. 39 The Florentine Republic had reclaimed Judith and Holofernes and destroyed the ideological image the Medici family had so carefully attempted to craft for themselves, which emphasized Judith’s narrative actions as a civic heroine, rather than a symbol of the “humility” of the Medici family.

Now Judith had come to truly symbolize the Republic’s freedom over tyranny, her charged imagery and her gender making her a more potent symbol for the Republic than her counterpart David, who was moved inside the Palazzo. However, her gender became an issue again in the latter half of the sixteenth century, when some officials began to worry about an increasing number of women being present within the Palazzo della Signoria 40 and believed the violent sculpture may have been partly to blame.

The sculpture was moved to a niche on the side of the palazzo, replaced by The Rape of the Sabine Women. It was later again moved to the inside of the Palazzo where it is still displayed, after Michelangelo’s David, a symbol of masculinity, supplanted the original placement. 41 In attempting to craft a visual program identifying their supposed role as the humble protectors of freedom in Florence, the Medici family created a symbol of their own hypocrisy and tyranny. The acquisition of Donatello’s Judith and Holofernes by the Republic after the exile of the Medici family demonstrates the power of an image and its ability to identify and create identity within the context of fifteenth century Florence. While the Medici family seemingly failed in this instance to create a convincing identity of humble servitude to their state, their legacy of art patronage spanning generations has caused history to remember them fondly in terms of their contributions to culture. Upon his death in 1464 , Cosimo de’Medici was given the title of Pater Patriae, or “father of his country.”42 This speaks to a difficult and complex relationship between the Medici family and Florence,

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and ultimately suggests that perhaps the identity the family sought to create for themselves was not entirely unsuccessful.

Endnotes 1

2

3

4

5

6

7

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Sarah Blake McHam, “Donatello’s Judith as the Emblem of God’s Chosen People,” in The Sword of Judith: Judith Studies Across the Disciplines [online], ed.

Kevin R Brine, Elena Ciletti, and Henrike Lähnemann.

(Cambridge: Open Book Publishers, 2010), 307.

Adrian W.B. Randolph, Engaging Symbols (London: Yale University Press, 2002), 78.

Caroline Elam, “Art and Diplomacy in Renaissance Florence,” RSA Journal 5387 (1988): 817.

Giorgio Vasari, Lives of the Most Eminent Painters, Sculptors and Architects, Volume II (London: Philip Lee Warner Publishers, 1912), 252.

McHam, “Donatello’s Judith as the Emblem of God’s Chosen People,” 307.

John F. Padgett and Christopher K. Ansel, “Robust Action and the Rise of the Medici,” American Journal of Sociology 6 (1993): 1269.

Randolph, Engaging Symbols, 4.

8

9 10

11 12

13

This even also established the Medici as the papal banking family in Florence.

Padgett and Ansel, “Robust Action and the Rise of the Medici,” 1292.

Ibid., 1269; 1284.

Padgett and Ansel thoroughly describe how the Medici family “mobilized” members of elite families into the Medici party through direct connections to Medici family members, which resulted in more cohesiveness than complex, interconnected relations. Ibid., 1279.

Tim Parks, Medici Money (New York: Atlas Books, 2005), 96 Roger J. Crum, “Severing the Neck of Pride: Donatello’s Judih and Holofernes and the Recollection of Albizzi Shame in Florence,” Artibus et Historae 44 (2001): 23.

Niccoló Machiavelli, History of Florence and the affairs of Italy from the earliest times to the death of Lorenzo the Magnificent [online], ed. W. Walter Dune. (New York: Universal Classics Library, 1901): Book IV, Chapter VI. Accessed on December 17,

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14 D O N AT E L L O ’ S

15

JUDITH AND HOLOFERNES: A SYMBOL OF TYRANNY

16

AND VIRTUE IN RENAISSANCE FLORENCE

17

18

19

20

21 22

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2014. https://ebooks.adelaide. edu.au/m/machiavelli/niccolo/ m149h/index.html Elam, “Art and Diplomacy in Renaissance Florence,” 814.

Mark Jurdjevic, “Civic Humanism and the Rise of the Medici,” Renaissance Quarterly 4 (1999): 999.

These images were removed in 1494 when the Medici family was exiled. Patricia Lee Rubin, Images and Identity in Fifteenth-Century Florence (London: Yale University Press, 2007), 118.

Allie Terry, “Donatello’s decapitations and the rhetoric of beheading in Midecian Florence,” Renaissance Studies 5 (2009): 609.

“Judith 13:6-8” The Official King James Bible Online, accessed on November 9, 2014 , http://www. kingjamesbibleonline.org/ book.php?book=Judith &chapter=13&verse=.

Sarah Blake McHam, “Donatello’s Bronze David and Judith as Metaphors of Medici Rule in Florence,” The Art Bulletin 83 (2001): 32-47.

Vasari, Lives of the Most Eminent Painters, Sculptors and Architects, Volume II, 245.

McHam, “Donatello’s Bronze David and Judith,” 33-34.

Laurie Schneider, “Donatello’s

23 24

25

26 27 28

29

30 31 32 33

Bronze David.” The Art Bulletin 55 (1973): 213.

McHam, “Donatello’s Bronze David and Judith,” 36-37.

David on his own was a very potent political symbol for the family, as Donatello had previously sculpted a marble David for the Palazzo della Signoria, further enhancing political connotations.

Schneider, “Donatello’s Bronze David,” 213.

Jurdjevic, “Civic Humanism and the Rise of the Medici,” 998.

Crum, “Severing the Neck of Pride,” 26.

Ibid., 23.

Roger J. Crum, “Judith between the Private and Public Realms in Renaissance Florence,” in The Sword of Judith: Judith Studies Across the Disciplines [online], ed.

Kevin R. Brine, Elena Ciletti, and Henrike Lähnemann (Cambridge: Open Book Publishers, 2010), 293.

Jane Davidson Reid, “The True Judith,” Art Journal 4 (1969): 378.

Randolph, Engaging Symbols, 251.

Ibid., 258.

Ibid., 76.

Jane Davidson Reid nicely summarizes how Judith has been interpreted my various

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34

35 36

37 38

39

40

41 42

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artists and scholars over the years. Reid, “The True Judith,” 376-387.

John T. Paoletti and Gary M. Radke. Art in Renaissance Italy, Fourth Edition (London: Laurence King Publishin Ltd, 2012), 387.

Machiavelli, History of Florence, Book III Chapter I. McHam, “Donatello’s Judith as the Emblem of God’s Chosen People,” 318. aoletti and Radke. Art in Renaissance Italy, 387.

Judith’s story has traditionally been compared to that of Esther, and interpreted in terms of her actions and civic heroism. Robert Applebaum, “Judith Dines Alone: From the Bible to Du Bartas,” Modern Philology, 4 (2014) 689.

Jaś Elsner, “Iconoclasm as Discourse: From Antiquity to Byzantium,” The Art Bulletin 94.3 (2012): 370.

Prominent citizen Francesco Filarete stated that “The Judith is a deadly sign and does not befit us whose insignia are the cross and lily, nor is it good to have a woman kill a man […]”. Randolph, Engaging Symbols, 280.

Ibid., 284.

Parks, Medici Money, 107.

Bibliography Applebaum, Robert. “Judith Dines Alone: From the Bible to Du Bartas.” Modern Philology, 4 (2014): 683-710.

Crum, Roger J. “Severing the Neck of Pride: Donatello’s Judih and Holofernes and the Recollection of Albizzi Shame in Florence.” Artibus et Historae 44 (2001): 23-29.

Crum, Roger J. “Judith between the Private and Public Realms in Renaissance Florence.” In The Sword of Judith: Judith Studies Across the Disciplines [online], edited by Kevin R. Brine, Elena Ciletti, and Henrike Lähnemann, 291-306. Cambridge: Open Book Publishers, 2010.

Elam, Caroline. “Art and Diplomacy in Renaissance Florence.” RSA Journal,5387 (1988): 813-826.

Elsner, Jaś. “Iconoclasm as Discourse: From Antiquity to Byzantium.” The Art Bulletin 94 no 3 (2012): 368-394.

Machiavelli, Niccoló. History of Florence and the affairs of Italy from the earliest times to the death of Lorenzo the Magnificent [online], edited by W. Walter Dune. New York: Universal Classics Library, 1901. Accessed on December 17, 2014. https://ebooks.adelaide.edu. au/m/machiavelli/niccolo/m149h/ index.html McHam, Sarah Blake.

“Donatello’s Bronze David and

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Judith as Metaphors of Medici Rule in Florence.” The Art Bulletin 83 (2001): 32-47.

McHam, Sarah Blake. “17.

Donatello’s Judith as the Emblem of D O N AT E L L O ’ S God’s Chosen People” In The Sword JUDITH AND of Judith: Judith Studies Across the HOLOFERNES: Disciplines [online], edited by Kevin A SYMBOL R. Brine, Elena Ciletti, and Henrike OF TYRANNY Lähnemann, 307-324. Cambridge: AND Open Book Publishers, 2010.

VIRTUE IN Jurdjevic, Mark. “Civic RENAISSANCE Humanism and the Rise of the FLORENCE Medici.” Renaissance Quarterly, 4 (1999): 994-1020.

Padgett, John F., and Christopher K. Ansel. “Robust Action and the Rise of the Medici.”

American Journal of Sociology,6 (1993): 1259-1319.

Paoletti, John T., and Gary M. Radke. Art in Renaissance Italy, Fourth Edition. London: Laurence King Publishing Ltd, 2012.

Parks, Tim. Medici Money.

New York: Atlas Books, 2005.

Randolph, Adrian W.B. Engaging Symbols. London: Yale University Press, 2002.

Reid, Jane Davidson. “The True Judith.” Art Journal 4 (1969): 376-387.

Rubin, Patricia Lee. Images and Identity in Fifteenth-Century Florence. London: Yale University Press, 2007.

Schneider, Laurie.

“Donatello’s Bronze David.” The Art Bulletin 55 (1973): 213-216.

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Terry, Allie. “Donatello’s decapitations and the rhetoric of beheading in Midecian Florence.”

Renaissance Studies 5 (2009): 609-638.

The Official King James Bible Online, “Judith 13: 6-8”. Accessed on November 9 2014. http:// www.kingjamesbibleonline.org/ book.php?book=Judith&chapter=13&verse= Vasari, Giorgio. Lives of the Most Eminent Painters, Sculptors and Architects, Volume II. London: Philip Lee Warner Publishers, 1912.

C C Un Jo A X El Th Un Jo

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CUJAH . The Concordia Undergraduate Journal of A r t H i s t o r y.

X I . Vo l u m e Eleven. CUJAH. The Concordia Undergraduate Journal of 27

CUJAH

VOLUME XI

ZOE WONFOR

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From Far and Wide: The Icon of the World’s Largest Coin on the Secular Pilgrimage of the Canadian Road Trip By: Ellen Belshaw Edited by: Jera MacPherson

Opposite: Fig. 1. The Big Nickel at Science North, 2002, digital photograph.

Photo reproduced with permission from Phil Harvey.

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Despite the fact that neither the tradition of the monument or the obsession with the gigantic are new or specifically Canadian phenomena, these ideals are something that Canadians have adopted as representations of regional and national identity. This is especially true when considering roadside attractions and novelty architecture; the experience of a road trip is intrinsic to many Canadians’ understandings and relationships to the landscape, and the objects and icons that confront them in this experience contribute to their understanding of national identity or ‘Canadianness.’ In terms of novelty architecture and roadside attractions as a form of monument, Canada boasts hundreds of the ‘world’s largest’ in various shapes and figurations. The sublime experience elicited in perceiving one of these giant structures becomes a tangible focal point from a distance, yet disconcerting when it is perceived in proximity. These monuments thus become added elements to our sublime response to the landscape up close and representations of society’s dominance over said landscape from the perspective of the road. Through an analysis of one of Canada’s specific ‘world’s largest,’ that is, the world’s largest artificial coin known colloquially as the Big Nickel in Sudbury, Ontario, the identity-forming experience of the Canadian road trip becomes evident as a representation of the more abstract issues of consumerism, national identity and self awareness as related to the landscape (fig. 1). Along the secular pilgrimage that is the Canadian road trip, sites such as the Big Nickel do not act as destinations but as sojourns on a greater journey, which represent through their structures a communal space of national identity-creation.

The Big Nickel in Sudbury was erected in 1964 as a commemorative marker of the 200th anniversary of the discovery of nickel and an acknowledgement of the contributions of the adjacent Vale mines. These mines are credited with producing the element important in aiding the war effort and increasing Canadian economy following the war. 1 Unlike many similar

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“A giant hockey stick. A big nickel.

A historic covered ELLEN BELSHAW, originally f rom New B runs wick and raise d in O nt ario, is currently completing her final year of an Art History and Photography degree at Concordia Universit y in Montreal. Her academic interests lie in subjec t s generally exclude d f rom the ar t historical canon , such a s p er formance ar t , sound ar t , and other work s that do not always f it into ea sily def inable categories . Her own creation usually revolves around ideas of the body and the nature of human interactions. Ellen has previously worked as the Assistant Editor of Yiara Magazine and E xhibitions Coordinator of the Ar t Matters Festival. Other publications she has recently contributed to include the 2015 Combine Catalogue, The Jerusalem Art History Journal, NASCAD’s CRITpaper, Interfold Magazine, and Afterimages.

bridge. A history-changing oil well.

People pass by these attractions all the time on their travels throughout Canada. Sometimes, tourists trek for days to ju st to catch a gl i mp se. So me attractions are monumental, others merely quirky. They are all the stuff of local legend.” 1

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memorial structures, the Big Nickel was not commissioned by the government, but was rather the brainchild of local fireman Ted Szilva who also coordinated the fundraising for its creation. The idea was originally rejected by the Centennial Commission and Szilva had to erect the coin three feet outside the city limits because the Sudbury municipal government would not give him a building permit for the project. 2 Szilva recruited sign-maker Bruno Cavallo to help him bring his idea to fruition, resulting in the world’s largest artificial coin in direct proximity to the actual nickel mines for which the area is known. As an exact replica of the 1951 Canadian nickel, this novelty structure acts as a literal marker of consumerism and nationalism.

Its H-frame interior structure indicates its height as proportionate to a fourstory building. However, it was not always the only giant coin in the area, as up until 1981 there stood an entire park of coins designed by Szilva called the Canadian Centennial Numismatic Park. It also contained a wampum memorial, acknowledging the form of currency used by First Nations prior to and during the early years of colonization. With the vision of expanding the project to include an educational mining science centre and museum, Szilva was faced again with bureaucratic barriers because the provincial government would not fund a privately developed project. In 1980, Szilva sold his project to the Regional Municipality of Sudbury who removed all but the Big Nickel from the site. Nonetheless, the city extended Szilva’s vision by creating what are now the Science North and Dynamic Earth Science Complexes (fig. 2). 3

Fig. 2. The Big Nickel with Science North/Dynamic Earth complex, digital photograph, circa early 2000s. File photo courtesy Northern Life Newspaper.

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The site of the monument is intentionally close to the historic mines that continue to produce thirty percent of the world’s nickel annually (seventy-five percent in 1965) and also sits at the fork of two minor highways, in proximity to the TransCanada Highway. 4 The Big Nickel’s pedestrian inaccessibility and scale, comparable to highway billboards, relate directly to the car culture that emerged in the post-war years. The emergence of billboards extended advertising to include roadside motels and gas station signs, as the road became more and more a site of the everyday. Because the automobile became more accessible to the middle class, people’s trajectories began expanding outside of cities for both living and leisure. The road-trip developed similarly to the escapist use of the railroad in early twentieth century North America, yet with an added element of individuality, autonomy and affordability not afforded by trains. In this regard, it was fitting that Szilva would choose a sign-maker as his collaborator, someone who no doubt would have a clear grasp of the features that should be largest to attract people from great distances. Assessed as signage, Venturi and Scott-Brown’s theories established in Learning From Las Vegas clarify the Big Nickel as an entire structure of decoration, rather than a structure with applied decoration. 5 With “pleasure-zone architecture,” structures are expected to express a narrative with the power to “engulf people in an imaginary role,” designed purely for the spectatorial gaze. 6 The flatness of the coin is similarly reminiscent of a billboard, which is a valid form of expression for the same reasons Clement Greenberg validated Modernist paintings: as a reflection of social, cultural (and in this case economic) circumstances of its given time. 7 The icon of the coin is also crucial to the association with national identity as it represents Canadian currency in its entirety as a tangible symbol recognizable by Canadians of all backgrounds. The erection of monuments across the country can be seen as markers of ownership over the land and a commemoration of recent history, discrediting the problematic past of settler dominance over First Nations and imposing a sense of justification in moving forward. In other words, we are taught that this land is ours, yet it is impossible to ever fully know the entirety of the vastness of Canada. Canadians try to assert a grasp of the landscape through the cross-country road trip, most commonly taken as a rite of passage either in youth with family or at the crux of adulthood with other maturing companions. Both excursions can be equated to secular pilgrimages where a façade of freedom is fostered in the sublime experience of traveling across the landscape with the inability to grasp the entirety of one’s surroundings in one view. Alternately, the ritual experience of repeating the same routes

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and activities contributes to a collective and national identity tied to the terrain. 8 Monuments as roadside attractions are points of focus where the gigantism of the landscape is visually digestible from the perspective of the automobile, which exists as the perceiving subject rather than the human within. 9 Monuments themselves are so large, proximity shifts this comprehension back to the experience of sublime and they are read on the same level as the earth and sky that surround them. 10 Ironic and uncanny in the case of the Big Nickel is the inversion of a miniature and controllable object into something gigantic and physically overwhelming. The experience of standing beneath an enormous coin offers a dimension of strangeness in the feeling of dominance projected by an object traditionally dominated. 11 Abandoning the perceiving subject of the automobile and its highway sensibility to stand beneath a giant structure-as-landmark and embrace the photo opportunity presents the anticlimax of an inaccessible milestone.

Perceiving it in the distance from the highway, there is a desire to attain the landmark, to grasp it, yet upon arrival the illusion of relatable scale is lifted and a barrier is faced when the observer tries to surmount something larger than themself. As an aesthetic experience of the sublime, which is characterized by astonishment and surprise, “the grandeur of scenery results in a sudden expansion of the soul and the emotions.” 12 This can be a positive or negative experience for the observer, whose realization of their size in the universe may either be sobering or frightening, or a mixture of the two. Aside from its scale, the Big Nickel cannot be held, embraced, or consumed, especially not with the added height of the pedestals on which it stands (not even the lowest facet can be reached by the average adult), and although outwardly excited, visitors are often left with an underlying feeling of dissatisfaction and deflation as they return to their car. From this perspective, the stops along the secular pilgrimage of the road trip leave the ‘devotee’ wanting more, even if they do not recognize that this is the catalyst for their craving. This lack of satisfaction may even be intended in the height of the new pedestals; although it was doubtfully Szilva’s goal.

The capitalist perspective of the government-funded agency that gained possession of the site may have encouraged the observer, who is also the consumer, to search for other means of filling their appetite, namely in the gift shop.

Sites such as the Big Nickel cannot be discussed in any one structural category such as novelty architecture, sculpture, land art, monument, sign, landmark or roadside attraction, but instead in the abject grey area between all of these categories. Some elements of postmodern theories of signage

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can be applied to this structure, yet architectural theory fills some of the gaps where these writings fall short and vice-versa. As a country whose identity has always been determined by its difference from those around it and those it came from, the national identity-creation made possible by highway culture and the cross-country road trip is both a repercussion of the connection between nation and landscape important in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries and as a means of attaining commonality with people of vastly different backgrounds across an equally vast territory.

Deemed “possibly Canada’s most famous national monument” by Weird Al Yankovic, the Big Nickel continues to attract attention from tourists but very little from academics (who are unjustly pitted for the sake of this comparison). 13 This is likely due to its evasion of category, where neither theorists nor historians of architecture nor sculpture realize the coin’s ability to fit into their realm, because of a history tied to the construct of high art and low kitsch. Created for novelty mass-consumption, it eludes recognition from scholars who do not necessarily stop to consider the phenomenological reading of the monument within the Canadian landscape, accepting it merely as a photo opportunity and kitsch elaboration or an unassuming object such as a five-cent coin. Much more than an inanity, the subtle properties of structures such as the Big Nickel are significant to personal and national identification on cross-country Canadian road trips, the secular pilgrimages that act as a subconscious unifying attempt for Canadians on each coast and everywhere in between.

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Endnotes 1

2

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“Sudbury’s Big Nickel,” Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, last modified October 1, 2012, http:// www.cbc.ca/archives/ categories/lifestyle/travel/ supersized-sights-of-canada/ builder-of-the-big-nickel. html.

Sarah Chisnell, “Big Nickel Celebrates 45 Years,” The Sudbury Star, July 19, 2009, accessed October 5, 2014 , http://www.thesudburystar. com/2009/07/18/

3

4

big-nickel-celebrates-45years.

Ted Szilva, Ted Szilva: The Medallion Crazy, interviewed by Jeff Fournier, Science North/Dynamic Earth, September 2, 2014 , https://www.youtube.com/ watch?v=4kUXNGa9nRY.; “Sudbury’s Big Nickel.”

Ted Szilva, “Originator of the Big Nickel recalls how the project began,” Sudbury Star archive, date unknown.

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“Sudbury’s Big Nickel.” Steve Narratives of the Miniature, Libby, “Giant Coins Honor the Gigantic, the Souvenir, Kennedy, Churchill,” The the Collection (USA: Duke Daily Independent, November University Press, 2007), 71.

3, 1965.

13 Ibid., 70.

6 Denise Scott Brown, Robert 14 Ibid., 74-75.

Venturi and Steven Izenour, 15 “Weird Al Road Report Learning From Las Vegas: #15: The Big Nickel in The Forgotten Symbolism Sudbury,” MuchMusic of Architectural Form Road Report, March 1995, (Cambridge: MIT Press, accessed December 3, 2014 , 2001), 89. https://www.youtube.com/ 7 John Urry, The Tourist watch?v=Ch-eHnWtEZw. Gaze: Leisure and Travel Bibliography in Contemporary Societies (London: SAGE, 1990), 122.

Chisnell, Sarah. “Big Nickel 8 Scott Brown, Venturi and Celebrates 45 Years.” The Sudbury Izenour, Learning from Las Star, July 19, 2009. Accessed Vegas, 53.

October 5, 2014. http://www.

9 Aron Vinegar and Michael J. thesudburystar.com/2009/07/18/ Golec, eds., Relearning from big-nickel-celebrates-45-years.

Las Vegas (Minneapolis: Greenberg, Clement.

University of Minnesota “Towards a Newer Laocoon.” In Art Press, 2009), 142; Clement in Theory: 1900-2000. Edited by Greenberg, “Towards a Newer Charles Harrison and Paul Wood.

Laocoon,” in Art in Theory: Oxford: Blackwell Press, 2003.

1900-2000, ed. Charles 562-568.

Harrison and Paul Wood Libby, Steve. “Giant Coins (Oxford: Blackwell Press, Honor Kennedy, Churchill.” The 2003): 562.

Daily Independent, November 3, 10 Kate Nesbitt, “The Sublime 1965. and Modern Architecture: Nesbitt, Kate. “The Sublime Unmasking (An Aesthetic of ) and Modern Architecture: Abstraction,” New Literary Unmasking (An Aesthetic of ) History 26:1 ( Winter 1995): 96. Abstraction. “ New Literary 11 Vinegar and Golec, Relearning History 26 No. 1 ( Winter 1995): from Las Vegas, 131.

95-110. Accessed October 5, 2014.

12 Nesbitt, “The Sublime and http://0-www.jstor.org.mercury.

Modern Architecture,” 95; concordia.ca/stable/20057270.

Susan Stewart, On Longing: 5

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Scott Brown, Denise, Robert Venturi and Steven Izenour, Learning From Las Vegas: The Forgotten Symbolism of Architectural Form. Cambridge: MIT Press, 2001.

Stewart, Susan. On Longing: Narratives of the Miniature, the Gigantic, the Souvenir, the Collection. USA: Duke University Press, 2007.

“Sudbury’s Big Nickel.”

Canadian Broadcasting Corporation. Last modified October 1, 2012. http://www.cbc. ca/archives/categories/lifestyle/ travel/supersized-sights-ofcanada/builder-of-the-big-nickel. html.

Szilva, Ted. “Originator of the Big Nickel recalls how the project began,” Sudbury Star archive.

Szilva, Ted. The Medallion Crazy. Interviewed by Jeff Fournier. Science North/ Dynamic Earth, September 2, 2014. https://www.youtube.com/ watch?v=4kUXNGa9nRY. Urry, John. The Tourist Gaze: Leisure and Travel in Contemporary Societies. London: SAGE, 1990.

Vinegar, Aron and Michael J. Golec, eds. Relearning from Las Vegas. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2009.

“Weird Al Road Report #15: The Big Nickel in Sudbury,” MuchMusic Road Report, March

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1995, accessed December 3, 2014 , https://www.youtube.com/ watch?v=Ch-eHnWtEZw.

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“The circumstances of war and Fig. 1. “A segment of the Habitat ‘67 residential complex. Image from the WikiMedia Commons.

Uploaded by user Taxiarchos228 under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3 .0 Unported license.”

technology had a comparable effect on the approach to and understanding of sound and sound technology. This became particularly apparent with the advent of futurism.”

DEVON HANSEN is an American artist working in sound and video. Born and raised in Southern California, he lived and worked in Seattle and New York before relocating to M ontreal in 2 014 . His work ha s b een relea se d under a numb er of pseudonyms by labels in the US , the UK , and Japan, as well he has performed in several cities on the East and West coasts of Nor th America . In both sound and video, he is most often interested in interdisciplinary performance, cross-modality, synesthesia , and the narrative potential of connotation and space . Devon is currently enrolled in the Electroacoustic Studies program at Concordia.

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Habitat ’67 and The Sound Object: Creative Structure in the Modern Era The nineteenth and twentieth centuries were host to a variety of complex changes to creative ideology and practice. 1 Coinciding movements of seemingly unrelated disciplines during this period of time can be compared in light of their shared circumstances, as modern architecture and abstract painting often are. 2 Less often, it seems, does comparison take place between modern architecture and the emergence of technology-based music. How are the two similar in industrial and sociopolitical circumstance? Where do they stand in relation to the creative ideologies that preceded them? To answer these questions, it is necessary to observe a material exponent of each field. This paper will investigate Moshe Safide’s housing complex Habitat ‘67, and Pierre Schaeffer’s concept of musique concrète. They will be examined and related through their sociopolitical and technological circumstance, creative ideology, and approach to compositional structure. In light of these parallels, it becomes evident that the historical and aesthetic connection of architecture to electroacoustics offers as much insight as its connection to the plastic arts.

During and af ter the second Industrial Revolution (1870-1920), 3 modernist thinkers found an unprecedented interconnectivity between people and nation encouraged through the development of industrial technology, ultimately having vast implications in fulfilling theoretical aspirations of the thinkers who preceded them. 4 While architecture initially became an expression of modern social ideals during the pre-war period, 5 its influence as a device of cultural innovation on an international level had been stunted by the denunciation of modernist art and ideology in Nazi Germany, 6 as well as Stalinist Russia. 7 It was with the end of World War II that further advancement in industrial technology coincided with the desire of post-war European societies to rebuild their cultures and cities in rejection of tradition and in spirit of Western internationalism and progress. 8 By

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By: Devon Hansen Edited by: Jennifer Rassi

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the mid-20 th century, an “international style” 9 of architecture was firmly in place, aided by the availability of cast iron, steel, reinforced concrete and new mechanized processes. 10 The circumstances of war and technology had a comparable effect on the approach to and understanding of sound and sound technology. This became particularly apparent with the advent of futurism. In The Founding and Manifesto of Futurism, F.T. Marinetti establishes a passionate idolatry for war and technology as means for the fulfillment of human potential, but only momentary allusions are made to sounds themselves. 11 The acoustic implications of modern chaos and machinery were notably developed in the wake of World War I by Luigi Russolo with The Art of Noise in 1917. 12 Even the onomatopoetic nature of Marinetti’s parole in liberta poetry – wherein the noises of war and industry are themselves a common element of poetic composition – was emblematic of futurist interest in wartime and industrial noise as the truest “musical” expression of the modern era. 13 Russolo and Pratella’s work with other futurist musicians in the composition and performance of machine-based music would provide an important precedent for the composers of post-war electronic music. 14 The use of this technology towards a new “musical potential” 15 was later reinforced by the availability of German-designed magnetic tape and tape machines after World War II. 16 During the early decades of the 20 th century, modern architects would meanwhile begin to openly engage with aspects of Cubism and other forms of modern art, and by the end of World War II would credit them with providing a vital source of impetus for movement away from representation and toward abstraction. 17 German architect Ludwig Mies van der Rohe would spend much of the 1920’s to 1930’s pursuing and refining a rejection of the ornate aspects of neoclassicism for the sake of an approach interested only in the most essential elements of form, so that any embellishment upon the primary devices of surface and volume was deemed unnecessary. 18 Not unlike the abstract painters of their time, van der Rohe and his contemporaries were intent on discarding representation out of a desire to “disrupt the system of actual or potential meanings” 19 involved in the manipulation of natural phenomena.

These changes to the paradigms of architecture during the early 20 th century would influence a subsequent generation of post-war architects.

In 1964 , Israeli-born architect Moshe Safdie returned to Montréal after having graduated from McGill University in 1961 and apprenticing with Louis I. Kahn in Philadelphia. He was to oversee Habitat ’67, his contribution to the 1967 International and Universal Exposition. 20 Habitat was largely

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an expression of his interest in improving upon the technical aspects of prefabricated home systems, applying and developing the strategies set in place by previous architects. 21 The foremost practicality of Habitat was its use as an integrative residential complex, and by extension, a critique on the inefficient use of space and density in typical condominium highrises and in urban design at large. 22 The result can be viewed as a definitive example of modern interest in the utility and functionality of non-representational form.

During the 1940’s, after experimenting extensively with sound technology during the war, broadcaster and engineer Pierre Schaeffer became concerned with the propensity of classical music toward abstraction, hoping

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Fig. 2. “ The Phonogène, built by Pierre Schaef fer, was designed to vary playback speed of prerecorded sounds on magnetic tape using a chromatic keyboard.

Image from the WikiMedia Commons. Uploaded by user Semitransgenic under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3 .0 Unported license.”

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to formulate a conversely “concrete” music. 23 This reaction to classical and neoclassical musicality through the development musique concrète was documented in À la recherche d’un musique concrète, a collection of his writings on the subject published in 1952. 24 For Schaeffer, the process of notation-to-performance in western classical music relied upon the notational abstraction of sound as a means, and a concrete expression of sound as its end. Through the medium of magnetic tape, Schaeffer was able to accomplish the opposite, by employing material sounds themselves as the sole means toward an abstract structure. 25 In 1966, his early theories culminated with the publication of Traité des objets musicaux, wherein the perception and qualitative or semantic understanding of a sound is observed as separate from the physical phenomenon of sound itself. 26 This notion of the sound object was one of the earliest defining concepts behind musique concrète, 27 and the discipline as a whole would go on to comprise an important part of today’s field of electroacoustics. 28 The compositional similarities between musique concrète and Habitat ’67 are perhaps most apparent in their modular nature. Composed of 354 identical prefabricated concrete components, each of Habitat’s home units is one of 16 different permutations on a one, two or three-block cluster that form 16 different house types, with 158 houses produced in total. 29 The composition of tape-based music, meanwhile, involves the dynamic arrangement and rearrangement of often hundreds of component tape lengths, which are recorded, cut, and assembled with adhesive tape to be played back and manipulated again. 30 In his Guide to Sound Objects, a parallel to architecture is drawn by Michel Chion to describe Schaeffer’s phenomenological understanding of these constituent elements and how they contribute to a “musical” structure: At the very most we can expect that, as in architecture there must be an affinity between the material and the construction, so in this new music there will be an affinity between the object as micro-structure, and the musical phrase, the macrostructure, of which it becomes an element. So, to be successful, the synthesis of musical objects presupposes some preliminary idea about the nature of the musical language we are hoping to find by articulating these objects.31 Perhaps paradoxically, reassessment of form and process in some cases led both technology-based musicians and architects of the 20 th century to engage more directly with the natural world. This was apparent in Schaeffer’s interest in sound as an immediate product of nature, 32 as

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well as the practice of Le Corbusier, Bauhaus founder Walter Gropius, and other architects to reduce structural features in buildings “specifically responsive to the need for adequate sunlight, air, and greenery.” 33 Kenzo Tange’s Metabolist movement of the 1960’s took a more abstract approach to natural systems, its manifesto regarding the development of modern or urban human societies as an “organic process.” 34 A particularly overt dialogue between electroacoustics and architecture can be observed in a number of International Expositions, particularly those that followed World War II. At Expo ’67, electroacoustic composers Oto Joaquim and Gilles Tremblay were responsible for sound installations in the Canadian and Québec pavilions, respectively. 35 Other expositions featured closer collaborations between prominent figures in both fields, including architect Fritz Bornemann and composer Karlheinz Stockhausen for the German Pavilion at Expo ’70 in Osaka, 36 as well as Le Corbusier and Iannis Xenakis for the Philips Pavilion at Expo ’58 in Brussels.37 This modern interest in cross-disciplinary applications of new technology formed an important precursor to the prominence of multimedia approaches that would become common practice by the end of the century.

Despite the obvious distinction of Habitat ’67 and musique concrète as occupying different modes of perception, they are products of a shared circumstance. With unprecedented resources and a long history of traditionalism, it could be said that both Safdie and Schaeffer were presented with the same problem: As the world is industrializing, how will art respond?

How does one revise the structures of creative practice in dialogue with technology? For Safdie, the answer to this problem lay in new approaches to the use of space. For Schaeffer, it was new approaches to the use of musical language. The resulting works then appear to make use of their materials in analogous ways. It can be learned from these analogies in particular that the continuities between differing modes may often be more compelling than their differences.

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Endnotes 1

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Charles Harrison, Modernism, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), 11; B. H. D. Buchloh, Serge Guilbaut, and David Solkin, eds. Modernismand Modernity: The Vancouver Conference

2

Papers, (Halifax: Press of the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design, 1983), 2.

Neil Levine, Modern Architecture: Representation & Reality, (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2009),

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O B J E C T: C R E AT I V E STRUCTURE IN THE MODERN ERA

5

6

7

8 9 10

11

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217-18; Eve Blau and Nancy J. Troy, eds. Architecture and Cubism, (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1997), 1-12.

Tim Armstrong, Modernism: a Cultural History, (Cambridge: Polity, 2005), 2.

Robert Adam, The Globalisation of Modern Architecture: The Impact of Politics, Economics and Social Change on Architecture and Urban Design since 1900, (Newcastle Upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2012), 20.

Kenneth Frampton, Modern Architecture: A Critical History, (London: Thames and Hudson, 2007), 59.

Joseph W. Bendersky, A History of Nazi Germany, (Chicago: Nelson-Hall, 1985), 43.

Pericles Lewis, The Cambridge Introduction to Modernism, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), 215.

Adam, The Globalisation of Modern Architecture, 39.

Ibid., 42.

Magali Sarfatti Larson, Behind the Postmodern Facade: Architectural Change in Late Twentieth-century America, (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993), 24.

Lawrence S. Rainey, Christine Poggi, and Laura Wittman, eds. Futurism: An Anthology, (New Haven: Yale University

12

13

14

15 16 17 18 19

20

21

22 23

Press, 2009), 49-53.

Nicholas Collins, Margaret Schedel, and Scott Wilson, Electronic Music, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014), 140.

F. T. Marinetti and Luce Marinetti, Selected Poems and Related Prose, (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2002), 207.

Thom Holmes and Terence M. Pender, Electronic and Experimental Music: Technology, Music, and Culture, (New York: Routledge, 2012), 15.

Collins et al., Electronic Music, 46.

Ibid., 14.

Levine, Modern Architecture, 217-18.

Ibid., 219.

Claude Lévi-Strauss, The Raw and the Cooked, (New York: Harper & Row, 1969), 22-23.

“Biography,” The Moshe Safdie Hypermedia Archive, accessed November 2, 2014. http://cac.mcgill.ca/safdie/ biography/biopage.php.

Amanda Dameron, “A Look Back at Habitat ‘67 with Moshe Safdie,” Dwell, accessed November 7, 2014. http://www.dwell.com/ context/article/look-backhabitat-67 moshe-safdie.

Habitat 67 (Ottawa: Queen’s Printer, 1967), 3-4.

Tim Hodgkinson,”Pierre Schaeffer: An Interview With the Pioneer of Musique

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24

25 26

27 28

29 30

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Concrète,” Recommended Composition,” Organised Records Quarterly, March 1, Sound 12.3 (2007): 213-31, doi: 1987, accessed November 10.1017/S1355771807001914.

2, 2014 , http://hugoribeiro.

31 Chion et al., Guide to Sound com.br/biblioteca-digital/ Objects, 59.

Hodgkinson-Interview32 Hodgkinson, “Pierre Schaeffer.”

Pierre_ Schaeffer.pdf.

33 Levine, Modern Architecture, 221.

Antonio Sergio Bessa, Öyvind 34 Zhongjie Lin, “Urban Fahlström: The Art of Writing, Structure for the Expanding (Evanston, Ill.: Northwestern Metropolis: Kenzo Tange’s University Press, 2008), 19.

1960 Plan for Tokyo,” Journal Hodgkinson, “Pierre Schaeffer.” for Architectural and Planning Michel Chion, trans., John Research 24.2 (2007): 110, Dack and Christine North, accessed November 4 , 2014 , Guide to Sound Objects: Pierre http://www.nslc.wustl.edu/ Schaeffer and Musical Research, courses/bio3411/woolsey/ReaMonoskop.org, (2009): dings/Lecture15/Lin 2007.pdf.

14-16, accessed November 7, 35 François Guérin, 2014 , http://monoskop.org/ 36 “Electroacoustic Music,” The File:Chion_ Michel_Guide_ Canadian Encyclopedia, To_ Sound_Objects_Pierre_ accessed November Schaeffer_ 21, 2014 , http://www. and_Musical_Research.pdf. thecanadianencyclopedia.

Collins et al., Electronic Music, ca/en/article/ 47-48. electroacoustic-music-emc/.

Marc Battier, “What the 37 Simon Emmerson, Living GRM brought to music: Electronic Music, (Aldershot, from musique concrète Hants, England: Ashgate, to acousmatic music,” 2007), 158.

Organised Sound 12.3 (2007): 38 James Harley, Xenakis: His 189-202, doi:10.1017/ Life in Music, (New York: S1355771807001902.

Routledge, 2004), 16.

Habitat ’67, 9.

Bibliography Daniel Teruggi, “Technology And Musique Concrète: The Adam, Robert. The Technical Developments Of Glob-alisation of Modern The Groupe De Recherches Architecture: The Impact of Politics, Musicales And Their Economics and Social Change on Implication In Musical Architecture and Urban Design

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since 1900. Newcastle Upon 2009. Accessed November Tyne, UK: Cambridge Scholars 7, 2014. http://monoskop.org/ Publishing, 2012.

File:Chion_ Michel_Guide_ Armstrong, Tim. Modernism: a To_ Sound_Objects_Pierre_ Cultural History. Cambridge: Polity, Schaeffer_and_Musical_Research.

2005. pdf.

Battier, Marc. “What the Collins, Nicholas, Margaret GRM brought to music: from Schedel, and Scott Wilson. musique concrète to acousmatic Electronic Music. Cambridge: music.” Organised Sound 12. no.

Cambridge University Press, 2014.

3 (2007): 189-202. Accessed Dameron, Amanda. “A January 29, 2015. doi:10.1017/ Look Back at Habitat ‘67 with S1355771807001902.

Moshe Safdie.” Dwell. Accessed Bendersky, Joseph W. “The November 7, 2014. http://www.

Historical Roots of Nazi Ideology.” dwell.com/context/article/lookIn A History of Nazi Germany, 43. back-habitat-67 moshe-safdie.

Chicago: Nelson-Hall, 1985.

Emmerson, Simon. Living Bessa, Antonio Sergio. Öyvind Electronic Music. Aldershot, Hants, Fahlström: The Art of Writing.

England: Ashgate, 2007.

Evanston, Ill.: Northwestern Frampton, Kenneth. Modern University Press, 2008.

Architecture: A Critical History. 4th Blau, Eve, and Nancy J. Troy, ed. London: Thames and Hudson, eds. Architecture and Cubism.

2007.

Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1997.

Guérin, François.

Buchloh, B. H. D., Serge “Electroacoustic Music.” The Guilbaut, and David Solkin, Canadian Encyclopedia. Accessed eds. Modernism and Modernity: November 21, 2014. http://www.

The Vancouver Conference Papers. thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/ Halifax, N.S.: Press of the Nova article/electroacoustic-music-emc/.

Scotia College of Art and Design, Habitat 67. Ottawa: Queen’s 1983.

Printer, 1967.

Chion, Michel, and Harley, James. “The Philips Guy Reibel. Les Musiques Pavilion.” In Xenakis: His Life in Él ectroacoustiques. Aix-enMusic, 16. New York: Routledge, Provence: Edisud, 1976.

2004.

Chion, Michel, trans., John Harrison, Charles. Modernism.

Dack and Christine North.

Cambridge: Cambridge University Guide to Sound Objects: Pierre Press, 1997.

Schaeffer and Musical Research.

Hodgkinson, Tim. “Pierre Monoskop.org. January 1, Schaeffer: An Interview

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With the Pioneer of Musique Concrète.”Recommended Records Quarterly, March 1, 1987. http://hugoribeiro.com.br/ biblioteca-digital/HodgkinsonInterview-Pierre_ Schaeffer.pdf Holmes, Thom, and Terence M. Pender. Electronic and Experimental Music: Technology, Music, and Culture. 4th ed. New York: Routledge, 2012.

Larson, Magali Sarfatti. Behind the Postmodern Facade: Architectural Change in Late Twentieth-century America.

Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993. 24.

Levine, Neil. Modern Architecture: Representation & Reality. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2009.

Lévi-Strauss, Claude. The Raw and the Cooked. New York: Harper & Row, 1969.

Lewis, Pericles. “Communism and the Left.” In The Cambridge Introduction to Modernism, 215.

Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007.

Lin, Zhongjie. “Urban Structure for the Expanding Metropolis: Kenzo Tange’s 1960 Plan for Tokyo.” Journal for Architectural and Planning Research 24.2 (2007). Accessed November 4 , 2014. http://www. nslc.wustl.edu/courses/bio3411/ woolsey/Readings/Lecture15/Lin 2007.pdf.

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Marinetti, F. T., and Luce Marinetti. Selected Poems and Related Prose. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 2002.

The Moshe Safdie Hypermedia Archive. “Biography.”

Accessed November 2, 2014. http://cac.mcgill.ca/safdie/biography/biopage.php.

Rainey, Lawrence S., Christine Poggi, and Laura Wittman, eds. Futurism: An Anthology. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2009.

Russolo, Luigi, and Robert Filliou. The Art of Noise: Futurist Manifesto, 1913. New York: Something Else Press, 1967.

Safdie, Moshe, and John Kettle. Form and Purpose. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1982.

Teruggi, Daniel. “Technology And Musique Concrète: The Technical Developments Of The Groupe De Recherches Musicales And Their Implication In Musical Composition.”Organised Sound 12. no. 3 (2007): 213-31.

Accessed November 4 , 2014. doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/ S1355771807001914.

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The Creative Act of Effacement: Erasing in the Art of Robert Rauschenberg and William Kentridge By: Stéphanie Hornstein Edited by: Mattia Zylak

(Opposite) Fig. 1. Robert Rauschenberg , Erased de Kooning Drawing , 1953 , traces of ink and crayon on paper, mat, label and gilded frame, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. Photo reproduced with permission from the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art.

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In the rhetoric of art-making, drawings are conceptualized in terms of creation—they are produced, generated, built, shaped, and materialized. In opposition, the typical definition of erasure is formulated in the language of subtraction. It connotes mistakes, deletion, and the dissimulations of imperfections. This binary understanding functions on the assumption that if drawing is an act of creation then the reverse, erasing, must be an act of destruction. Such a narrow outlook negates the creative potential of erasing and stubbornly distances two complementary actions. In fact, many connections can be found between drawing and erasing: both are the physical results of gestures and in this way they echo the hand of the artist, record the passing of time and alter the material surface of paper. Both require dexterity and specific tools and play pivotal roles in the shaping of a work of art. Perhaps the misconception of erasing can be attributed to the fact that the cumulative effort of the artist is referred to as a ‘drawing’— an appellation that acknowledges only the additive aspect of the process.

This essay aims to redefine erasing as an action that has the possibility to create rather than just destroy. Two examples are particularly apt at illustrating this: the groundbreaking Erased de Kooning Drawing (1953) by Robert Rauschenberg and William Kentridge’s Mine (1991), an animated film from a series which he refers to as “drawings for projection.” 1 Rauschenberg’s controversial Erased de Kooning Drawing (fig. 1) is inextricably tied to the myth of its conception, which is essential to the proper understanding of the piece. The tale begins in 1953 when Rauschenberg returned to New York City after a lengthy sojourn in Europe and Africa. 2 There he reunited with an art scene that was under the sway of Abstract Expressionism—a movement, spearheaded by Willem de Kooning and heavily rooted in the demonstration of emotion through gestural painting,

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CUJAH VOLUME XI ZOE WONFOR

Born in Montréal, STÉPHANIE HORNSTEIN is presently completing her final year at Concordia University studying Art History major with a minor in Creative Writing . Her current research interests center around the place of women and memory in amateur photography from the turn of the century. Increasingly, she is also drawn to the study of textiles, more precisely in the activist practice of yarn bombing and in the gendered implications of the traditional ‘ceinture fléchée’ in québecois culture. She is the current Editor-in-Chief for Yiara Maga zine and , in addition to CUJA H, her writ ten work can be found in the Jerusalem Art History Journal and the Architecture Concordia Journal.

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which Rauschenberg didn’t personally identif y with. At the time, the young artist had just had his White Paintings (1951)—a series of seemingly blank canvases which hinge on the idea of visual silence—shown at the Stable Gallery. 3 Pleased with the results, Rauschenberg sought to extend the concept behind the White Paintings to drawing. 4 He began by erasing his own pieces, but found this to be unsatisfactory because the works he was creating had not authoritatively been declared art yet. “I realized,” Rauschenberg later explained to Calvin Tomkins, “that it had to be something by someone who everybody agreed was great, and the most logical person for that was de Kooning.” 5 Despite the fact that de Kooning was at the apex of the Abstract Expressionist movement, Rauschenberg had tremendous respect for him and it is with great trepidation that he approached his elder. De Kooning initially disapproved of Rauschenberg’s idea, but he finally accepted halfheartedly on the principle that he didn’t want to stand in the way of another artist’s idea. 6 He provided Rauschenberg with a multi-media drawing that would present a challenge to erase and that he would miss, thus adding sentimental value to its eventual loss.

According to Rauschenberg’s account, he approached the effacement of the de Kooning as if it were a delicate surgery. The process took several weeks, required numerous erasers and gentility so as not to tear the paper.

In the end, Rauschenberg was left with an artwork which he had produced solely by “[using] the eraser as a drawing tool” 7—that is, a tool that had a physical impact on the page.

This seemingly simple deed sent a shockwave through the art world.

Several reacted in outrage, declaring Rauschenberg ’s gesture an act of vandalism. Others, in light of Rauschenberg ’s aversion to Abstract E xpressionism, the generational gap between the two artists, and de Kooning’s prominent status, psycho-analyzed the gesture as an oedipal patricide. 8 However, to see this act of erasure as pure destruction is to understand it solely through the negative connotations associated with erasing. Rauschenberg’s piece calls for a more complex interpretation than that. Those who deem Erased de Kooning a violent eradication do not even take the artist’s word into account. Although the maker does not have monopoly on his artwork ’s interpretation, due to the psychological and personal nature of the Erased de Kooning, Rauschenberg’s opinion deserves careful consideration.

Rauschenberg repeated several times that he never intended his action to be an aggressive one and constantly deplored the fact that it was perceived as an attack on de Kooning and Abstract Expressionism:

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“It’s not a negation,” he stated in an interview with San Francisco Museum of Modern Art Director David A . Ross, “its a celebration.” 9 This idea is emphasized by the fact that Rauschenberg only thought the piece would be successful if he erased an artwork that was not only good, but great.

In this way, he seems to be paying de Kooning a compliment, if not a tribute. Furthermore, Rauschenberg has mentioned that he would never have erased an Andrew Wyeth artwork, because he could not relate to him. 10 He felt that, in order for his piece to be successful, for it to generate meaning and resound with significance, a certain connection needed to exist between him and the artist whose work he was to erase. De Kooning and Rauschenberg were not only contemporaries, but they evolved in the same artistic circles. Even though their aesthetics were radically different, there was a basic understanding between the two. It is also significant that de Kooning was a living artist who was still producing drawings at the time.

Had Rauschenberg selected a Rembrandt or another long-dead master, “the factor of vandalism would [have been] so overwhelming that nothing else, no other motive, would count for much.” 11 This is not to suggest that the effaced de Kooning drawing can be retrieved, but that Rauschenberg was not taking away from something fixed; de Kooning’s career was still developing. If anything, the young artist was incorporating the master’s work into a new form of art-making, including it in avant-garde history. Indeed, no other drawing by de Kooning has gained as much fame and attention as the one Rauschenberg erased. As David Fenner argues: “[T]hat the drawing was erased is itself more culturally significant that the original drawing.” 12 Another element that begs consideration in Rauschenberg’s choice of de Kooning is the master’s continuous use of erasure in his own practice. According to Tom Hess, de Kooning made heavy use of the eraser “not to rub out the lines, but to move them, push them across the paper, turn them into planes.” 13 Thus, de Kooning, often working in charcoal or pencil—media which are particularly suited to erasing— also understood the eraser as tool which could be used constructively in the context of drawing. Perhaps Rauschenberg, seeing this, sought to further de Kooning’s process by pushing erasing to its extreme. Viewed this way, the project can be interpreted as a partnership or even an artistic collaboration in which the first step is the drawing and the second the erasure. Supporting this hypothesis is the fact that Rauschenberg insisted upon de Kooning’s conscious participation in the work. 14 According to the story, de Kooning knowingly handed over one of his drawings to be erased.

Inspired by Duchamps’ readymades, the Erased de Kooning is unquestionably a conceptual work. This is made evident by the fact that the object

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CUJAH VOLUME XI STÉPHANIE HORNSTEIN

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itself is so devoid of information that, to properly understand the piece, the viewer must rely on its narrative. 15 The aim of a conceptual piece is to illustrate the idea or creative event that brought about its making: in this case, the act of erasing. In this sense, the creative output of the Erased de Kooning Drawing is a performance, not a drawing. Because it refers to an event, Rauschenberg’s project draws attention to the temporal nature of erasing and its historical significance. It specifically references the moment of erasure as well as the zenith of de Kooning’s career and Rauschenberg’s forays into conceptuality. In the same SFMOMA interview, Ross brings the question of memory into the discussion by asking Rauschenberg: “[D] o you have the [pre-eased de Kooning] image burned into your head? ” 16 Rauschenberg responds that he had a general idea, but gives no indication of remembering details. What is erased has largely been forgotten, but the action itself is documented. However, Ross’s question, which is emblematic of the art historical desire to archive every detail, misses the point. The appearance of the original drawing is irrelevant to this conceptual piece; what is at the core of this work is the action of erasing. In the physical record of the erasure, de Kooning’s presence is felt even in the absence of his drawing, because Rauschenberg’s erasure, like all erasures, is essentially an unsuccessful one. Indeed, “every rubbing away, every pressure on the paper can only drive the drawing media deeper into the paper’s fibers.” 17 Traces of de Kooning’s hand can still be detected in the final result. What is left is a ghostly imprint, a testament to de Kooning’s draftsmanship and Rauschenberg’s unrelenting gestural efforts.

The constructive potential of erasure is also central to the aesthetics of William Kentridge’s rudimentary stop-motion technique. The politically-charged narratives of oppression and apartheid presented in Kentridge’s animations are extremely complex. This essay does not seek to analyze the intricacies of the films’ content, but will focus on the artist’s practice and his use of erasure. Kentridge’s painstaking process begins by positioning a Bolex camera at one end of his studio so that it faces a charcoal drawing that he has pinned to the wall. 18 The artist then makes marginal changes to the drawing by erasing or redrawing, then walks back to the camera, takes a few shots, and returns to the drawing to make more modifications. 19 Kentridge continues, creating the illusion of movement, until he deems that it is time to move onto the next sequence. Contrary to traditional or modern animations which are the product of the overlaying of several drawings, Kentridge’s films are made up of a few drawings which have been altered innumerable times. Without erasure, there would be no animation

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of this sort. Because Kentridge is constantly reworking one drawing, the chronicling of movement requires the effacement of past positions in order to be comprehensible. There is a performative aspect, both in the artist’s ritual pacing and in the action of the animations themselves. After all, here are drawings that undergo several transformations in order to transcend their static qualities and move. Much like the Erased de Kooning Drawing, the final object that Kentridge is left with is a tired drawing—battered by all the erasure and redrawing it has undergone. In this way, the act of erasing is central to the creation of what the artist himself terms “Stone Age FilmMaking.” 20 Rather than detracting from the viewer’s experience, the act of erasing provides them with a document of the artist’s actions and the drawing’s evolution.

The importance of erasure to Kentridge’s animations is also evident in his choice of medium, which he justifies as “the ease with which charcoal can be erased, with an eraser, with a cloth, even with a breath.”21 Although it is true that charcoal is easily altered, reshaped, it does not make for clean erasures; smears are left behind, smoky clouds appear. Perhaps it is more accurate to describe charcoal as being a malleable medium, its transformation achievable by the use of an eraser. Because charcoal can easily be modeled, “you can kind of change it as quickly as you can think.” 22 This characteristic of charcoal is extremely appealing to Kentridge because it is conducive to what he terms ‘fortuna’—“the contingent and transformative agency that guides him [...] enabling the development of visual ideas that were not (and perhaps could not have been) planned in advance.” 23 Erasure thus plays a key role in Kentridge’s creative process, which unfolds slowly and steadily in the time it takes to walk to and from the camera.

A good example of Kentridge’s animation technique can be found in his 1991 film Mine which recounts a day in the life of both African gold miners and Kentridge’s fictional character Soho Eckstein, a wealthy White mine owner. The animation brilliantly transitions between Soho’s private space and the darkness of the mine. Kentridge makes use of simple aesthetics to enhance the binaries of above and below ground, light and dark, Blacks and Whites, drawing and erasing. In Soho’s space, Kentridge has left the background the whiteness of the paper, but in the mines, the surface has been darkened and forms appear only when their contours are erased. This is particularly visible in the drilling sequence from the 3:30-3:55 mark (fig.

2, panels 7-9). In this section of the animation, Kentridge makes sharp strokes with his eraser to indicate the blinding light of sparks. As the miner digs deeper, the erasure unveils an Ife head, buried in the rock, which the

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T H E C R E AT I V E ACT OF E F FA C E M E N T: ERASING IN THE ART OF ROBERT R AU S C H ENBERG AND WILLIAM KENTRIDGE

William Kentridge, Image stills from Mine, 1991, charcoal on paper, Tate Museum

worker then blasts to pieces with his drill. The scene changes to a wider shot of the dark mining tunnel. At first, only one figure is discernible, but as the sequence plays out, others come into being, shaped by precise erasure.

These vigorous marks work in tandem with the soundtrack to convey the frenetic, staccato motion of jackhammers. In this way, Kentridge uses the eraser as a subtractive drawing tool, eliminating the excess to reveal shapes.

Towards the end of the film, Kentridge’s erasures become increasingly noticeable in the Soho scenes (fig. 2, panels 10-12), because they leave visible smudges on the white background. After its transformation from bed, to desk, to bed again, Soho’s space is cluttered with marks. By the time a rhinoceros makes an appearance, the paper is too exhausted to support any more erasing and a dark shadow follows the animal as it moves across the page. In doing so, these smears track “the history of those changes, as each erasure leaves a snail-trail of what has been.”24 This demonstrates how Kentridge’s drawings have their history built into them. The passing of time

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is chronicled by the marks left behind through imperfect erasures which give Kentridge’s images the allure of a palimpsest—an ancient manuscript which has been wiped clean in an effort to be reused, but which still retains traces of its original content. In relation to Kentridge’s practice, Rosalind Krauss has suggested that “the palimpsest [...] is the emblematic form of the temporal and as such it is the abstraction of narrative, of history, of biography.” 25 Indeed, as the Soho scenes in Mine exemplify, Kentridge’s drawings are tattooed with the traces of their past which, despite several erasures, are still visible for the eye to pick out. These ghost-like traces generate a multilayered appearance that implies a sense of memory. In Kentridge’s art, this is the painful memory of apartheid; a thing of the past whose haunting shadow can never be fully erased from history. “All that you see at each moment is the present,” 26 says Kentridge referring to his animations. But this is a present that is deeply informed by its past. Beyond being a mode of animation, erasure serves as metaphor in Kentridge’s films to visually embody past scars.

As the art practices of Rauschenberg and Kentridge illustrate, the action of erasing contains as much creative potential as that of drawing.

This is especially evident in Rauschenberg’s Erased de Kooning Drawing which at first glance, appears to be an act of destruction. Upon further analysis, this work can be interpreted as a conceptual homage to de Kooning in which the master himself played a role. For his part, Kentridge uses erasure in conjuncture with ‘fortuna’ as a means to animate his drawings. This results in intricate films characterized by a palimpsestic appearance that compliments the themes of history and memory that Kentridge addresses in his content. Contrary to the destructive characteristics that have traditionally been assigned to the eraser, both artists demonstrate a deeper understanding of this tool and harness its creative potential to produce truly unique artworks.

CUJAH VOLUME XI STÉPHANIE HORNSTEIN

Endnotes 1

2

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Carolyn Christov-Bakargiev and William Kentridge, William Kentridge (Bruxelles: Société des Expositions du Palais des Beaux-Arts, 1998), 61.

Sarah Roberts, “Erased de Kooning Drawing,”

3 4

last modified July 2013, http://www.sfmoma. org/explore/collection/ artwork/25846/essay/ erased_de_kooning_drawing.

Ibid. svsugvcarter, “Robert Rauschenberg: Erased

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de Kooning,” Youtube, accessed Dec. 1, 2013. http://www.youtube.com/ watch?v=tpCWh3IFtDQ. 5 Calvin Tomkins, The Bride and the Bachelors: Five Masters of the Avant-Garde, (New York: Penguin Books, 1968), 210.

6 Roberts, “Erased de Kooning Drawing.”

7 Catherine Craft, “‘Cut, Tear, Scrape, Erase’: Notes on Paper in Twentieth-century Drawing,” Master Drawings 50.2 (2012): 178.

8 Roberts, “Erased de Kooning Drawing.”

9 “Robert Rauschenberg Discusses Erased de Kooning Drawing at the SFMOMOA, May 6, 1999,” videoclip ed.

Richard Robertson, SFMOMA . accessed Dec. 9, 2013. http:// www.sfmoma.org/explore/ collection/artwork/25846/ research_materials/video/ EDeK _98.298_031.

10 Leo Steinberg, Encounters with Rauschenberg: (a Lavishly Illustrated Lecture), (Chicago: University of Chicago Press; Houston: Menil Collection, 2000), 18.

11 Ibid.

12 David E. W. Fenner, “Why Modifying (Some) Works of Art is Wrong,” American Philosophical Quarterly 43. 4 (2006): 339.

13 14 15 16

17 18

19 20 21 22

23

24

25

26

27

Steinberg, Encounters with Rauschenberg, 19.

Tomkins, The Bride and the Bachelors, 210.

Sarah Roberts, “Erased de Kooning Drawing.”

“Robert Rauschenberg Discusses Erased de Kooning Drawing.”

Craft, “‘Cut, Tear, Scrape, Erase,’” 183.

Christov-Bakargiev and Kentridge, William Kentridge, 61-64.

Ibid.

Ibid, 61.

Ibid, 64.

“William Kentridge on his Process,” SFMOMA, accessed Dec. 10, 2013. http://www.sfmoma.org/ explore/multimedia/ videos/356.

Ed Krčma, “Cinematic Drawing in a Digital Age,” accessed Dec. 8, 2013. http:// www.tate.org.uk/research/ publications/tate-papers/ cinematic-drawing-digital-age.

Christov-Bakargiev and Kentridge, William Kentridge, 64.

Rosalind Krauss, “‘The Rock’: William Kentridge’s Drawings for Projection,” October 92 (2000): 24.

“William Kentridge on his Process.”

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Bibliography Christov-Bakargiev, Carolyn, and William Kentridge. William Kentridge. Bruxelles: Société des Expositions du Palais des BeauxArts, 1998.

Craft, Catherine. “‘Cut, Tear, Scrape, Erase’: Notes on Paper in Twentieth-century Drawing.”

Master Drawings 50.2 (2012): 161-186.

Dillon, Brian. “The Revelation of Erasure.” Tate Etc 8 (2006): 30-37.

Diserens, Corinne. “William Kentridge: Unwilling Suspensions of Disbelief.” Art-Press 255 (2000): 20-26.

Fenner, David E. W. “Why Modifying (Some) Works of Art is Wrong.” American Philosophical Quarterly 43. 4 (2006): 329-341.

Katz, Vincent. “A Genteel Iconoclasm.” Tate Etc 8 (2006): 38-41.

Krauss, Rosalind. “‘The Rock’: William Kentridge’s Drawings for Projection.” October 92 (2000): 3-35.

Krčma, Ed. “Cinematic Drawing in a Digital Age.” Last modified Oct. 1, 2010. http://www. tate.org.uk/research/publications/ tate-papers/cinematic-drawing-digital-age.

Ollman, Leah. “William Kentridge: Ghosts and Erasures.”

Art In America 87.1 (1999): 70-77.

Roberts, Sarah. “Erased de Kooning Drawing.” Accessed

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Dec. 9, 2013. http://www. sfmoma.org/explore/collec​ tion/artwork/25846/essay/ erased_de_kooning_drawing.

San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. “Robert Rauschenberg Discusses Erased de Kooning Drawing at the SFMOMA, May 6, 1999.” Videoclip edited by Richard Robertson. Accessed Dec. 9, 2013 . http://www.sfmoma.org/ explore/collection/artwork/25846/ research_materials/video/ EDeK _98.298_031.

“William Kentridge on his Process.” March, 2009. Videoclip.

Accessed Dec. 10, 2013. http:// www.sfmoma.org/explore/ multimedia/videos/356.

Steinberg, Leo. Encounters with Rauschenberg: (a Lavishly Illustrated Lecture). Chicago: University of Chicago Press; Houston: Menil Collection, 2000. svsugvcarter. “Robert Rauschenberg: Erased de Kooning.”

Youtube. Videoclip. Accessed Dec. 1, 2013. http://www.youtube.com/ watch?v=tpCWh3IFtDQ. Tomkins, Calvin. The Bride and the Bachelors: Five Masters of the Avant-Garde. New York: Penguin Books, 1968.

Vimeo. “Mine.” 1991.

Videoclip. Accessed Dec. 1, 2013. http://vimeo.com/66486337.

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How to Weigh a Poster: The Restitution of the Hans Sachs Poster Collection.

By: Zoë Wonfor Edited by: Shany Engelhardt

(Opposite) Fig. 1. Sachs in his study. (Image courtesy: WLRN.com) URL: http://wlrn.org /post/ how-posters-stolen-nazis-resurfaced-jewish-museum-south-florida

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The story of the Hans Sachs poster collection spans over a hundred years and two world wars. The collection was confiscated by Nazi officials in 1938 and it was kept in an archive in East Berlin until the Berlin wall fell, whereupon it became national property of a re-unified Germany. The restitution of this collection has been complicated by its shifting value – not only monetary, but national, cultural, and personal. Research on poster art and poster collecting has remained a relatively conservative field as it has focused largely on the formal analysis of posters. Historic posters are often seen as images that exist in contemporary contexts as old objects. Frozen in time, they are stripped of any agency to affect current politics. However, more recent scholarship has argued that “posters are barometers of social, economic, political and cultural events … as well as mirrors of intellectual and practical activities.” 1 This perspective enables a fascinating reading of the history of Dr. Hans Sachs’s poster collection. This essay will examine the different episodes that marked the life of this unique collection including its seizure, the ensuing court case, its passage through an auction house, and finally its reproduction in catalogues. Each of these events has problematized the transformation of Sachs’s posters from ‘ad’ to ‘artwork’ and finally to ‘artifact.’

Jewish born Hans Sachs was born in Breslau, Germany in 1881, but he later moved to Berlin where he lived and worked as a dentist. 2 Sachs lived in Berlin until 1938 when he was forced to emigrate due to the brutal discrimination against Jews in Germany that preceded the Second World War. While his days were occupied by work as a dentist, Sachs was most notably an avid poster collector. From advertising, to propaganda, to anti-Hitler, and

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CUJAH VOLUME XI ZOE WONFOR

“Sachs’ collection was known for its variety and quality, and so it came as no surprise when Dr. Joseph Goebbels, the Nazi propaganda minister — a man almost as obsessed with the graphic arts and design as Sachs — took an interest in it.”

ZOË WONFOR is a fourth year undergraduate student at Concordia University studying in the joint major program of Art History and Studio Art. She is originally from Alberta but spent two years farming in Italy and New York State before moving to Montreal to pursue her studies. Her interests within Art History are specific to architecture with a focus on Canadian landscape and gardens, which has informed her art practice a great deal. Research for CWAHI (Canadian Women Artist’s History Initiative) along with curatorial work and drawing have enabled fur ther explorations in space, nature and architecture which have been integral in her role as founder and co-director of the student-run research group architecture | concordia.

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art posters, Sachs was fervent and fastidious in his collecting. His poster collection grew to over 12 000 works, both large and small, and it has come to be known as one of the greatest poster collections in the world.3 Hans Sachs became interested in the graphic arts as a teenager and began collecting in 1896. In a remarkable, albeit short–autobiography published by Sachs in 1957 (and re-published by Guernsey’s auction house in 2013), he tried to recall when his passion for collecting began: “[P]erhaps it all started when I secretly exchanged the first foreign stamps under the school desk in the second preliminary school class of the Koenig-WillhemsGymnasium in Breslau.”4 After seeing several posters pinned to the bedroom walls of a schoolmate, which included a design by Otto Fischer called Die Alte Stadt, Sachs asked his friend how he had acquired such spectacular works. His friend promptly told him that he had simply helped himself to these pictures in the waiting rooms of railway stations. 5 Regardless of when his fixation on graphic art began, Sachs was discerning and critical in his selection. He collected works in which he saw “artistic merit,” and readily admits, “in this particular phase of art it is just the personal taste of the collector that counts!” 6 Sachs kept his poster collection in his house, where in addition to covering the walls (Fig. 1) thousands of works were stored in fire-proof aluminum sheaths and were fastidiously organized with labels and an index card system. Following the advice of his childhood friend, Sachs would help himself to posters around the city, but he soon became more discerning and rigorous. 7 Increased public interest in his collection coincided with the growth of the collection itself; as such, Sachs came to realize that there was a need for an organization that would liaise like-minded collectors and function as a platform for the dissemination of knowledge. So in 1905, with Hans Meyer, another young collector –,Sachs founded the Verein der Plakat Freunde – The Society for the Friends of the Poster. The society’s mandate was to promote poster collecting and increase scholarship on the subject, 8 which they had achieved by hosting poster swaps and lectures by graphic artists and other collectors. Sachs’s home became a social and public site for the development of this field. 9 In early twentieth-century Berlin, posters dominated public space and visual culture. Plastered to lampposts and buildings (Fig. 2), posters became “the medium for the construction of a pictorial rhetoric…of national identities.” 10 While commercial advertising and political campaigns were standard poster subjects, the turn of the twentieth-century brought on the art poster. 11 Many well-known European artists, such as Toulouse de Lautrec,

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Kandinsky, Klimt, Mucha, and Steinlen experimented with the medium.

An art historical analysis of posters can certainly serve as a starting point, however, one must remember that “posters refer to an act within a wider world, and reading them requires reconstructing that world.” 12 A formal analysis of a poster can prompt important political and social investigations that can effectively reconstruct its cultural context. Posters act as important C U J A H markers within history, as they are able to supply “information regarding V O L U M E X I the cultural niveau” and can provide “reliable insight into the mentality of Z O E W O N F O R the population.” 13 This pedagogy of understanding is critical to the reading and writing of the history of Sachs’s poster collection; for as individual objects and as a collection, the posters provide a means through which we can understand the modes of communication and cultural production in turn-of-the-century Berlin.

In addition to The Societ y for the Friends of the Poster, Sachs published a journal on the subject of posters and the graphic arts called Das Plakat or “The Poster”. This journal began in 1910 and was an integral part of the Society’s mandate, as it enabled the wide circulation of new styles, trends, and writing on this emerging field. Each issue was devoted to a single artist who was in charge of its design, from the font to color choices and layout, which made each issue unique. Das Plakat was known for dealing with “unexplored aesthetic, cultural, and legal issues about posters and graphic design,” 14 and at its peak Das Plakat was circulating over 11 000 copies internationally per month. 15 By 1938 Sachs collection numbered over 12 000 posters, and according to Sachs, it was “a most varied and comprehensive collection from every angle … from the artistic [to the] sociological, cultural, psychological, historical, or geographical.” 16 He was particularly interested in the “forbidden, religious or zoological posters, posters of the dance or festivals, of war and revolution, even plagiarism.” 17 Sachs’s collection was known for its variety and quality, and so it came as no surprise when Dr. Joseph Goebbels, the Nazi propaganda minister — a man almost as obsessed with the graphic arts and design as Sachs — took an interest in it.

Goebbels was a notorious figure whose role as Hitler’s Propaganda Minister directly contributed to the broadcasting of Hitler’s radical ideologies throughout Germany. It has been argued that Goebbels’s propaganda tactics were largely responsible for Hitler’s swift and successful rise to power in 1933. 18 In a haunting autobiography by Goebbels titled My Part in Germany ’s Fight, he writes on November 14th 1932, that “…besides our speeches, and the success of our propaganda, the Press is our only

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weapon.” 19 According to Goebbels, successful propaganda was simple, repetitive, appealing, and credible, 20 and it was quickly employed as a weapon for the Nazi government.

In the winter of 193 8 , Sachs received a phone call from three high-powered Gestapo officers who informed him that they were to come and investigate his apartment. The officers were a part of Goebbels’s Propaganda ministry, and conveniently enough, they were all “former advertising managers for German firms,” 21 so they would have been well aware of Sachs’s “collecting activities, as well as the periodical ‘Das Plakat.’” 22 Sachs was informed that Goebbels “wished to add a new wing to the Kunstgewerbemuseum (Museum of Decorative Arts) on Prinz-AlbrechtStrasse in Berlin to be devoted to ‘the art of the merchant’.” 23 This wing that was to include advertising and poster art. Modern art and art posters were considered radical and distasteful, and many of Sachs’s posters were considered to be political arsenal. 24 When searching his house, the Gestapo officers demanded to see any and all of Sachs’s political posters, “especially those of the last election campaigns.” 25 Sachs didn’t have too many of these posters, but he did have some, and he presented them to the police. His collection of anti-Hitler posters, however, was larger and he was surprised by the officers’ reactions to them. He recalls, “[T]he more posters of anti-Hitler content I magically produced with the aid of my card index, the more I could see their expressionless faces light up. Every moment I expected imprisonment for the possession of such objects as [they] were subversive to the state. Instead each new specimen was received with unqualified approval and something of suppressed glee.” 26 Upon deciding that Sachs’s collection should be confiscated, they seized everything and arrested Sachs. Sachs remembers this day with intensity in his 1957 memoir, “Three giant trucks appeared. The blackest day of my life had begun. With my own hands I took all 250 aluminum arms, each containing 50 posters from their supports, removed the bibliography with its 80 larger works and hundreds of single articles, carried out 12 full car-index boxes with 1000 cards each and the entire miniature graphic, to the trucks, where they were then carried off to the Kunstgewerbemuseum…the headquarters for the Gestapo.” 27 Sachs’ was interned at Sachenhausen concentration camp for a short while before his wife and friends managed to negotiate his release; although how they achieved this remains unclear in all accounts of Sachs’s history.

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Following his release, Sachs, his wife Felicia, and their one-year-old son Peter fled to the United States.

The war ended in 1945 and Sachs and his family had begun to rebuild a life in the United States. Even though Sachs had come to accept the impossibility of his collection having sur vived the war, in 1956, he contacted the Director of Public Education in West Berlin to inquire about any information on the possible survival of any part of his collection. The Director responded and was as sceptical as Sachs was. He said that if the collection had been at the Kunstgewerbemuseum or at the Gestapo headquarters, then it was overwhelmingly likely that it had either been demolished in allied bombing or “cleared out by the First Army of Occupation.” 28 A few years later, a Dr. Holscher from Munich unexpectedly contacted Sachs and implied that a portion of his collection might very well exist in East Berlin. 29 As a result, Sachs contacted the curator at the Deutsches Historisches Museum (German History Museum), Helmutt Rademacher. In a letter from May 23rd 1966, from Sachs to Rademacher, Sachs requests the collaboration of the museum curator and hopes that they might be able to work together to “do everything that can be done in order to make the remaining collection accessible and understandable to a public interested in culture and art.” 30 This letter was first published in the 2013 auction catalogue for the sale of Sachs’s collection at Guernsey’s auction house in New York City. The inclusion of this letter in the catalogue proves the correspondence between Sachs and Rademacher, but it conveniently excludes any of the subsequent letters between them.

The complicated and politicized events that followed this exchange may account for their omission from the Guernsey catalogue – an auction catalogue that has come to function as an important resource on Sachs and his poster collection. Perhaps this was done in order to maintain the illusion of an innocuous narrative – one that couches a bleak history into a mythologized happy ending. Sachs flew to Berlin to meet with Rademacher in the 1970s (exact dates unknown), but due to Cold War politics that divided Berlin, neither Rademacher nor Sachs were able to discuss a solution to the collection’s future in person. 31 At this point in the Cold War and in the aftermath of World War II, there was still “no legal channel for the restitution of art stolen in West Berlin and rediscovered in the Eastern Bloc,” 32 and though Sachs attempted to file a restitution claim against the GDR, it failed. 33 Notes from the 2012 court proceedings state that “a claim for restitution against a public museum in the

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GDR during the times of the Cold War must have seemed as a hopeless endeavour to the father; this also indicates that the father, by referring to the compensation sum received, did not express a definitive waiver of his rights to the collection…” 34 Sachs died in 1974 and the collection remained with the museum under the supervision of Rademacher.

Helmutt Rademacher, the curator at the German History Museum, is in important and often overlooked figure in this story. Rademacher was widely known as an expert on German poster art, and he organized several exhibitions and published numerous texts that revolved around Sachs’s collection.

The collection was obviously coveted by the curator and by the Museum, so it remains unclear whether certain less flattering details about the provenance of the museum’s poster collection were intentionally omitted or were merely unknown. Regardless, the museum and Rademacher proudly celebrated the provenance of their collection. In the exhibition catalogue for the 1992 exhibition called Künst! Kommerz! Visionen! Deutsche Plakate 1888-1933 (Art! Commerce! Visions! German Posters 1888-1933) at the museum, Rademacher notes that “an essential part of this collection was the former collection of Dr. Hans Sachs, a dentist from Berlin, sold in 1938 to emigrate from Berlin.” 35 This inaccurate statement legitimizes the Museum’s possession and ‘ownership’ of these posters, and it marks the beginnings of a subsequent scandal and legal battle between the German History Museum and Sachs’s son Peter.

Peter Sachs, who still lived in the United States, had worked as an airline pilot before retiring in 2005 . Despite his father having said little about what happened to his poster collection after the war, 36 Peter decided that in his retirement he would do some investigating of his own. It didn’t take him long on the Internet to discover that the German History Museum proudly had in their holdings the “Hans Sachs Poster Collection.” Like his father, Peter sought first to find an amicable agreement with the Museum, but after being refused any type of restitution, he sought legal help from Osen LLC , an American law firm known for its success in cases dealing with restituting Nazi looted works. 37 The legal proceedings were prolonged and tedious. The 2012 court proceedings note that the German government was hesitant about restituting the works in question, because of a $50 000 reparation payment paid to Hans Sachs in 1961 by the Federal Restitution Act as compensation for the theft of his collection. 38 The German Culture Ministry sought council from the a newly formed government body and advisory group trained specially in restitution cases, called the Limbach Commission, in order to

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Fig. 2. Anon., Advertising in Berlin, af ter 1936 , from a screened reproduction of an early Ag facolor slide.

Image courtesy: Hans Christian Adam from him book Berlin: Portrait of a City. Cologne et al.

Taschen, 2005 .

“determine the rightful ownership.” 39 The museum director was fervently protective of the collection and in the midst of the proceedings said that “if the works were returned to the collector’s son, he would but ‘hawk them poster by poster’.”40 The museum’s mistrust of Peter Sachs can be largely attributed to the institution’s anxiety that if restituted, this collection would be divided and thus lose a great deal of its cultural capital. However, in the wake of the publication of documents like the 1998 Washington Principles, 41 the accusations by the German History Museum can be understood as both calculated and malicious. To elaborate, the Washington Principles stipulate that “if the pre-War owners of art that is found to have been confiscated by the Nazis and not subsequently restituted, or their heirs, can be identified, steps should be taken expeditiously to achieve a just and fair solution,”42 . The consultation of the Limbach Commission was also a disappointment and the commissioners ‘suggested’ “that the multimillion-dollar Sachs collection should stay with the German Historical Museum, where it had been, for the most part in the archives, since the reunification of Germany.”43 Due to their refusal to co-operate, Peter sued the German Historical Museum in 2009. The case was highly publicized and after three years, it eventually made it to Germany’s highest court. In 2012, in a landslide ruling, it was determined that Hans Sachs – and subsequently his son and heir Peter Sachs – never lost ownership of the collection. In October of the

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HOW TO WEIGH A POSTER: THE R EST I T UTION OF THE HANS SACHS POSTER COLLECTION

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same year, the remaining 4,344 posters were returned to Sachs seventy-four years after they were stolen from his father (a number of them had been destroyed and or lost during the war and thereafter). Peter Sachs assured the German museum, the public, and the media that “above all else [he] wanted his collection to be exhibited and kept together.”4 4 It is important to reflect on Dr. Hans Sachs’s intention for the collection. Sachs intended for the impressive cultural archive that he had amassed to be maintained and exhibited in a museum as his son Peter recalls in an interview: “[M]y father always wanted the posters to be seen by the public.” 45 Sachs had initially intended for this museum to be at his home in Berlin, and he had had an addition to his apartment built by architect Oscar Kauffmann to house and exhibit the collection. 46 Once the collection was restituted, for reasons that remain relatively unclear, Peter Sachs decided to ultimately sell the collection. While the financial burden of a seven-year court case is an obvious incentive for the sale, Sachs also told reporter Carol Cling, “I do not have the ability to keep or store over 4 ,000 posters.”47 Sachs contacted Guernsey’s auction house in New York City to help with the auction and the collection was sold over the course of three sales. 48 The catalogues for the sale of the “Hans Sachs Poster Collection” are impressive and contain never before published material written by Hans Sachs. The previously cited essay by Sachs called “The World’s Largest Poster Collection 1896-1938: How it came about and…disappeared from the Face of the Earth” from 1957, along with the letter from Sachs to Rademacher, were published for the first time in this catalogue. In the introduction of Guernsey’s catalogue (Day 1), the auction house gushes over how pleased they are that Sachs selected them: “[I]t has been a distinct honour to have been selected to represent this most important, and quite wonderful assemblage of posters constituting the Hans Sachs Collection.”49 The intensive research and translation that went into the production of these catalogues is impressive, albeit curious. This document conveniently excludes all details of the lengthy legal battle, and it entirely omits the tension and conflict between Sachs (both Hans and Peter) and the German History Museum. The translation of both Hans Sachs’s essay and his letter to Rademacher is remarkably shoddy and both are riddled with spelling mistakes. If these mistakes were included in order to stay synchronized with any typos in the original document, the editors (presumably Guernsey’s, but it is not specified) fail to mention this.

Helmutt Rademacher produced a handful of exhibitions utilizing Sachs’s poster collection at the German Histor y museum before the

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collection was restituted in October 2012. His curation was thematic, and (as far as I can tell) never exhibited the collection as a whole. The sale of the collection however, prompted three unprecedented exhibitions of the Sachs collection. The first ‘exhibition’ was a two-day preview that took place in New York City in January of 2013 , the second is the beautifully produced auction catalogues, and finally, the last and the most accessible C U J A H exhibition can be seen at LiveAuctioneers.com.

VOLUME XI The two-day preview for the sale took place at the Bohemian National Z O E W O N F O R Hall in New York. This preview contained every poster that was for sale, and exhibited them in plastic sleeves haphazardly cluttered on the walls of a small room (Fig. 3). This preview is fascinating, as while it achieves Sachs’s dream to exhibit the collection as a whole and to a public, it simultaneously marks the beginning of the collection’s deconstruction and dispersion. By the end of the three sales, The Hans Sachs poster collection ceased to exist.

In addition to the temporary exhibition at the Bohemian Hall and the impressive but expensive auction catalogues, there is one last place where the Sachs collection still exists. 50 LiveAuctioneers.com is an incredibly helpful resource where the contents of the three sales can still (as of December 2014) be found. Each lot, in addition to a high-quality image, has the following information: the dimensions, the artist, the year of production, the reserve price, and the final price that it was sold for. The distribution, purchase, and subsequent re-collection by various buyers and institutions completely disassemble the collection, and LiveAuctioneers.com quite literally functions as an archive. Several museums (including the German History Museum) purchased posters during these sales, but the bulk of the collection has been redistributed across the world. The online preview and the preview at the Bohemian Hall in New York became the most viewed (and certainly the most accessible) exhibitions of Sachs’s collection.

The shift in knowledge production and access to historical information has been rearranged in the case of Sachs’s poster collection. A collection that was intended to be held in a public institution was subject to a tedious and drawn-out legal battle that resulted in the sale of the restituted works. While it is indeed unfair to speak on behalf of anyone in this case, it is important to acknowledge the conflation of economy and education.

The invention of the auction house as a pseudo-academy, for example, involved in the publication and dissemination of important information in the auction catalogues, is a precarious and slippery one that places research motivation and intention along side speculated monetary gain.

The research presented in this paper has attempted to highlight how the

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exhibition space has morphed throughout history, and how the valuation of the Sachs poster collection has been transformed at every exhibition or lack thereof. The Hans Sachs poster collection is a remarkable case study. It addresses a history of violence and of a convoluted legal climate that has become synonymous with art restitution cases. This case has also complicated and teased out notions of what constitutes a collection – form, value, size – and how these valuations have shifted over time. How has this collection been historically evaluated? How have these values change throughout time? What purpose does a collection have? How does it function as a whole and how can it function in separate parts? This research has not uncovered a logical or fair solution to the issues at hand, nor has it invented new or better ways of dealing with arduous restitution cases, but it has enabled better questions to be asked and it has proved that cases like Sachs’s need to be made accessible and public in order to begin considering such questions.

Endnotes 1

2

3

4

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Josef Müller-Brockmann and Shizuko, History of the Poster, (Zurich: Editions ABC, 1971), 12.

Hans J Sachs Collection and Hans Sachs, 18811974 (Accession code: AR 2564), The Leo Baeck Institute for Jewish History, http://digifindingaids.cjh. org/?pID=1661635#serIII. Guernsey’s Auction House, “Hans Sachs Poster Collection Day 1,” New York: Guernsey’s, 2013 Hans Sachs, “The World’s Largest Poster Collection 1896-1938: How it came about and…disappeared from the Face of the Earth,” (New York: Self Published, 1957). N.B.: This essay was re-published

5 6 7 8

9

in Guernsey’s “Hans Sachs Poster Collection Day 1.”

Ibid., 8.

Ibid., 15.

Ibid., 9.

Steven Heller, “History of Aggressive Design Magazines,” Design Observer, November 14th 2008, accessed November 8th 2014. URL:http:// designobserver.com/feature/ history-of-aggressive-designmagazines/7607/ Sachs recalls how more than 70 friends and people in the field would come to lectures at his house. See Sachs, “The World’s Largest Poster Collection,” 9. James Aulich and John Hewitt, Seduction or Instruction? First World War

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Posters in Britain and Europe, (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2007).

[Cited in: Pearl James, Picture This: World War I Posters and Visual Culture, (Lincoln & London: University of Nebraska Press, 2009), 3.]

10 Heller, “History of Aggressive Design Magazines.”

11 James, Picture This, 22.

12 Müller-Brockmann and Shizuko, History of the Poster,12.

13 Heller, “History of Aggressive Design Magazines.”

14 Sachs, “The World’s Largest Poster Collection,” 15.

15 Ibid.

16 Ibid.

17 Mark Weber, “Goebbels’ place in history,” in The Journal of Historical Review, JanuaryFebruary 1995 ( Vol. 15, No. 1): 21.

18 Dr. Joseph Goebbels, My Part in Germany’s Fight, trans. Dr. Kurt Fiedler (London: Hurst and Blackett, 1940), 161.

19 Willi A . Boelcke, The Secret Conferences of Dr. Goebbels: The Nazi Propaganda War 1939-43, (New York: E.P. Dutton & Co, 1970), xvii.

20 Sachs, “The World’s Largest Poster Collection,” 24.

21 Ibid.

22 Ibid.

23 Steven Heller, “Hitler’s Poster Handbook,” Design

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24 25 26 27

28 29

30

31 32

Observer, February 17th 2011, accessed October 19th 2014.

URL: http://designobserver. com/feature/hitlers-posterhandbook/24898/ Sachs, “The World’s Largest Poster Collection,” 24.

Ibid.

Ibid., 25.

Reply from the Director of Public Education in West Berlin to Sachs in 1956 – from “Sachs, “The World’s Largest Poster Collection,” 25.

Sachs, “The World’s Largest Poster Collection,” 25.

Letter from Sachs to Rademacher, May 23rd 1966. Published in “Hans Sachs Poster Collection Day 1,” (New York: Guernsey’s, 2013), 30.

Suzanne Glass, “Will posters confiscated by Nazis from Einstein’s dentist be returned?” Times, Jan. 28, 2010, article courtesy of “Commission for Art Recovery” website, accessed October 25th 2014. http:// www.commartrecovery.org/ sites/default/files/ Will%20 posters%20confiscated%20 by%20Nazis%20from%20 Einstein%E2%80%99s%20 dentist%20be%20returned.pdf Ibid.

Patrick Bahners, “Ownership Does Not Equal Possession.

Museum Loyalty: Opinion of

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33 HOW TO WEIGH A POSTER: THE R EST I T UTION OF THE HANS SACHS POSTER COLLECTION 34

35

36

37

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the court in the Sachs Case,” in Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, February 19th 2010, p. 35.

Berlin Federal Court of Justice, Judgment of 16 March 2012, V ZR 279/10. Section II. 22.3. Accessed September 24th 2014. Courtesy of “Commission for Art Recovery” website, http://www. commartrecovery.org/cases/ hans-sachs-poster-collection Hellmut Rademacher, Künst!

Kommerz! Visionen! Deutsche Plakate 1888-1933. (Berlin: Deutsches Historiches Museum, 1992), 7.

Andrea Richard, “How Posters Stolen by the Nazis Resurfaces at a Jewish Museum in South Florida,” WLRN, August 27th 2013, accessed October 7th 2014. http://wlrn.org/post/ how-posters-stolen-nazisresurfaced-jewish-museumsouth-florida “Hans Sachs Poster Case,” Osen LLC, accessed October 18th 2014 , http:// www.osenlaw.com/case/ hans-sachs-poster-case Berlin Federal Court of Justice, Judgment of 16 March 2012, V ZR 279/10. Section II. 22.3. Accessed September 24th 2014. Courtesy of “Commission for Art Recovery”

website. http://www. commartrecovery.org/cases/ hans-sachs-poster-collection 38 Glass, “Will posters confiscated by Nazis from Einstein’s dentist be returned?”

39 Ibid.

40 US Department of State: Bureau of European and Eurasian Affairs, “Washington Conference Principles on Nazi-Confiscated Art,” accessed November 3rd 2014.

(Document originally from The Washington Conference on Holocaust Era Assets, Washington, DC, December 3, 1998), http://www.state.gov/p/ eur/rt/hlcst/122038.htm 41 #8 “Washington Conference Principles on NaziConfiscated Art,” accessed November 3rd 2014., http:// www.state.gov/p/eur/rt/ hlcst/122038.htm 42 Glass, “Will posters confiscated by Nazis from Einstein’s dentist be returned?”

43 Catherine Hickley, “NaziLooted Posters Should Stay in Berlin, Court Says (Update 1),” Bloomberg online, January 28th 2010, accessed December 12th 2014. http:// www.bloomberg.com/apps/ news?pid=newsarchive &sid=aAXc0_E8SqJM

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44

45

46 47 48

49

50

Carol Cling, “Las Vegas man wins battle to reclaim father’s poster collection,” Las Vegas Review Journal, Jan. 19, 2013, accessed October 20th 2014.

URL: http://www. reviewjournal.com/ entertainment/arts-culture/ las-vegas-man-wins-battlereclaim-fathers-postercollection Sachs, “The World’s Largest Poster Collection,” 20.

Cling, “Las Vegas man wins battle.”.

Auction I: January 18th-20th 2013; Auction II: November 22nd, 23rd & 24th 2013; Auction III: Winter 2013/2014.

Guernsey’s Auction House, “Hans Sachs Poster Collection Day 1,” (New York: Guernsey’s, 2013): 4. “ “Buying,” –‘Absentee Bidding,’” Guernsey’s, accessed December 5th 2014 , http://www.guernseys. com/Guernseys%20New/ participate.html Bibliography

Aulich, James and John Hewitt. Seduction or Instruction?

First World War Posters in Britain and Europe (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2007).

Boelcke, Willi A, ed. The Secret Conferences of Dr. Goebbels:

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The Nazi Propaganda War 1939-43.

New York: E.P. Dutton & Co, 1970 Cling, Carol. “Las Vegas man wins battle to reclaim father’s poster collection” in Las Vegas Review Journal. January 19 2013.

Berlin Federal Court of Justice. Judgment of 16 March 2012, V ZR 279/10. Section II. 22.3. Documents courtesy of The Commission for Art Recovery, http://www. commartrecovery.org/cases/ hans-sachs-poster-collection.

Gaehtgens, Thomas W. “The Berlin Museums after reunification,” in The Burlington Magazine, Vol 136, no 1090 (January 1994): 14-20.

Glass, Suzanne. “Will posters confiscated by Nazis from Einstein’s dentist be returned?”

The Times, January 28 th , 2010.

Article courtesy of “Commission for Art Recovery” website.

Goebbels, Dr. Joseph. My Part in Germany’s Fight. London: Hurst and Blackett, 1940. Translated by Dr. Kurt Fiedler.

Guernsey’s Auction House, “Hans Sachs Poster Collection Day 1,” New York: Guernsey’s, 2013.

Heller, Steven. Design Literacy: Understanding Graphic Design. New York: Allworth Press, 2014.

-----------------. “Graphic Design Magazines: Das Plakat.”

U&lc 25 (1999): 6-17.

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-----------------. “History of Aggressive Design Magazines.”

Design Observer, November

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14th 2008. Accessed November 8 th 2014. http:// designobserver.com/feature/ history-of-aggressive-design-magazines/7607/ -----------------. “Hitler’s Poster Handbook.” Design Observer, February 17th 2011.

Accessed October 19 th 2014. http:// designobserver.com/feature/ hitlers-poster-handbook/24898/ -----------------. “The Master Race’s Graphic Masterpiece.”

Design Observer, February 7th 2011. Accessed November 8 th 2014. http://designobserver.com/feature/ the-master-races-graphic-masterpiece/24358 Henry, Marilyn. “Metro Views: What’s another word for injustice?”

The Jerusalem Post, February 6th 2010.

Hickley, Catherine. “NaziLooted Posters Should Stay in Berlin, Court Says (Update 1).”

Bloomberg online, January 28 th 2010. Accessed December 12 th 2014. http://www.bloomberg. com/apps/news?pid=newsarchive&sid=aAXc0_E8SqJM James, Pearl. Picture This: World War I Posters and Visual Culture. Lincoln & London: University of Nebraska Press, 2009.

Karlin, Samantha. “Stolen by the Nazis, hidden by the Soviets, now on sale in New York.” The Times of Israel, web, January 17 th 2013.

Kromm, Jane. “Introduction.”

A History of Visual Culture: Western Civilization from the 18th to 21st Century. Oxford & New York: Berg, 2010.

Marlin, Randal. Propaganda& the Ethics of Persuasion.

Peterborough: Broadview Press, 2002.

Müller-Brockmann, Josef and Shizuko. History of the Poster.

Zurich: Editions ABC, 1971.

Rabinbach, Anson G. “The Aesthetics of Production in the Third Reich.” The Journal of Contemporary History–special issue: Theories of Fascism 11 (1976): 43-74.

Rademacher, Hellmut. Künst!

Kommerz! Visionen! Deutsche Plakate 1888-1933. Berlin: Deutsches Historiches Museum, 1992.

Rademacher, Hellmut.

Masters of German Poster Art. New York: October House, 1966.

Richard, Andrea. “How Posters Stolen by the Nazis Resurfaces at a Jewish Museum in South Florida.” WLRN online, August 27th 2013. Accessed October 7 th 2014. http://wlrn.org/ post/how-posters-stolen-nazis-resurfaced-jewish-museum-south-florida

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Sachs, Hans, “The World’s Largest Poster Collection 18961938: How it came about and… disappeared from the Face of the Earth.” New York: Self Published, 1957.

Weber, Mark. “Goebbels’ place in history,” The Journal of Historical Review, January-February 1995 ( Vol. 15, No. 1): 21.

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Fig. 1. Marnie Guglielmi-Vitullo, Chalayan, 2015 . Photo courtesy of the artist.

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MARNIE GUGLIELMI-VITULLO is currently working towards a BFA at Concordia University in Art History, while also enrolled in the Inter-disciplinary Studies in Sexuality. In 2013-2014 , she served as the administrator for the Journal of Interdisciplinary Studies in Sexuality. In addition to her volunteer work, Marnie has been published in the FOFA Gallery ’s Combine catalogue, 2014 edition. While studying art history, she is fascinated with the physical body and the concept of personal identity, and how the two may work and influence one another. Marnie is particularly interested in the manifestation of personal identity in the contemporary world, whether it be through the plastic arts, or more specifically through fashion and style.

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Conceptual Fashion, An In-Depth Look at Hussein Chalayan and His Monumental Designs That fashion is a completely frivolous and materialistic entity could not be further from the truth, as there is always so much more that lies beneath the surface. This essay hopes to challenge the former notion by clearly defining the bond between the materiality of fashion and the possible concepts hidden underneath. By focusing on three distinct dresses designed by British and Turkish fashion designer, Hussein Chalayan, this essay will explore their individual connection to the Western conceptual art movement. Beginning with a brief history of the relationship between fashion and art will help contextualize how fashion and art have functioned together over time. This will be followed by an examination of how fashion can and is viewed as art, and not just as a capitalist endeavour. Finally, this essay will delve into an in-depth exploration of Chalayan’s three conceptual designs; the Chair Dress (S/S 1999), the Aeroplane Dress (F/W 1999-2000), and finally the Remote Control Dress (S/S 2000).

Throughout the twentieth century, art and fashion have always had a tumultuous relationship. 1 Beginning around the nineteenth century, English fashion designer Charles Frederick Worth called for the autonomy of the fashion designer. Worth did not perceive his profession as one that was subject to the wishes of the clientele, as craftsmen were. Instead, he believed that designers were free to design and create on the basis of their own subjectivity. 2 Worth emphasized a connection between fashion and art, and expressed that the fashion designer was also an artist. 3 But since the divide between art and craft, fashion has been accorded with its own realm, subsequently distancing it from the world of craft, but not exactly deemed as art. 4 Over time, art garnered a fair amount of scholarly attention, resulting in a field of study that has been greatly expanded upon, unlike fashion, which had not received much attention from academia until recently. This subsequently reinforced the divide between the world of art and the world of fashion. Art was perceived as a legitimate form of expression, while fashion, on the other hand, was referred to as ‘capitalist merchandise.’ 5

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By: Marnie Guglielmi-Vitullo Edited by: Jennifer Rassi

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Fashion was understood as being superficial and commercial, a medium that could not be placed on par with art. However, with recent scholarship, fashion has been slowly earning a reputation as its own art. Along with the plastic arts, the study of fashion has been developing its own self-reflexive and self-referential lexicon. 6 All the while, it still borrows terms and names from the language of the fine arts—such as avant-garde, deconstructionist, and even conceptual—solidifying a possible connection with the arts. 7 Moreover, while the idea of what constitutes an art piece has expanded greatly over time, fashion has also aligned itself with art objects as a means of elevating the cultural capital of a certain piece. It has become a difficult endeavour to distinguish what is art, what is not, and even what is anti-art. 8 But then it begs the question, how is fashion still not identified as art? The intention of this essay is not to provide an explicit answer to the question.

Instead, Norwegian philosopher Lars Svendsen provides one point of view addressing that very question, claiming that “[...] fashion has [not] ‘gained’ the level of art, but rather that practically everything (including art) is subject to the principles of fashion.”9 Svendsen does not try to suggest that art and fashion are equals, but instead reasons that both are dependent on one another in order to function.

Fashion critics began drawing from the terminology of art and architecture in order to describe garments that resisted the basic fashion vocabulary.

These pieces were defined as conceptual, with the emphasis drawn away from the functionality of the clothes and instead directed to the idea behind the designs. 10 This is much like the principles of conceptual art, as defined

by American artist Sol Lewitt in his writing Paragraph’s on Conceptual Art (1967), insisting that “in conceptual art the idea or concept is the most important aspect of the work.” 11 In other words, it is not the final product, but the original idea that initiated the project which is most important.

Over the past fifty or so years, fashion has grown into a medium capable of expressing ideas and concepts through clothing, 12 once again distancing itself from its initial conception as a commercial product, and aligning itself with the realm of fine arts. 13 British-Turkish fashion designer Hussein Chalayan graduated from Central Saint Martin’s College of Art and Design in London in 1993. From that point on, Chalayan had earned himself the reputation as “[...] one of the most original designers working anywhere in the world today.” 14 His fashion shows are unique and unpredictable, as the designer incorporates props as unorthodox as confessional boxes and trampolines onto the runway, while at the same time creating garments that are capable of transforming

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themselves into furniture and vice versa. 15 Chalayan often worked on his collections alone—except for the time he spent designing in New York for the label Tse—thus ensuring that his initial designs would translate into elaborate final products. 16 During the late 19 9 0s and early millennium, the British-Turkish designer would go on to create collections and fashion shows that truly expressed his ideas on a more symbolic level. 17 However, according to Chalayan, particular pieces stood as “monuments to ideas,” 18 or in other words, as complete manifestations of a specific thought or motif. 19 Closely analyzing three of Chalayan’s monumental designs such as the Chair Dress (S/S 1999), the Aeroplane Dress (F/W 1999-2000), and finally the Remote Control Dress (S/S 2000) will help illustrate how the designer manages to embody an idea through a physical garment. 20 Beginning with Chalayan’s Chair Dress, the piece was first revealed in 1999 in the Spring/Summer collection, Geotropic. The show’s central focus was the definition of a nation, coupled with concepts such as nationalism, culture, nature, expansion, and conflict over boundaries. The designer also explored the idea of a nomadic identity by constructing a garment that could also function as a chair (fig. 1), allowing the individual to sit wherever they choose. 21 The piece was constructed of two main parts, the first being the greenish-grey chair that was fastened to the body with chrome catches collected from the motor industry. The second part was the flesh-colored undergarments that covered the body, and upon which the Chair Dress rested.

By combining the two materials together, Chalayan transformed the body into a site where tensions between the skin and technology played out. The chair piece of the dress bandaged to the model’s head and spine, along with the flesh tones of the undergarments, stood as a reminder of the fragility and vulnerability of the human body. Moreover, the hard shell of the Chair Dress acquainted the body’s posture, providing a rigid structure to rest the neck and arms—these details were symbolic of the hard-edged precision of modern engineering. 22 Fashion history theorist, Caroline Evans, explains in her book, Fashion at the Edge (2012), “the contract between frail humanity and rigid technology emphasized the difference between organic and inorganic. [...]”23 Through the juxtaposition of various mediums and materials, Chalayan’s Chair Dress is an exploration of the geographical displacement of the human body.

Chalayan’s second monumental design, the Aeroplane Dress (fig. 2), was exhibited in the 1999-2000 Fall/ Winter collection, Echoform. In this

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show, the British-Turkish designer wished to explore the “[...] premise that everything we do is an external vision of the body,” 24 once again drawing inspiration from the human form, but this time in relation to speed. Through the help of enhanced technologies, the human body is now capable of experiencing varying degrees of speed and motion. With that in mind, Chalayan focused on ergonomics and the interior design of cars for the collection. 25 Focusing on the notion of flight, the white resin Aeroplane Dress mimicked the movement of actual aeroplane flaps. With a battery, gears, and wheels tucked away within the resin structure, the mechanism was activated by a switch located within the dress. Once switched on, various panels along the waist slid downwards, a slide flap rose, as another panel close to the chin moved horizontally across the body. 26 The last ‘monument’ this essay will analyze is the Remote Control Dress. Like the Aeroplane Dress, this design also had mechanically moving parts (fig. 3). However, the difference was that this dress was to be operated by a remote control removed from the garment. The dress was part of the 2000 Spring/Summer collection Before Minus Now, where Chalayan wished to explore notions of the intangible as a medium for creation— focusing on concepts such as gravity, the weather, technological forces, expanding forces, and wave and wind detecting objects.

The Remote Control Dress was a dress cast in pink resin with an electrically wired hem that would lift once the electrical current passed through.

As the hem of the skirt lifted and spread itself around the body, the dress was left suspended in mid-air, subsequently, defying notions of gravity. 27 As the flaps of the dress rose, a large mass of light pink frothy tulle was revealed underneath. When the flaps closed, it encased the tulle against the model’s body, a symbolic representation of the encapsulation of nature within the machine, and the dress once again reverted back to its aerodynamic shape. 28 Controlling the movements of the dress was a little boy, wearing a yellow T-shirt, wandering about the catwalk with a remote control in his hand. The boy’s character played an important role in the show as he was featured on the invitations, along with the show’s program. The invitation consist of a photograph of the boy in the yellow T-shirt holding a remote control in his hands, aiming the device towards a jet plane flying overhead.

In the program, the boy was photographed once again, this time, pointing his remote control at a swan found in the middle of a lake. Having the boy appear on the runway alongside many of the models conjured the idea that the boy would probably aim his remote at one of the humans in an attempt to control one of them. But in the end, nothing had happened, and the

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boy left the runway disappointed. 29 Only to return to the runway when the model in the pink resin dress was revealed, to try his remote control a second time. This time succeeding in controlling the dress, as the panels of the garments were mechanically lifted.

Chalayan wished to compose a garment that was equal parts mechanical and serene. Despite the technological innovation of the dress, the movements of the panels were elegant and ended in composition similar to the figure of a swan. The Remote Control Dress embodied concepts such as nature, technology and alienation, while also underlining the futility of human mastery over the natural or technological world. 30 Chalayan’s designs embody the various motifs and tropes of modernity, while also infusing a sense of uneasiness and trauma, thus creating spaces where strenuous relationships can play out. 31 Chalayan’s work often puts into question various facets of modern society. Using his fashion shows and collections as a means to embody his ideas, the fashion designer uses the sources available to him to express his political positions, or to draw attention to a particular social issue. 32 His designs, though seemingly absurd or, by contrast, extremely simple at first glance, bear a great amount of meaning when referenced to history and time. 33 This point falls into step with one of Lewitt’s affirmations of conceptual art, stating, “Some ideas are logical in conception and illogical perceptually.” 34 With regard to Chalayan’s collections, while some of the physical garments seem impractical for the human form and entirely unwearable, the emphasis is instead placed on the idea that initially inspired the design. The designer places an importance on the initial thought, and the context from which it may have come from. 35 Conceptual fashion provides a space for designers to experiment and play with ideas and materials, just as the art world functions for the artist.

This also allows designers to work in a realm outside the confines of the fashion industry and business. 36 By having examined three of Hussein Chalayan’s monumental works, this essay has unraveled how each piece functioned as objects of conceptual art. Beginning with a brief contextualization of the everchanging history and climate between fashion and art allowed for a short exploration of how fashion and design—and more specifically the work of fashion designer Hussein Chalayan—are not so far removed from conceptual art. This was followed by an in-depth analysis of the Chair Dress (1999), the Aeroplane Dress (1999-2000), and the Remote Control Dress (2000), which helped solidify Chalayan’s works as conceptual art pieces. In conclusion, Hussein Chalayan’s designs help bring an artistic and conceptual element to the fashion world. The designer does

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not shy away from serious ideas or political ideologies; but instead chooses to incorporate them into his collections, thus transforming the body into a site of expression and thought.

Endnotes

C O N C E P T UA L FA S H I O N , A N

1

I N -D E P T H L O O K AT HUSSEIN

2

C H A L AYA N

3

AND HIS

4

M O N U M E N TA L

5

DESIGNS

6 7

8 9 10

11

12

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Lars Svendsen, Fashion: A Philosophy (London: Reaktion Books, 2006), 97.

Ibid., 90.

Ibid., 91.

Ibid., 90.

José Teunissen, “Fashion and Art,” in Fashion and Imagination, About Clothes and Art, ed. Jan Brand, José Teunissen, and in cooperation with Catelijne de Muijnck (Arnhem: ArtEZ Press, 2010), 14.

Ibid., 14.

Angela McRobbie, “The fashion girls and the painting boys,” in British Fashion Design, Rag trade or image industry, (London and New York: Routledge, 1998) 51.

Svendsen, Fashion: A Philosophy, 107.

Ibid., 108.

Jennifer Craik, “Fashion, aesthetic, and art,” in Fashion, The Key Concepts (Oxford and New York: Berg, 2009) 186.

Sol LeWitt, “Paragraphs on Conceptual Art,” Artforum 5.10 (1967): 79.

Teunissen, “Fashion and Art,” 13.

McRobbie, British Fashion Design, 51.

14 Skye Sherwin, “Hussein Chalayan,” in Fashion Now, ed. Terry Jones (Cologne: Taschen, 2005) 54.

15 Ibid., 54.

16 Caroline Evans, Fashion at the Edge; Spectacle, modernity and deathliness. (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2012), 74.

17 Marga van Mechelen, “The tête-à-tête of performance in fashion and art,” in Fashion and Imagination, About Clothes and Art, ed. Jan Brand, José Teunissen, and in cooperation with Catelijne de Muijnck (Arnhem: ArtEZ Press, 2010), 111.

18 Evans, Fashion at the Edge, 270.

19 Ibid.

20 While fashion designer, Hussein Chalayan, acknowledges the three dresses as ‘monumental’ pieces in his body of work, it is fashion theorist, Caroline Evans who further expands on this point. In her book, Fashion at the Edge, Spectacle, Modernity, and 13

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21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35

36

Deathliness (2003), Evans suggests that these three particular dresses stand as ‘monuments to ideas,’ as the garments and designs seem to fully embody Chalayan’s initial ideas and inspirations.

Evans, Fashion at the Edge, 270.

Ibid., 274.

Ibid., 274.

Ibid., 271.

Ibid., 271.

Ibid., 271.

Ibid., 271.

Ibid., 274.

Ibid., 271-273.

Ibid., 273.

Ibid., 275.

Teunissen, ‘Fashion and Art’, 12.

Evans, Fashion at the Edge, 275.

Lewitt, Paragraphs on Conceptual Art, 79.

Sylvia Chivaratanond, “Flesh and Bones,” in Skin Tight: the Sensibility of the Flesh, dir.

Robert Fitzpatrick, (Chicago: Museum of Contemporary Art, 2004). n.p.

McRobbie, British Fashion Design, 48.

Bibliography

Chivaratanond, Sylvia. “Flesh and Bones.” In Skin Tight: the Sensibility of the Flesh, directed by Robert Fitzpatrick, n.p. Chicago: Museum of Contemporary Art, 2004.

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Craik, Jennifer. “Fashion, aesthetic, and art.” In Fashion, The Key Concepts, 171-204. Oxford and New York: Berg, 2009.

Evans, Caroline. Fashion at the Edge; Spectacle, modernity and deathliness. New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2012.

LeWitt, Sol. “Paragraphs on Conceptual Art.” Artforum 5.10 (1967): 79-83.

McRobbie, Angela. “The fashion girls and the painting boys.”

In British Fashion Design, Rag trade or image industry, 33-52. London and New York: Routledge, 1998.

Sherwin, Skye. “Hussein Chalayan.” In Fashion Now, edited

by Terry Jones, 54. Cologne: Taschen, 2005.

Svendsen, Lars. Fashion: A Philosophy. London: Reaktion Books, 2006.

Teunissen, José. “Fashion and art.” In Fashion and Imagination, About Clothes and Art, edited by Jan Brand, José Teunissen, and in cooperation with Catelijne de Muijnck, 10-25. Arnhem: ArtEZ Press, 2010.

Van Mechelen, Marga. “The tête-à-tête of performance in fashion and art.” In Fashion and Imagination, About Clothes and Art, edited by Jan Brand, José Teunissen, and in cooperation with Catelijne de Muijnck, 104-115.

Arnhem: ArtEZ Press, 2010.

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Roland Barthes and the Influence of the Autobiographical By: Christine Walsh Edited by: Vincent Mercier

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In “The Death of the Author,” Barthes argues that a text should not be ascribed a single, ‘correct’ interpretation imposed neither by the author’s intention or the critic’s expertise. Instead, the fluidity of language allows for multiple interpretations, because the text is nothing more than a response to other texts. Thus, Barthes concludes by declaring the birth of the reader as the interpreter of meaning. This shift in focus changed the parameters of literary criticism in ways that have been profoundly influential, having been supported or contested by various schools of thought.

This considered, it is ironic that Barthes’s mature works that responded to events in his life were marked by an increasing tendency towards the personal. This essay considers that Barthes’s contentious essay “The Death of the Author” is not his final word on subjectivity, though it may continue to be perceived as such. Beginning with a close examination of this seminal treatise, this text continues by examining personal influences in Barthes’s later works: his fictionalized autobiography Roland Barthes, his tome on photography, Camera Lucida, completed shortly after his mother’s death, as well as Mourning Diary, where he records his most personal responses to her death. In these later works, his penchant for including autobiographical material reveals Barthes’s continued exploration of subjectivity and the ineluctable presence of a writing body, one’s biographical origins and life circumstances, buried within a text.

Roland Barthes is perhaps best known for “The Death of the Author,” a text that proposed the rejection of the ‘Author’ as authority, echoing the revolutionary sentiments of the late sixties. Clara Claiborne Park in

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“Life stories must always be reductive, due to the inherent limitations of language and our own unconscious predilection to draw upon p r e v a i l i n g mythologies.”

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A Ceramics major, CH R IST IN E WA LSH is currently completing her final year at Concordia University. Her present submission represents her continuing interest in autobiography as a form of stor ytelling that assists the individual in establishing a tenable self-identity.

Her Master ’s thesis on the subject of autobiography as a means of including oneself and one’s people within a national discourse was published as Postcolonial Borderlands: Orality and Irish Traveller Writing. Presently, her ar tistic preoccupations focus on our exploitation of the environment and nonhuman species, and how we relate to each other.

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“Author! Author! Reconstructing Roland Barthes” believes that the essay’s revolutionary and hyperbolic language reflected the historical moment in which it was written, during the heady days of the student uprisings 1 in Paris in the spring of 1968. 2 Noting that Barthes’s language is “permeated with the rhetoric of liberation,” Claiborne Park interprets the text’s rhetROLAND oric as a symbolic expurgation of all historic authority figures, including BARTHES “nothing less than that staple of the sixties, the death of God.” 3 Barthes AND THE indeed communicates that ‘literature’ must be desacralized in order to be I N F L U E N C E O F liberated. Questioning the term ‘literature,’ a category that had up until THE that moment been vested in a hidden but tacit hierarchy, Barthes stresses AU T O B Ithat “(it would be better from now to say writing),”4 thus opening up the OGRAPHICAL terminology to include “the world as text.” 5 He proposes that there is no definitive meaning in a text 6 waiting to be discovered by the ‘Critic,’ rather looking to “the multiplicity of writing, [where] everything is to be disentangled, nothing deciphered.” 7 His words refusing all subordination, he asserts that “to refuse to fix meaning is, in the end, to refuse God and his hypostases – reason, science, law.” 8 Claiborne Park understands “The Death of the Author” as a reaction against uniquely French problems: namely, the French Academy, which had maintained a political ascendancy over the mother tongue since its “first and continuing project, the codification and purification of French”9 thus making “Language [into] a means of control.” 10 Within this framework, Barthes reacted against French Rationalism that imposed its particular (bourgeois) values while also asserting its universality.

In the second paragraph of “The Death of the Author,” Barthes refers to the political ideology as a dogma “which has attached the greatest importance to the ‘person’ of the author.” 11 Subverting what he perceived as the reification of an ‘Author-God,’ 12 Barthes concludes by proposing the “the birth of the reader,” 13 transferring authorial power to the reader who generates a multiplicity of meanings with each act of reading.

Though the scope of influence of “The Death of the Author” is too broad to address in its entirety, a few threads should be delineated.

First, literary texts were once seen as a “line of words releasing a single ‘theological’ meaning,” 14 but literary criticism changed with Barthes’s emphasis on the reader as the locus of interpretation. With the deposing of the author as preeminent genius, the text was no longer seen as unprecedented, but as part of an open-ended dialogue, a confluence “made of multiple writings, drawn from many cultures.” 15

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Second, as in his earlier collection of cultural critiques published in his book Mythologies, Barthes continued to demythologize the assumed ‘universality’ of beliefs in “The Death Of The Author.” Opening up the narrow parameters of literary study to include the world at large allowed for a multiplicity of credible voices. Finally, the general, anti-theological, 16 revolutionary tone of “The Death of the Author” upset the sacrosanct status of literature. Barthes is remembered among those who revealed the hidden hierarchies that established works as canonical, thereby opening up the field of literature to include formerly marginalized voices.

Feminist critics such as Toril Moi saw the death of the author as emancipatory, freeing writers from the “patriarchal practice of authority” 17 that had formerly excluded marginalized groups from acceptance. Others, like Nancy K. Miller, held a more mitigated view. Though recognizing the benefits gained by the death of the author as an authority “who excludes the less-known works of women and minority writers from the canon,” 18 Miller worried that the “postmodernist decision that the Author is dead, and subjective agency along with him, does not necessarily work for women and prematurely forecloses the question of identity for them.” 19 More specifically, Miller was concerned about “the asymmetrical demands generated by different writing identities, male and female, or, perhaps more usefully, canonical or hegemonic, and noncanonical or marginal.” 20 Her sentence structure implies a false dichotomy: male, canonical, and hegemonic are necessarily contrasted with female, noncanonical, and marginal by her description. Nevertheless, her concerns typify the disquiet of those marginalized voices that felt that their biographies, their life histories, their origins, represented “asymmetrical” exigencies that were an intrinsic part of what they were as artists and writers. Barthes’s overstated, revolutionary claims that “writing is the destruction of every voice” 21 or, “writing is that [...] oblique space where our subject slips away, the negative where all identity is lost, starting with the very identity of the body writing,” 22 seem to come from a privileged position, given that many marginalized voices have faced difficult physical circumstances such as poverty, violence, and dislocation.

This seeming erasure of the body writing stands in contrast to Virginia Woolf ’s assertion in A Room of One’s Own, first presented as a series of lectures in 1928 a mere decade after British women received the right to vote, that “these webs” – stories, plays, poems, essays – “are not spun in mid-air by incorporeal creatures, but are the work of suffering human beings, and are attached to grossly material things, like health and money and the houses we live in.”23 It is important to note that Barthes’s disconnect

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between a text and the visceral struggles of artists and writers comes from a privileged position that has since been contested.

Given Barthes’s insistence on the incorporeal and impersonal nature of both the writer and reader in “The Death of the Author,” it may seem ironic that several of Barthes’s major works in the following decade dwelt around notions of subjectivity. Yet one may consider this a continued exploration of his earlier intellectual assertions. For instance, Barthes severs himself from his autobiographical project, Roland Barthes, by the insertion of a handwritten epigraph on the preface page, which reads: “It must all be considered as if spoken by a character in a novel.” 24 This gap between self and text corresponds to the assertion in “The Death of the Author” that “the modern scriptor is born simultaneously with the text, is in no way equipped with a being preceding or exceeding the writing.” 25 Likewise, his fragmented presentation of seemingly unrelated entries in this ‘autobiography’ mirrors his perception of the subject as fluid and transient, a point of view strongly marked by existentialism, defined by John Sturrock as “the presumed unity of any individual is dissolved into a plurality.” 26 Equally suggestive of self-division, Barthes refers to himself in various grammatical persons, and often switches points of view throughout the text. In one such instance, the section subtitled “Emploi du temps – Schedule,” after listing the mundane minutiae of his life, Barthes admonishes himself in the second person: “All of which has no interest. Further, not only do you indicate your class allegiances, but you even make of such an indication a literary confession.” 27 Barthes’s fluid movement between first, second and third person consistently reminds the reader that he has created an autobiographical persona, a literary contrivance. And yet the last words of this section, his reference to the “futility” of this autobiographical impulse and his self-critical musing: “you constitute yourself, in fantasy, as a “writer,” or worse still: you constitute yourself,” 28 convey a sense of self-disgust at this literary desire to create himself as a character. For the stories we tell ourselves, the stories by which we make meaning in our lives, are always selective, always reductive and simultaneously additive. We ignore certain indications that would interfere with our self-perception, while valorizing other aspects of our existence that would confirm it. Our autobiographies are essentially mythologies.

Barthes returns more than once to the inadequacy of language to express certain experiences, especially emotions, and specifically love.

In another section, he imagines a discourse between two lovers as “an unheard-of speech in which in which the sign’s form is repeated but never

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is signified.” 29 For Barthes, this complete indeterminacy is liberative as “the speaker and the lover finally triumph over the dreadful reduction which language (and psychoanalytic science) transmit to all our affects.” 30 Language’s ability to permutate into a multiplicity of meanings is antiauthoritarian, and therefore subversive, in the most revolutionary sense of the word. Barthes is comfortable with this open-endedness of meaning and even to the point of resisting interpretation, 31 as is the case with love itself.

He says of his “disjointed” texts that “no one of [them] caps any other; the latter is nothing but a further text, the last of the series, not the ultimate in meaning: text upon text, which never illuminates anything.” 32 While Barthes seems resigned to the limitations of language in his autobiographical venture, and even celebrates the profusion of meanings inherent in a text of one’s life, the death of his mother two years after the publication of Roland Barthes provoked a serious depression that caused him to question his life, his work, and the nature of existence. Barthes never knew his father, who died in the First World War while he was an infant. Barthes’s mother raised him: he lived with her his entire life, and nursed her in her final days.

It was during her illness that he began work on Camera Lucida, a book about photography. “Part Two” deals almost exclusively with photographs of his mother, as he searches through old photographs to “‘find’ her,” as he puts it, “straining toward the essence of her identity.” 33 As previously mentioned, Sturrock points out that Barthes’s conception of the self as indeterminate and changing is existentialist; yet Camera Lucida betrays an opposing philosophy, that of essentialism. Sturrock writes: “Essentialism holds that within each human individual there is some ultimate essence which does not change.” 34 Born out of grief, Barthes’s search for something enduring of his mother’s essence is logically inconsistent with his notion of the ephemeral self. When he discovers the Winter Garden Photograph, a picture of his mother as a five-year-old child, he declares, “I saw the kindness which had formed her being immediately and forever.” 35 ‘Forever’ expresses the idea of an unchanging, essential being, which he later affirms when he writes, “the Winter Garden Photograph was indeed essential, it achieved for me [...] the impossible science of the unique being.” 36 There is no logic to how this photograph affects Barthes: it is not even reproduced in the text because its effect cannot be duplicated. “It exists only for me.” 37 While Camera Lucida is a critique of photography, it shifts to near-poetic form when Barthes tries to identify how a photograph communicates.

He settles on the term “air,” recognizing its inadequacy: “I use this word, lacking anything better, for the expression of truth.” 38 As he struggles to

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describe his personal “satori,” or epiphany, “in which words fail,” 39 Barthes adopts the language of metaphor, and captures something of the indefinable quality of photography:

Thus the air is the luminous shadow which accompanies the body; and if the photograph fails to show this air, then the body moves without a shadow, and once this body is severed [...] there remains no more than a sterile body. It is by this tenuous umbilical cord that the photographer gives life; if he cannot, either by lack of talent or bad luck, supply the transparent soul its bright shadow, the subject dies forever. 40 Faced with his grief and loss, Barthes further resorts to language with religious overtones, a vocabulary that attempts to fathom the indefinable.

In his Mourning Diary: October 26, 1977 – September 15, 1979, written after his mother’s death, Barthes is elegiac. He regrets the unbelieving age in which he lives, which disallows spiritual consolation. He muses: “Seeing the swallows flying through the summer evening air, I tell myself, thinking painfully of maman: how barbarous not to believe in souls – in the immortality of souls! The idiotic truth of materialism!”41 As this diary entry suggests, Barthes fell into a depression after his mother’s death that caused him to question his life, his work, his existence.

As J. Gerald Kennedy notes in “Roland Barthes, Autobiography, and the End of Writing,” his mother’s death “brought about radical changes in the way Barthes thought about the nature of the self and the purpose of writing”42 .

Examining his own notes from Barthes’s last series of lectures, Kennedy records that in one seminar, Barthes expressed a sense of failure, believing “that his previous writing amounted to a betrayal of his true concerns.”43 Such an admission suggests that Barthes had been reassessing his values.

He even “expressed the desire to ‘escape from the prison house of critical meta-language,’”4 4 which suggests dissatisfaction with his work, but also corresponds with a confession in the opening pages of Camera Lucida: “I had always suffered from: the uneasiness of being a subject torn between two languages, one expressive, the other critical.”45 As demonstrated, Barthes’s exploration into the nature of photography in Camera Lucida, especially his attempt to define the fugitive, ranges into lyrical imagery. Barthes’s struggles to define the elusive quality of a photographic image and the incompleteness and indeterminacy of his efforts

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are what make his ruminations interesting. As art critic Martin Herbert, referring to Camera Lucida, says, “I don’t go looking for ‘ideas about photography’ in that book; I read it for a certain kind of vulnerability.”46 Brian Dillon highlights the direct influence that this book had on artists including “Gerhard Richter, Christian Boltanski, Tacita Dean and Fiona Tan [who] have all amassed archives of everyday portraits.”47 Its influence can perhaps be attributed to the text’s metaphorical language, a means of expression that resists definitive interpretations. Thus the book continues to offer new insights for the reader with each reading.

Through his personal journey of grief, Barthes decided that he must write a novel, his vita nota, 48 in which his mother would feature as a main character. This novel was never written, though the preparation of the novel served as a basis for his last series of lectures. 49 His inability to complete this account before his death in February 1980 suggests that, in his internal struggle between critical and creative writing, Barthes could not shut down his critical mind long enough to give complete expression to fiction. Or perhaps, as with Camera Lucida, his exploratory analyses merged genres.

It is interesting to note how in the proliferation of meanings, writing and criticism that “The Death of the Author” engendered became a kind of self-fulfilling confirmation for Barthes’ theor y of the author disappearing into the instance of writing. As demonstrated, Barthes’s writing life departed from this earlier work, as he continued to explore notions of subjectivity and even, with his mother’s death, apparently embrace more essentialist views of the human entity. As Virginia Woolf sensed in the 1920s, the ‘body writing,’ the personal life trajectories of artists and writers are complex and nuanced, and even marked by self-contradiction.

This, in fact, is one of the problems of the biographical/ auto-biographical impulse. Life stories must always be reductive, due to the inherent limitations of language and our own unconscious predilection to draw upon prevailing mythologies. For Barthes, it was much more satisfying to explore the multiplicity of meanings that comprise a life than to be reduced to the autobiographical persona inscribed in Curriculum vitae, newsy human interest stories or in any number of famous persons’ ghostwritten memoirs. Through his works, Barthes subjected our unquestioned beliefs to closer scrutiny and opened the way for artists and writers to take a similar approach in their own work.

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Endnotes 1

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John Lichfield’s makes an excellent summary of the

timeline of the Paris riots of May 1968 and their historical

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2

3 4

5 6

7 8 9

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significance. Writing in 2008, some forty years later, Lichfield points out the exceptional quality of these events. While there have been student rebellions before and since Lichfield argues, “In no other country did a student rebellion almost bring down a government.

In no other country did a student rebellion lead to a workers’ revolt.” John Lichfield, “Égalité! Liberté!

Sexualité!: Paris, May 1968,” The Independent, February 23, 2008. Accessed Jan. 28, 2015.

Clara Claiborne Park, “Author!

Author! Reconstructing Roland Barthes,” The Hudson Review 43, No. 3 (1990: Autumn): 377.

Ibid.

Roland Barthes, “The Death of the Author,” Image, Music, Text, Translated by Stephen Heath (New York: Hill and Wang, 1977), 147. Barthes’ parentheses.

Ibid.

The offshoot of seeing the world as a text to be read and interpreted encouraged critical analysis of previously unexamined assumptions which opened the way for cultural studies as a discipline.

Ibid.

Ibid.

Claiborne Park,

10 11 12 13

14 15 16 17

18

19 20 21 22 23

24

25

“Reconstructing Roland Barthes,”380.

Ibid.

Barthes, “The Death of the Author,” 148.

Ibid., 146.

Not however, a reader as a person, for this reader is a “space” which is “without history, biography, psychology;” an abstract entity. See Barthes, “The Death of the Author,” 148.

Ibid., 146.

Ibid., 148.

Ibid., 147.

Toril Moi, as quoted in Cheryl Walker, “Feminist Literary Criticism and the Author,” Critical Inquiry, 16: 3, 1990.

553.

Nancy Miller, quoted in Walker, “Feminist Literary Criticism and the Author,” 556.

Ibid.

Ibid., 557.

Barthes, “The Death of the Author,” 142.

Ibid.

Virginia Woolf, A Room of One’s Own (London: The Hogarth Press, Ltd., 1949), 63.

Roland Barthes, Roland Barthes, Translated by Richard Howard (New York: Hill and Wang, 1977), no pagination.

The epigraph also appears on p. 119.

Barthes, “The Death of the Author,” 145.

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John Sturrock, cited by J. Gerald Kennedy, “Roland Barthes, Autobiography, and the End of Writing,” The Georgia Review 35, No. 2 (1981: Summer): 390.

27 Barthes, Roland Barthes, 82.

28 Ibid. Barthes’ emphasis.

29 Barthes, Roland Barthes, 114.

30 Ibid.

31 Even in Mythologies, written in the 1950s, Barthes sought to deconstruct the ‘givens’, the hitherto unexamined meaning underlying ordinary cultural activities. Using the example of a magazine cover illustrating a young African boy in military uniform saluting the French flag, Barthes notes that this photograph is “A kind of arrest […]the Negro suddenly hails me in the name of French imperiality; but at the same moment the Negro’s salute thickens, becomes vitrified, freezes into an eternal reference meant to establish French imperiality. On the surface of language something has stopped moving.” 125 (Barthes’ italics) Barthes resisted this authoritative use of language that for him, typified imperialism and authoritarianism. Roland Barthes, Mythologies, translated by Annette Lavers, Hill and Wang, New York, 1972.

26

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32 33

34

35 36 37 38 39 40 41

42

43 44 45 46

Barthes, Roland Barthes, 120.

Barthes’ emphasis.

Roland Barthes, Camera Lucida: Reflections on Photography, Translated by Richard Howard (Hill and Wang, New York, 1981), 66.

Sturrock, as cited in Kennedy, “Roland Barthes, Autobiography, and the End of Writing,”389-390. Barthes’ refusal to assign a hierarchy of meaning to the diffuse texts of Roland Barthes and his emphasis on the futility of trying to construct an autobiographical character further support Sturrock’s assertion.

Barthes, Camera Lucida, 69.

Ibid., 71. Barthes’ italics.

Ibid., 73.

Ibid., 109.

Ibid.

Ibid., 110.

Roland Barthes, Mourning Diary: October 26, 1977 – September 15, 1979, Translated

by Richard Howard (Hill and Wang, New York, 2010), 159.

Kennedy, “Roland Barthes, Autobiography, and the End of Writing,” 381.

Ibid., 383.

Ibid.

Barthes, Camera Lucida, 8.

Quoted in Brian Dillon, “Rereading Camera Lucida

by Roland Barthes,” The

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Guardian, March 26, 2011. http://www.theguardian. com/books/2011/mar/26/ roland-barthes-cameralucida-rereading. Accessed Jan. 30, 2015.

Ibid.

Barthes, Mourning Diary, 74.

The term references Dante’s monument to grief, The Divine Comedy.

Published as The Preparation of the Novel: Lecture Courses and Seminars at the Collège de France, 1978-1979 and 1979-1980, translated by Kate Briggs, (Columbia UP, New York, 2011).

---. Roland Barthes. Translated

by Richard Howard. New York: Hill and Wang, 1977.

Claiborne Park, Clara. “Author!

A u th o r ! Re c o n s tr u c ti n g Ro l a n d Barthes.” The Hudson Review 43, No. 47 3 (1990: Autumn): 377-398.

48 Dillon, Brian. “Rereading Camera Lucida by Roland Barthes.”

T h e G u a rd i a n . M a r c h 2 6 , 2 0 1 1 .

Accessed January 30, 2015 . http:// 49 www.theguardian.com/books/2011/ mar/26/roland-barthes-camera-lucida-rereading.

Kennedy, J. Gerald. “Roland Bar thes, Autobiography, and the End of Writing.” The Georgia Review 35, No. 2 (1981: Summer): 381-398.

Lichfield, John. “Égalité!

Bibliography Liberté! Sexualité!: Paris, May 1968.”

Barthes, Roland. Camera Lucida. The Independent. February 23, 2008.

Translated by Richard Howard. New Accessed January 28, 2014 . http:// York: Hill and Wang, 1980. www.independent.co.uk/news/ ---. “The Death of the Author.” world/europe/egalit-libert-sexualIn Image, Music, Text. Translated by it-paris-may-1968-784703.html.

Stephen Heath, 142-148. New York: Woolf, Virginia. A Room of One’s Hill and Wang, 1977.

Own. London: The Hogarth Press, ---. Mourning Diary: October 26, Ltd., 1949.

1977 – September 15, 1979. Translated

by Richard Howard. New York: Hill and Wang, 2009.

---. Mythologies. Translated by Annette Lavers. New York: Hill and Wang, 1972.

---. The Preparation of the Novel: Lecture Courses and Seminars at the Collège of France, 1978-1979 and 19791980. Translated by Kate Briggs. New York: Columbia UP, 2011.

C C Un Jo A X El Th Un Jo

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CUJAH . The Concordia Undergraduate Journal of A r t H i s t o r y.

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The Sensual & The Surreal: Johnson Tsang and Ronit Baranga’s Contemporary Investigations of Anthropomorphic Tableware By: Sarah Amarica Edited by: Karen Lee Chung

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Ceramic teacups, saucers, dinner plates, and dessert plates invade our ever yday lives, their presence usually unacknowledged and their function rarely questioned. They pour tea, hold sugar cubes, endure the scratching and scraping of cutlery, are sometimes wounded by a sudden fall and resulting chip, then are washed, rinsed, and placed back on cluttered shelves until they perform their dinner-dance anew. How absurd it would be for these objects to one day come to life and disrupt the utilitarian role imparted onto them! Contemporary ceramicists Johnson Tsang and Ronit Baranga make this possible. By instilling anthropomorphic qualities and Surrealist traits to passive tableware, these artists create something quite fantastical indeed.

I am par ticularly interested in the fusion of anthropomorphism, Surrealism, and the appropriation of traditional porcelain tableware, as explored in Tsang’s Lifetime Partner (2009) and Baranga’s The Feast (2014).

By generating sensual and corporeal responses through thematic and material means, these artists instill passive objects with life, and in turn, secure a unique category for themselves within contemporary ceramic production.

Ultimately, I mean to engage in a discussion between seemingly different artistic themes, movements, and concepts to demonstrate the range of interpretations that Tsang and Baranga’s works convey.

My inspiration for this topic began with the striking similarities between Tsang and Baranga’s work in their abstract sculpting of human

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CUJAH VOLUME XI ZOE WONFOR

S A R A H A M A R I C A is a born and raise d M ontrealer currently completing her B achelor ’s degree in A r t Histor y at C oncordia Universit y. She work s a s a co-direc tor of the VAV G aller y, where she enjoys curatorial under t ak ing s and work ing direc tly with the ar tist communit y. She is chief ly intereste d in the investigation and dissec tion of contemp orar y ar tistic materials integral to creative produc tion; she hopes to pursue a career in the contemporar y ar t f ield up on completion of her studies . In addition to ar t theor y, S arah dabbles in studio arts, including but not limited to painting , tex tiles , ceramics , and design . Aesthetic exploration f uels her ar tistic prac tice , which is forever stimulate d by worldly travels and the vibranc y of her M ontreal home .

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Fig. 1. Ronnity Baranga, The Feast, 2014 , clay and porcelain. Photo reproduced with permission from Ronit Baranga.

Courtesy of the artist.

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T H E S E N S UA L & THE SURREAL: JOHNSON TSANG AND RONIT B A R A N G A’ S CONTEMPORARY I N V E S TI G AT I O N S O F ANTHROPOMORPHIC TA B L E WA R E

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forms and facial features. This interaction between anthropomorphism and clay has had a long history in ceramic studies, practiced through a range of clay mediums and influenced by a multitude of global cultures.

Traditional African Nok terracottas and 12 th to 15 th century Ife heads are significant examples of anthropomorphic study through clay, for funerary, ritualistic, or portraiture purposes. 1 Anthropomorphic vessels are just as historically abundant and as culturally mysterious; on a twentieth-century Nigerian terracotta vessel (ikoko Shango) from the Yoruba pottery tradition, 2 for example, we see a beautiful detailed investigation of a human form molded to the vessel’s body, complete with meticulous facial features and sculpted traditional attire. 3 These clay representations of the body are indicative of cultural practices, rituals, and variances in global ceramic production. Moreover, the progression of anthropomorphic portrayal over the course of art history unveils an interesting physical connection between ceramicists and their artwork, especially when we consider the crucial role of the body in clay manipulation and ceramic-making as a whole. We can perhaps consider Tsang and Baranga’s thematic use of anthropomorphism as an appropriation of a historical ceramic tradition, in which the artists acknowledge ceramic’s history and evolve this practice for a contemporary setting and audience. Anthropomorphic vessels, ancient and contemporary, have the potential to express the experiences of our human bodies, from our visible flesh to our hidden souls.

Let us now dive right into Surrealism, seemingly a world apart from anthropomorphic vessels, whose artistic investigation of eroticism and the imaginary wholeheartedly relates to Tsang and Baranga’s art objects. A precise definition of this early twentieth-century artistic and literary movement is self-contradictory, for Surrealism is in complete charge of its own directional will. 4 In fact, its clarity, or lack-of, can be best illustrated by a line by poet Comte de Lautréamont: “Beautiful as the chance encounter of a sewing machine and an umbrella on a dissecting table.” 5 Surrealism thrives in dumfounding juxtapositions, between the arbitrary and the beautiful, the unconscious and the unexpected, and the concrete and the abstract. 6 Consequently, its art also reveals “topsy-turvy appearances” 7, forcing the viewer to similarly confront bizarre realities and hidden desires. Surrealism’s fascination with psychoanalytic theory emphasizes subconscious fantasy, driving artists to explore eroticism through sculptural, photographic, and painterly manifestations. Its art, through a diverse range of mediums and aesthetics, could perhaps be best understood as attempting to playfully bridge the gap between art and reality, whatever imagined or physical reality that may be. 8

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Surrealist objects have quite a significant popularity in the art movement, as best explained by authors Georges Hugnet and Margaret Scolari: Nothing that the movement has produced is more authentic, more varied, more personal… Surrealist objects are… the automatic, reasonless, and yet material expression of inhabited wishes, anthropomorphic vegetations of the permanently unpredictable in man. 9 Surrealist artist Salvador Dali affirms the immense possibilities of the object as the most sincere outlet of interior activity, 10 embodying so much activity in fact, that Surrealist objects seem to live with as much autonomy and spontaneity as the very artistic movement they abide to.

Meret Oppenheim’s well-known Object (1936), 11 for example, is a physical manifestation of the surreal and the sensual (Fig. 1). A fantastically bizarre aesthetic twist on utilitarian objects, the artist cleverly coats an ordinary teacup, saucer, and spoon in luxurious fur. Her Surrealist sculpture is most acclaimed for eliciting a tactile response, as viewers imagine pressing their lips onto the hairy surface, or uncomfortably drinking a beverage filled with hair fibers. Furthermore, the lush and sensual quality of Object’s furry surface evokes erotic and animalistic ideas, which are characteristic of the hidden desires that surface through Surrealist art. My main interest in Oppenheim’s striking art object is her transformation of functional objects to something quite alive. It is useful to keep these imagined sensual reactions in mind when considering Tsang and Baranga’s work, as I believe they

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F ig. 2 . John son Tsang , L ifetime Par tner, 2 0 0 4 , porcelain cup and saucer.

Photo reproduced with permi ssion f rom John son Tsang. C our tesy of the ar ti st .

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too carry similar aesthetic and reactionary traits and therefore also relate to Surrealist art practice.

Note here that I am not sug gesting that anthropomorphism or Surrealism are by any means new themes in ceramics. What I am suggesting is that this mix of Surrealism and anthropomorphic study is an interesting and unique niche for contemporary ceramicists. Artists Tsang and Baranga prove that contemporary ceramics need not be bound to a static interpretation, function, or materiality, but have the potential to expand into alternative realms of art practice, or explore former art movements and theories. My investigation of their artwork encourages a multi-faceted artistic dialogue, which ultimately demonstrates the endless interpretations that these ceramic art objects carry. Furthermore, as I will discuss shortly, their acknowledgement of the history of traditional porcelain bridges contemporary and historical ceramic practices.

Let us now examine the two artists in question. Award-winning HongKong based ceramicist Johnson Tsang has exhibited worldwide, recognized for his combination of realist sculpture and Surrealist imagination. 12 Tsang pushes material limits, working with stainless steel in addition to porcelain, infusing life and soul into static materiality. 13 Israeli-born artist Ronit Baranga is a psychology and literature scholar, whose interest in human experience prevails through her renowned anthropomorphic objects. 14 Baranga works primarily with porcelain, and she is particularly interested in the fusion of body parts and passive objects. 15 Through the detailed analysis of both artists’ artwork, the concepts of anthropomorphic study and Surrealism, and the accompanying notions of the body and of human experience, will become evident.

Johnson Tsang ’s Lifetime Partner (2009) embodies the sensuality of Surrealism while referencing traditional porcelain production (Fig. 2).

Showcased at Living Clay in 2012, a solo exhibition at Taiwan’s Taipei Yingge Ceramics Museum, the deceptive porcelain tableware entrances the viewer with its anthropomorphic qualities. Tsang’s teacup sits atop its matching saucer, which are joined together by kissing lips; the vessel is molded in the form of a subtle shape of a human nose, with lightly puckered lips at its base.

These lips are interlocked with another open mouth, formed to the saucer’s rim, with its adjoining nose nearby. A delicate ear protrudes from the cup’s side, as a substitute for a handle, which gracefully connects to the rest of the cup’s features with a subtle cheekbone. Porcelain’s trademark stark whiteness and soft luster give a ghostly appearance to the human features.

Tsang has given the vessels’ rim a natural and elegant curve, similar to the

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fragile sway of wet clay. Whether viewed from above or to the side, the object’s shapes naturally blend together as we forget the very functionality of the tea set, a testament to the artist’s skill in ceramic manipulation.

Though quite abstract in concept and execution, the faces and expressions in Lifetime Partner are intimate and nostalgic, reflective of the gentle curvature of a loved one’s face. Viewers hold their breath for fear of disturbing this intimate scene; the two vessels are left to remain embraced forever.

Despite its tableware characteristics, Tsang’s object is evidently not functional. With forms too delicate and the lack of supportive handle, not even considering the heartlessness of prying the two lovers apart, Tsang’s contemporary tableware is more abstract than utilitarian. Like Oppenheim’s sculpture, Lifetime Partner evokes very corporeal and sensual associations, as we imagine picking up the teacup and saucer and placing our lips to the vessel’s rim, near those already in embrace: a Surrealist ménage à trois between art objects and viewer. It is this imagined and physical sensuality that transports Tsang’s ceramic object into the realm of Surrealism.

Moreover, this sensuality endures from the moment of the object’s conception, in Tsang’s intimate connection to his clay, to its final execution of embracing forms. Tsang assigns anthropomorphic and Surrealist traits to otherwise ordinary tableware, exploring a unique transformation of passive object into lively art.

Ronit Baranga’s The Feast (2014) – one of her newest ceramic projects – is an assortment of living tableware which, like Tsang’s Lifetime Partner, also explores the relations between useful tableware and body parts (Fig. 3). 16 A piled assortment of white dinner plates, cups, and saucers interact with fused fragments of human mouths and fingers; in a small ornate teacup, a gaping mouth exposes a protruding red tongue and sharp teeth, while on a nearby saucer, several projecting fingertips clasp onto a cup’s handle.

Atop a sizeable pile of plates, another ravenous mouth attempts to eat a sprig of grapes. As evidence of Baranga’s attention to detail, every dish is hand painted with vibrant floral motifs and every edge is rimmed with gold.

The shocking appearance of carnivorous cavities contrasts the decorative aesthetics of the dishes. The haphazard arrangement creates a chaotic composition of color and form, melding body parts with porcelain and food with tableware; viewers unable to recognize what is alive and what is not.

The anthropomorphic qualities of the dishes also suggest their running off at a moment’s notice. The spontaneous variety of mouths, each uniquely sculpted, seem to be waiting to be fed rather than performing their practical role as tableware, ingeniously reversing the roles between the feeder and the fed.

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Like Tsang’s work, Baranga intends her art objects to disturbingly develop behaviors of their own: “The combination of ceramic cups with ceramic fingers represent an idea in which the still creates a will of its own, enabling a cup to decide whether to stay or leave the situation it is in.” 17 The Feast enables an interesting interaction between the viewer and the living dishes, but also between the dishes and the space they envelop; 18 Baranga’s objects resemble defiant teenagers, who would rather be caught dead than behave appropriately at a formal luncheon. Similar to Tsang’s Lifetime Partner, Baranga’s dishes are quite alive, but unlike the sensual kiss, Baranga’s objects appear to be highly unpredictable. Her dishes exist in a state of temporality, remaining motionless for only a moment’s notice, and it is this fantastical heightened state that bears resemblance to the intentions behind Surrealist art.

In addition to their collaborative use of anthropomorphic and Surrealist themes, Tsang and Baranga’s artworks can be analyzed according to their chief use of porcelain, ultimately referring to the material’s noteworthy production and global impact over the course of ceramic history. I suggest that though contemporary in execution and intent, the two artworks strategically acknowledge porcelain’s past, and the accompanying social and aesthetic connotations that the material carries. Porcelain production is first attributed to Chinese ceramicists as early as 575 BCE, whose long and precise production process ensured aesthetic distinction and durability, which eventually became tirelessly sought after by eighteenth-century European collectors. 19 As such, porcelain’s allure was reinforced by its global exportation and foreign conception, classed as a regal material. 20 Its social and economic impact was extraordinary; porcelain as a commodity sustained a global economy, was found on the tabletops of European and Asian households alike, and flooded literature and painterly sources worldwide with its beauty and status. 21 Porcelain ware is easily identified by its stark white slip, but it also traditionally features royal blue ornamentation, gold gilt design, and floral motifs, which was later appropriated by Europeans and coined ‘Chinoiserie.’ 22 What is essential to realize about porcelain, from its conception to its distribution, is that its meaning lays in its materiality, 23 therefore regardless of its execution as a teacup, vase, or figurative sculpture, its high status is unquestionably recognizable and automatically associated to its meaning.

Tsang and Baranga would have undoubtedly been aware of porcelain’s historical luxury status upon conceiving their respected clay sculptures. I would suggest that considering Tsang’s Asian heritage, his use of porcelain

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Fig. 3 . Meret Oppenheim, Object, 1936 , fur covered cup and saucer, The Museum of Modern Art, NewYork. Watermarked photo reproduced from Art Resource online. Courtesy of Art Resource, NY.

is a mechanism of empowerment, connecting his contemporary art practice to an ancestral past. Tsang provides a much-needed twist through his subject matter, but still acknowledges and respects a cultural history of porcelain production. On the other hand, Baranga’s combination of porcelain, decorative motifs and shocking body parts mocks porcelain traditions, specifically addressing through her work the historic frivolousness of tea drinking rituals. According to scholar Karen Harvey, porcelain teacups reaffirmed gender constructs, allocating women to the confines of the domestic sphere through tea drinking rituals. 24 Baranga’s regal-style tableware acts of its own accord, neglecting any sense of social confinement; we can imagine the Victorian elite sipping tea from Baranga’s teacups, shocked at the gaping mouth gawking back at them. Despite their differences in engaging in the history of porcelain ware, Tsang and Baranga have similarly rendered their objects completely dysfunctional, allowing them to speak for themselves as art rather than utilitarian objects, quite unlike traditional porcelain tableware. Their transformed tableware is not meant to serve but rather live and behave autonomously, and when considered alongside Surrealist art thematics, they ultimately turn porcelain’s historical high status on itself.

Though Lifetime Partner and The Feast may negotiate their porcelain materiality slightly differently, both still acknowledge its important past. Moreover, the appropriation of a historical material and its past onto a contemporary setting further demonstrates the unique space that Tsang and Baranga’s work occupies within contemporary art.

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Johnson Tsang and Ronit Baranga’s work knows no bounds, melding fantastical Surrealist ideas and unique anthropomorphic traits with simple everyday objects. Their contemporary practices reflect upon a vibrant history of porcelain production, appropriating a historic material into the contemporary art realm. As a call for further research, this theme of anthropomorphic tableware could be broadened to encompass other contemporary ceramicists. British artist Beccy Ridsdel, for example, performs laboratory experiments on altered tableware, using surgical instruments to peel back strips of ceramic flesh, revealing a floral interior. 25 Pushing the boundaries of ceramics study to encompass alternative forms of artistic production allows for an entirely innovative realm of contemporary ceramics to flourish. After discussing Tsang and Baranga’s work, we might also reconsider the historical journey tableware production has undergone up to this point. From a history of passivity to its adoption as fine art, where does porcelain tableware go from here? If these fantastically bizarre objects prove anything, it is simply that magic can exist in the simplest of objects.

Perhaps you will think twice the next time you drink your morning coffee in a ceramic cup – it may just come alive.

TA B L E WA R E

Endnotes 1

2

3

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Susan Surette, “Terracotta Sculpture in Africa” (lecture, ARTH 350: Aspects of the History of Ceramics, Concordia University, Montreal, QC, September 25, 2014).

Nicole Mullen, Yoruba Art and Culture, eds. Liberty Marie Winn and Ira Jackins (Berkeley: Phoebe A . Hearst Museum of Anthropology, 2004), 16.

Terra-cotta vessel (ikoko Shango), Ita Yemoo Museum of Youruba Pottery, Ile Ife, Nigeria. “A Saga of Synchronicity” Ceramics

4

5 6 7 8

9

Today, accessed on December 10, 2014 , http://www. ceramicstoday.com/articles/ synchronicity_images.htm.

Georges Hugnet and Margaret Scolari, “In the Light of Surrealism,” The Bulletin of the Museum of Modern Art 4 (1936): 19.

Ibid., 25.

Ibid., 30.

Ibid.

Edward D. Powers, “Bodies at Rest: Or, the Object of Surrealism,” RES: Anthropology and Aesthetics 46 (2004): 228.

Hugnet and Scolari, “In the Light of Surrealism,” 30.

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10 11

12

13 14

15

16 17

18 19

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Ibid.

Object is also nicknamed Déjeuner en Fourrure (Breakfast in Fur) by André Breton. Oppenheim’s art object also bears the titles: Fur Breakfast, and Fur-covered cup, Saucer, and Spoon.

“Amazing Sculptures by Johnson Tsang,” Beautiful Life, accessed on December 2, 2014 , http://www. beautifullife.info/art-works/ amazing-ceramic-sculpturesby-johnson-tsang/.

Ibid.

“About,” Ronit Baranga, accessed on December 2, 2014 , http://www. ronitbaranga.com/about.htm.

“EK Interview: Ronit Baranga,” Empty Kingdom, accessed on December 2, 2014 , http:// www.emptykingdom.com/ featured/empty-kingdominterview-ronit-baranga/.

Ibid.

“Ronit Baranga’s Disturbing Sculptures,” Daily Art, accessed on December 2, 2014 , http://www.daily-art. com/ronit-barangasdisturbing-sculptures/.

Ibid.

Susan Surette, “The Chinese Porcelain Body” (lecture, ARTH 350: Aspects of the History of Ceramics, Concordia University, Montreal, QC, October 9, 2014).

20

21 22 23 24

25

Alden Cavanaugh, and Michael E. Yonan.

“Introduction,” in The Cultural Aesthetics of EighteenthCentury Porcelain, ed. Alden Cavanaugh and Michael E. Yonan, ( Vermont and Surrey: Ashgate, 2010), 1-17.

Surette, “The Chinese Porcelain Body.”

Ibid.

Cavanaugh and Yonan, “Introduction,” 10.

Karen Harvey, “Barbarity in a Teacup? Punch, Domesticity and Gender in Eighteenth Century,” Journal of Design History 21 (2008): 205-221.

“Surgically Altered Ceramics

by Beccy Ridsdel,” Colossal, accessed on December 2, 2014 , http://www. thisiscolossal.com/2014/02/ surgically-altered-ceramicsby-beccy-ridsdel/.

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Bibliography Beautiful Life. “Amazing Sculptures by Johnson Tsang.”

Accessed on December 2, 2014. http://www.beautifullife.info/ art-works/amazing-ceramic-sculptures-by-johnson-tsang/.

Cavanaugh, Alden and Michael E. Yonan. “Introduction.”

In The Cultural Aesthetics of Eighteenth-Century Porcelain.

Edited by Alden Cavanaugh and Michael E. Yonan, 1-17. Vermont and Surrey: Ashgate, 2010.

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Ceramics Today. “A Saga of Synchronicity.” Accessed on December 10, 2014. http://www. ceramicstoday.com/articles/ synchronicity_images.htm.

Colossal. “Surgically Altered Ceramics by Beccy Ridsdel.”

Accessed on December 2, 2014. http://www.thisiscolossal. com/2014/02/surgically-altered-ceramics-by-beccy-ridsdel/.

Daily Art. “Ronit Baranga’s Disturbing Sculptures.” Accessed on December 2, 2014. http://www. daily-art.com/ronit-barangas-disturbing-sculptures/.

Empty Kingdom. “EK Interview: Ronit Baranga.”

Accessed on December 2, 2014. http://www.emptykingdom.com/ featured/empty-kingdom-interview-ronit-baranga/.

Harvey, Karen. “Barbarity in a Teacup? Punch, Domesticity and Gender in Eighteenth Century.”

Journal of Design History 21 (2008): 205-221.

Hugnet, Georges and Margaret Scolari. “In the Light of Surrealism.” The Bulletin of the Museum of Modern Art 4 (1936): 19-32.

Mullen, Nicole. Yoruba Art and Culture. Edited by Marie Winn, Liberty and Ira Jackins. Berkeley: Phoebe A . Hearst Museum of Anthropology, 2004.

Powers, Edward D. “Bodies at Rest: Or, the Object of Surrealism.”

RES: Anthropology and Aesthetics 46 (2004): 226-246.

Ronit Baranga. “About.”

Accessed on December 2, 2014. http://www.ronitbaranga.com/ about.htm.

Surette, Susan. “Terracotta Sculpture in Africa.” Lecture at ARTH 350: Aspects of the History of Ceramics, Concordia University, Montreal, QC, September 25, 2014.

---. “The Chinese Porcelain Body.” Lecture at ARTH 350: Aspects of the History of Ceramics, Concordia University, Montreal, QC, October 9, 2014.

C C Un Jo A X El Th Un Jo

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CUJAH . The Concordia Undergraduate Journal of A r t H i s t o r y.

X I . Vo l u m e Eleven. CUJAH. The Concordia Undergraduate Journal of print.indd 103

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“I glorify hysterical actions. They are powerful gestures, a form of resistance when one is in a weak position.”

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“I glorify hysterical actions. They are

powerful gestures,a form of resistance when one is in a weak position.”

Pipilotti Rist

A N N E -M A R I E T R É PA N I E R is currently completing a Bachelor of Fine Arts at Concordia University, majoring in Intermedia/Cyberarts. An interdisciplinary artist, her works have been presented in public screenings and exhibitions, including Les Lieux Communs (A xenéo7), Manifestations of a Portable Studio (Lock Gallery) and L AB 353 – Biologie Matérialiste (Espace Projet). She has co-curated Sans feu ni lieu; Sans foi ni loi, a two-part exhibition presented at Studio XX and on the online gallery Width;700px.

As a writer, Trépanier is interested in the socio-political transformations brought on by digital technologies, as well as the global dissemination of images and knowledge. This is her second feature published in the Concordia Undergraduate Journal of Art History.

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Narcissisme hystérique et réflexivité: I’m Not the Girl Who Misses Much de Pipilotti Rist

of e e k .” t

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Les théories freudiennes et lacaniennes sur la constitution du Soi et de l’Autre 1 marquent de manière notable le corpus vidéographique des années soixante et soixante-dix. Dès lors, la relation entre le sujet et l’objet devient une source d’investigation récurrente, tandis que le cinéma hollywoodien séduit le regard du grand public, grâce à ses corps désirables projetés sur grand écran. Comme l’explique Laura Mulvey dans son essai « Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema », la structure cinématographique conventionnelle satisfait à deux types de plaisir chez le spectateur. D’abord, elle subvient à ses pulsions scopophiles 2 en lui permettant de scruter les personnages à l’écran et de les identifier comme objets de désir. La structure narrative du film et l’égo du spectateur lui permettent aussi de s’identifier aux images perçues. Afin de critiquer la perversion et le voyeurisme dans le cinéma narratif, les artistes vidéastes retournent leur caméra vers eux-mêmes, usant de leur corps et de leur psyché pour aborder des problématiques bien au-delà de leur individualité. 3 Débutant sa carrière dans les années quatre-vingt, Pipilotti Rist prend part à cette période complexe mais féconde en art vidéo. Divisée entre l’utopie technologique du global village et la discordance d’une société contemporaine à la fois interconnectée et totalement fragmentée, elle questionne le rapport entre la dimension tactile des nouvelles technologies et la représentation du corps – particulièrement du corps féminin. 4 Suivant cette tendance, la vidéo I’m Not the Girl Who Misses Much (1986) critique le regard cinématographique scopophile et place la femme comme sujet actif par le biais de l’autoreprésentation et du narcissisme hystérique.

La monobande I’m Not the Girl Who Misses Much propose une réinterprétation du premier vers de la célèbre chanson Happiness Is a Warm Gun des Beatles en mettant en scène l’artiste elle-même dans un état d’âme complètement déjanté. Articulant des mouvements convulsés et maladroits, sa voix et ses gestes disgracieux sont dénaturés par l’accélération de la vidéo. Le chant aigu et strident de la protagoniste laisse par ailleurs

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percevoir une altération dans les paroles originales de John Lennon : plutôt que de répéter « She’s not the girl who misses much », Rist adopte une perspective subjective en déclarant « I’m not the girl who misses much ». Sur le plan du traitement de l’image, le corps hors focus et les filtres de couleurs dégradent la visibilité du personnage qui se dandine seins nus devant la caméra. Vers la moitié de la vidéo, une série de lignes balaient l’écran à la diagonale et fragmentent le corps de la performeuse, interrompant progressivement la transmission de ses mouvements.

Le rythme expéditif et répétitif de la vidéo a de quoi faire ciller le spectateur : les contorsions incontrôlables de l’artiste se révèlent à la fois fascinantes et insoutenables. Tandis qu’elle poursuit sa routine effrénée, Rist est interrompue de nouveau par des arrêts sur images qui figent ses actions frénétiques dans le temps.

Dès lors, mouvement et immobilité sont transmis en simultané sur l’écran, décomposant son corps de plus belle. La cacophonie fait place à une interprétation originale de la pièce, alors que la voix de John Lennon retentit dans le moniteur, interprétant la mélodie avec un rythme et un timbre adéquat. La voix masculine et apaisée sert de contrepartie à l’adaptation féminine forcenée. Autrement dit, alors que Lennon s’adresse à un personnage féminin observé de loin, l’artiste s’auto-représente en incarnant ce protagoniste pléthorique, cette fille omniprésente qui ne manque pas grand chose. À cet égard, l’œuvre de Pipilotti Rist s’inscrit dans une tendance vidéographique narcissique remettant en question la place du sujet et de l’objet sous le regard de la caméra. Dès le début des années 60, des artistes tels que Nancy Holt, Vito Acconci, Bruce Nauman, et Joan Jonas s’intéressent à l’interaction entre la caméra et le moniteur, avec lesquels ils interagissent comme avec un miroir. 5 Exactement dix ans avant la création de I’m Not the Girl Who Misses Much, la critique d’art et théoricienne Rosalind Krauss publie un essai intitulé Video: The Aesthetics of Narcissism dans lequel elle établit que le narcissisme constitue la matière première de la vidéo. 6 Selon l’auteure, plutôt que de restreindre la vidéo au dispositif de diffusion – ce dernier comprenant entre autres le moniteur et la caméra – la vidéo doit être analysée selon un modèle psychologique. Dans cette optique, l’auteure définit le terme « médium » selon ses dérivés sémiotiques, c’est-à-dire à la fois comme émetteur et récepteur d’un message provenant d’une source indéterminée. 7 Or, les deux versants de cette définition peuvent aussi être

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appliqués à la vidéo en référence à la réception et la projection simultanée de l’image, de même que dans l’usage de la psyché comme canal de transmission. 8 Comme l’indique Krauss, cette dernière caractéristique illustre l’usage marqué du corps de l’artiste dès les débuts de l’art vidéo. 9 La transmission du signal dans le moniteur et l’enregistrement s’effectuant simultanément, le corps de l’artiste se retrouve encadré par la caméra (le récepteur vidéo) et le moniteur (l’émetteur vidéo). La vidéo Centers (1971) de Vito Acconci témoigne d’ailleurs de cette particularité. Pointant directement au centre de l’écran, Acconci se sert du moniteur comme d’un miroir.

Tel Narcisse s’observant dans les eaux, il maintient son regard fixé vers ce qui ne peut nécessairement être que son reflet, consignant le spectateur à être témoin d’une sorte de tautologie à laquelle il ne peut participer.

Le circuit entre l’artiste et son double étant fermé, tout observateur, ou pourrait-on dire tout objet externe, se retrouve séparé de l’attention de l’artiste investi dans une quête narcissique du Soi. La caméra et le moniteur sont eux aussi oubliés, afin d’abstraire la psyché de l’artiste comme seule matière constituante. 10 Autrement dit, en dématérialisant l’attirail technologique d’enregistrement et de diffusion, la pratique vidéographique se retrouve ancrée dans l’espace psychologique du réalisateur, qui se place devant l’appareil de capture vidéo à la fois comme sujet et comme sujet reflété plutôt que de cibler un objet extérieur à lui-même. En retournant la caméra vers lui-même, l’artiste extrait le processus d’objectification généralement associé à l’œil voyeur cinématographique et effectue un retour sur lui-même à travers le moniteur afin d’amorcer une démarche d’autoreprésentation similaire à celle d’un reflet dans le miroir.

Dans un même esprit, Pipilotti Rist investit la représentation traditionnelle du corps féminin comme objet de plaisir optique en utilisant à profit la propriété voyeuriste de la caméra. Dans la vidéo I’m Not the Girl Who Misses Much, elle défait les conventions du regard cinématique empreint d’une dichotomie sexuelle où « le plaisir du regard est divisé entre actif/masculin et passif/féminin ». 11 À travers l’autoreprésentation, l’artiste élabore diverses stratégies audiovisuelles afin de trafiquer l’interaction conventionnelle scopophile du sujet avec l’objet à l’écran. En l’occurrence, la fragmentation du corps de l’artiste causée par le balayage de l’écran et l’arrêt sur image permet à Rist de décomposer le corps féminin pour mieux le réassembler. Bien que ces techniques de déconstruction soient analogues au montage narratif classique, Rist les détourne en reconstituant le corps de façon inhabituelle et arbitraire. 12 Par contraste, pensons à la scène célèbre du film Psycho (1960) d’Alfred Hitchcock, dans lequel le personnage féminin se fait découper simultanément par les plans de caméra et les

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coups de couteau de son assaillant. La réalisatrice, Rist elle-même, s’affaire à déformer l’image et transforme conséquemment le regard du spectateur afin de produire une connaissance plus juste d’elle-même. 13 Alors que les normes du cinéma hollywoodien invitent le regard masculin à se poser sur l’objet de désir féminin, Rist corrompt la vidéo en dégradant la qualité de l’image et en dévalorisant toute appréciation érotique du corps féminin par l’usage de l’hystérie. Néanmoins, le potentiel érotique de l’image demeure bien présent : les seins dénudés de l’artiste appellent au voyeurisme, alors que le flou optique empêche le regard voyeur de saisir pleinement son objet.

En outre, l’artiste n’incarne pas un simple objet passif, livré au regard du spectateur; elle se représente plutôt comme sujet pleinement actif, exalté et insaisissable.

En réinterprétant les paroles de John Lennon, elle s’approprie entre autres choses la position de force et d’action de la figure masculine. Dès lors, elle néglige la présence du spectateur de l’autre côté de l’écran afin d’entretenir un rapport réflexif et narcissique face à sa propre image. Cette relation privilégiée entre l’artiste et son image nous ramène de plus belle à la théorie de Krauss énonçant que la vidéo constitue un milieu d’investigation et d’érotisation du Soi. 14 Parallèlement, les paroles « I’m not the girl who misses much…» soulignent l’autonomie et l’autosatisfaction érotique du personnage féminin, libéré de l’emprise du regard cinématographique.

La critique féministe de Pipilotti Rist quant à l’hégémonie du regard masculin sur le corps féminin se joue dans l’hystérie présente chez le protagoniste. 15 Comme elle le cite dans une entrevue avec l’auteure Christine Ross, l’hystérie permet une forme de résistance pour celui ou celle qui se trouve en position de faiblesse. Les altérations techniques de la vidéo, telles que l’accélération et les contours flous du personnage, de même que ses gesticulations saccadées communiquent l’état d’agitation dans lequel se débat l’artiste. Citant l’essai d’Elizabeth Bronfen « The Knotted Subject: Hysteria and its Discontent », Ross explique que l’hystérie se manifeste à travers des attaques physiques, causées par un stress traumatique impénétrable et impossible à illustrer. 16 Cette maladie, considérée pendant longtemps comme l’un des symptômes associés aux errances de l’utérus, fut caractérisée par la nature faible, sensible et passionnelle du sexe féminin. 17 Dès lors, conclut Ross, l’hystérie correspond à « une maladie de la représentation», de la représentation de l’organe reproducteur féminin, pourrait-on penser, ce dernier étant internalisé et difficile à visualiser, ou de la complexité des passions féminines. 18 Autrement dit, dans l’œuvre de Rist,

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l’incapacité de se représenter la cause des perturbations psychologiques du personnage résulte en une danse violente et effrénée. Cette réaction crée une dissidence avec les conventions du regard cinématographique, dans lesquelles le regard masculin actif se pose sur un corps féminin passif. Les possibilités d’autoreprésentations de la femme hystérique sont multiples, voire infinies : elles résistent à l’autorité paternelle – dans ce cas-ci, celle du regard masculin – et prennent plaisir à confronter et à s’enquérir de son reflet. 19 En somme, la monobande I’m Not the Girl Who Misses Much propose une vision unique et intime de la représentation du corps féminin. Isolée devant la caméra, la protagoniste s’agite de manière hystérique de façon à résister à l’objectification du regard cinématographique. Dans le cas présent, Rist ne se soumet pas à la dichotomie sujet/objet : son excessivité performée devant la caméra l’isole face à elle-même et transpose le rôle du spectateur à celui de témoin. 20 I’m Not the Girl Who Misses Much propose ainsi de désamorcer le regard objectifiant du spectateur tout en résistant aux carcans de la représentation. En se réappropriant les comportements hystériques, Rist conteste le rapport d’autorité entre le spectateur et l’image projetée, rapport de force qui pourrait d’ailleurs être comparé aux interactions entre le médecin et la patiente hystérique, auscultée et saisie comme objet d’étude. 21 Internée dans l’espace vidéo, Pipilotti Rist incarne une figure indépendante et immaîtrisable, se laissant aller aux pulsions de son corps et aux divagations de sa conscience.

CUJAH VOLUME XI A N N E -M A R I E T R É PA N I E R

Endnotes 1

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Nous faisons ici une référence toute particulière à la théorie du stade du miroir de Lacan ainsi qu’à son rôle crucial dans la constitution du « Je » chez l’enfant, de même qu’à la théorie des pulsions de Freud, dont la pulsion scopophile, que nous expliquerons plus en détails au cours de cet essai. Pour se référer à ces deux concepts fondateurs de la psychanalyse, voir Jacques Lacan sur la Schaulust

freudienne dans Les quatre concepts fondamentaux de la psychanalyse, (Paris : Éditions du Seuil, 1973), particulièrement les pages 199 à 206. Voir aussi du même auteur « Le stade du miroir comme formateur de la fonction du JE : telle qu’elle nous est révélée dans l’expérience psychanalytique », Revue française de psychanalyse, (octobre 1949) : p. 449-455.

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4

5

6 7 8 9 10 11

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Le concept de scopophilie, terme provenant du grec σκοπέω (skopeō), «regarder, examiner» et φιλία ( philia), «tendance vers», est introduit par Freud comme le plaisir de voir, la Schaulust, qui signifie littéralement « désir de regarder ». Voir Sigmund Freud, Trois essais sur la sexualité. (Paris : Éditions Points, 2012).

Peggy Gale, « The Use of the Self to Structure Narrative, » dans Western Front: Video, réimprimé dans Peggy Gale, Videotexts, ( Toronto: Power Plant, 1995): 91.

Chrissie Iles, « You are a Queen : The Selfless Spaces of Pipilotti Rist, » dans Pipilotti Rist: Eyeball Massage, édité par Stephanie Rosenthal, (Londres : Hayward Publishing, 2012) : 106.

Rosalind Krauss, « Video: The Aesthetics of Narcissism, » October 1 (Spring 1976) : 52.

Ibid., 50.

Ibid., 52.

Ibid.

Ibid.

Ibid.

Laura Mulvey, « Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema, » dans Visual and Other Pleasures ( Theories of Representation and Difference), (Bloomington, IN : Indiana University Press, 1989), 19.

12

13 14

15

16

Elisabeth Bronfen, « Pipilotti’s Body Camera, » dans Pipilotti Rist: Eyeball Massage, sous la direction de Stephanie Rosenthal, (Londres : Hayward Publishing, 2012), 117.

Ibid.

Dans cet extrait, Krauss décrit comment la vidéo détourne l’attention de l’artiste de tout objet extérieur à lui-même pour s’investir dans le Soi. Elle illustre ainsi la théorie freudienne qui dépeint la condition d’un individu qui aurait abandonné l’investigation d’objets externes par la libido pour se transformer lui-même en ego-libido. Cet état, dit-elle, constitue la condition spécifique du narcissisme.

Voir Krauss, « Video: The Aesthetics of Narcissism, » 57.

Dans le cadre de cet essai, il est indispensable de mentionner l’origine étymologique du terme « hystérie », qui provient du grec ὑστερά (hustera), utérus, puisqu’on croyait autrefois que cette maladie avait son origine dans cet organe.

L’hystérie constitue ainsi une maladie spécifiquement associée au féminin.

Christine Ross, « Pipilotti Rist : Images as quasiobjects, » n.paradoxa 7 (2001) : 18.

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John Mullen, « Hypochondia Gale, Peggy. « The Use of the and Hysteria : Sensibility Self to Structure Narrative. » Dans and the Physicians, » The Western Front: Video, réimprimé Eighteenth Century, Vol. 25, dans Peggy Gale, Videotexts, 83-94.

No.2, (1984) : 157-158.

Toronto: Power Plant, 1995.

18 Ibid., 19.

Iles, Chrissie. « You are a 19 Ibid., 18.

Queen: The Selfless Spaces of 20 Jan Peacock, « Corpus Pipilotti Rist. » Dans Pipilotti Rist: Loquendi (Body for Speaking), Eyeball Massage, sous la direction » dans Halifax: Dalhousie Art de Stephanie Rosenthal, 106-115.

Gallery (catalogue), réimprimé Londres : Hayward Publishing, dans Video re/ View, eds., 2012.

Gale and Steele, ( Toronto: Krauss, Rosalind. « Video: Art Metropole and V Tape, The Aesthetics of Narcissism. » 1994) : 159.

October 1 (Spring 1976) : 50-64.

21 Pour une analyse de la Lacan, Jacques. « Le stade représentation médicale du miroir comme formateur de de l’hystérie lors de son la fonction du JE : telle qu’elle «invention» au XIXe siècle, nous est révélée dans l’expérience voir Georges Didi-Huberman, psychanalytique », Revue française Invention de l’hystérie : de psychanalyse, (octobre 1949) : Charcot et l’iconographie p. 449-455. photographique de la ---. Les quatre concepts fondaSalpètrière, (Paris : Éditions mentaux de la psychanalyse. Paris : Macula, 2012). Éditions du Seuil, 1973.

Mullen, John. « Hypochondia Bibliographie and Hysteria : Sensibility Bourneville et P. Regnard, and the Physicians. » The Iconographie photographique de Eighteenth Century, Vol. 25, No.2, la Salpètrière. Paris: V. Adrien (1984) :141-174.

Delahaye & Cie, 1878.

Mulvey, Laura. « Visual Bronfen, Elisabeth, Pleasure and Narrative Cinema. » « Pipilotti’s Body Camera. » Dans Dans Visual and Other Pleasures Pipilotti Rist: Eyeball Massage, ( Theories of Representation sous la direction de Stephanie and Difference). Bloomington, Rosenthal, 116-123. Londres : IN :Indiana University Press, 1989 : Hayward Publishing, 2012.

14-26.

Freud, Sigmund. Trois essais Peacock, Jan. « Corpus sur la sexualité. Paris : Éditions Loquendi (Body for Speaking). » Points, 2012.

Dans Halifax: Dalhousie Art Gallery 17

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(catalogue), réimprimé dans Video re/ View, dir., Gale and Steele, 144-160. Toronto: Art Metropole and V Tape, 1994.

Rist, Pipilotti. I’m Not The Girl Who Misses Much, 1986, Single channel video.

Rosenthal, Stephanie. « Be my Friend. » Dans Pipilotti Rist : Eyeball Massage, sous la direction de Stephanie Rosenthal, 18-29.

Londres : Hayward Publishing, 2012.

Ross, Christine. « Pipilotti Rist: Images as quasi-objects. » n.paradoxa 7 (2001) : 18-25.

C C Un Jo A X El Th Un Jo

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CUJAH . The Concordia Undergraduate Journal of A r t H i s t o r y.

X I . Vo l u m e Eleven. CUJAH. The Concordia Undergraduate Journal of 113

CUJAH

VOLUME XI

ZOE WONFOR

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On the Funny Side of the Street 1 By: Catriona Schwartz Edited by: Mattia Zylak

“Humor: A comic, absurd, or incongruous quality causing amusement.”

Random House Kernerman Webster’s College Dictionary 2 “A great power; humor was a sort of savior so to speak because, before, art was such a serious thing, so pontifical that I was very happy when I discovered that I could introduce humor into it. And that was truly a period of discovery.

The discovery of humor was a liberation.”

Marcel Duchamp 3 “I’m not being purposely humorous. I do think the world is absurd.”

John Baldessari 4

(Opposite) Alfred Stieglitz Fountain (photograph of assisted readymade by Marcel Duchamp). 1917.

Gelatin silver print. ©Succession Marcel Duchamp (2015), ADAGP/Paris, SODR AC (2015)/Montréal, © Georgia O’Keef fe Museum (2015).

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Conceptual art has been variously described as one of the most austere, coolly rational, and highly cerebral movements of modern art.

And yet, it contains absurdist elements and a wonderful irreverence that can be traced back to the Dada movement in Europe and New York City, epitomized by Marcel Duchamp’s “readymades”. 5 Duchamp (1887-1968) has been called the forefather of Conceptual art, but according to the art critic, Martin Gayford, in his 2008 article for The Telegraph, he could also be considered the ultimate prankster. Duchamp, in fact, carried out “the practical joke that launched an artistic revolution” 6 when he took a porcelain urinal, laid it on its back, and, by bestowing it with the signature “R. MUTT 1917” and the ironic title of Fountain, declared it as a work of art.

Duchamp’s decision to submit Fountain to a New York exhibition in 1917 was not only provocative, but also a humorous attack on the prevailing art conventions of the time. This one revolutionary act called into question what should and could be considered “art” and whether the artist had to

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C AT R I O NA S C H WA R T Z is currently a par t-time student at C oncordia Universit y pursuing a BFA with a Major in A r t Histor y, and nourishing a life -long pa ssion for k nowle dge . Her interest s within A r t Histor y include architec ture throughout the a ges , in par ticular, the A r t Deco p eriod in all it s facet s , not just architec tural . Fully enga ge d with her fa scination with the A r t Deco p eriod , she ha s writ ten an ar ticle for the Empress Cultural C entre ’s Fall 2 011 newslet ter a s well a s a research ess ay that wa s publishe d in CUJAH Volume X . B oth of her work s focus on M ontreal ’s own out st anding A r t Deco E gyptian-st yle architec tural gem , the Empress Theatre in NDG , which is the only one of it s k ind that ha s ever b een built any where in C anada .

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create the actual art object with his own hands. In addition, by presenting the urinal as a “work of art”, Duchamp also asserted that the artist’s idea or concept held greater importance than the finished object.

Marcel Duchamp’s readymades were the product of a discourse initiated by the Dadaists who questioned the nature of art as well as the notion that the art object is more important than the idea behind it. This discourse is continued today by the Conceptual art movement where, as Lucy Lippard has described it, the dematerialization of the art object 7 has found its apogee. The humorous and absurdist elements that both the Dadaists and Duchamp employed have been taken up by a number of Conceptual artists, in particular, the California-based American artist, John Baldessari (1931 – present). In my opinion, he is Duchamp’s “prankster in crime” and a worthy successor to Duchamp’s ironic sensibilities and impish wit, bringing much needed humor and irreverence into his Conceptual works. This can be seen in two of his videos from the 1970s: John Baldessari Sings LeWitt and Teaching a Plant the Alphabet. The incongruous nature of their subject matter and their ostensible simplicity that borders on the banal gives both videos an absurdist quality that is laugh-out-loud funny.

As with Duchamp’s readymades, these videos illustrate that humor can be just as cerebral, subversive, and thought-provoking as the sometimes dry, intellectual instructions and theories that are prevalent in LeWittian-based Conceptual art practiced by other Conceptual artists. It is my contention that humor – particularly of the absurdist, ironic, and irreverent variety – is a much needed “liberator” for works of art, specifically Conceptual art. This type of humor has been used to great effect by John Baldessari throughout his Conceptual art practice.

In order to trace the origins of absurdity and humor in Conceptual art, it is necessary to examine the direct lineage between the Dada movement (1916-1924) and Conceptual art of the 1960s and 1970s, using irreverent, ironic, and absurd elements as the key. In addition, an exploration of the correlations between the socio-political conditions, surrounding Dadaism during and after World War I and Conceptualism during the turbulent 1960s and 1970s, will be necessary. Both movements were a reaction to their tumultuous periods of history and yet they each appear to have established many of the same irreverent and humorous anti-aesthetic art strategies.

While Dadaism was a relatively short-lived art movement, it was international in scope with branches in Zurich, Berlin, Hanover, Cologne, and Paris, as well as in New York City. In the art historical canon, it was one of the few art movements (until Conceptual art) to use irreverent humor and parody as an art strategy. Dada as a group was provocative and politically

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subversive, as well as being anti-capitalism, anti-rationalism, anti-bourgeois, anti-aesthetic art, and against art’s commodification. 8 Not surprisingly, they were vehemently nihilistic, particularly in Europe where, because of World War I, the socio-political climate was both tumultuous and chaotic.

Laurent Le Bon, the curator of the Dada exhibition that took place at the Centre Pompidou Paris in 2005 , made the key point that without World War I, there would have been no Dada. 9 The catastrophic horrors of World War I (1914-1918), ironically named “the war to end all wars”, was fought on European soil by 65 million soldiers, of which 8.5 million were killed and a further 21 million were wounded. 10 It signaled the end of the euphoria associated with the Machine Age, which the Dadaists believed was responsible for producing the “War Machine” and its ensuing industrial-scale carnage. 11 To escape the horror, many artists and poets flocked to neutral Switzerland, where they formed a club at the Café Voltaire in Zurich. This became the birthplace of Dada, where like-minded individuals united by their revulsion of the war, used provocative and absurdist performances, such as reciting verse without words, nonsensical sound poems, and chance poetry readings comprised of random selections from a phone book, with the stated intent to shock their bourgeois audience out of their complacency. 12 These were the precursors to Conceptual art’s “happenings” and “performance events” of the 1960s.

Unlike other art movements, there was no one “Dada-style” per se, this aspect which Dada has in common with Conceptual art. Yet, in spite of the diverse range of their artistic output, the group was unified in their contempt for the prevailing traditional and rational art conventions, the so-called “High Art”. They manifested this disdain by undermining and stripping away the aura of “art” itself, with the use of highly political and subversive subject matter, along with satirical and humorous wordplay. 13 Another innovative and influential art strategy employed particularly by the Berlin Dadaists was through the appropriation of found objects such as rubbish from the streets (bus tickets, discarded toys, cigarette packets, and candy wrappers) for their artworks, and in so doing, they developed a new collage technique that they called photomontage. 14 In typically nonsensical Dada fashion, this type of art strategy served to elevate “trash” into the Dadaesque version of “High Art”. 15 Owing to the chaotic absurdity of their times, it was only natural that they would produce art works that not only reflected this absurdity, but which were also humorously infused with satire, irony, and irreverence.

The New York Dada group, which included such artists as Marcel Duchamp, Francis Picabia, and Man Ray, was less overtly political than their

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European counterparts, but it had a similar ironic and irreverent sensibility, in addition to sharing the same “anti-aesthetic, anti-rational and anti-idealistic” viewpoints as the European Dadaists. 16 The New York Dada group also issued a challenge and critique to the prevailing conventions of “High Art” and notions of good taste, by producing art works that appropriated found objects, amongst them Duchamp’s infamous urinal, the aforementioned Fountain.

When Duchamp submitted Fountain to the Society of Independent Artists exhibition in New York in 1917, it was refused, not only because it was a man’s urinal and therefore “vulgar”, but also because it had not been created by the artist “with his own hands.” 17 Fountain ended up hidden behind a screen for the duration of the exhibition. 18 Not long after, Duchamp took Fountain so that it could be photographed by the American photographer Alfred Stieglitz. The resulting photograph (figure 1), is the only remaining image of Fountain, as the original urinal was purportedly thrown in the garbage at Stieglitz’s studio. 19 Duchamp, using the pseudonym “R. Mutt”, responded to the controversy surrounding Fountain by writing this in the 1917 Dadaist publication, Blind Man (which included the Stieglitz image): Whether Mr. Mutt with his own hands made the fountain or not has no importance. He CHOSE it. He took an ordinary article of life, placed it so that its useful significance disappeared under the new title and point of view — created a new thought for that object. 20 By irreverently naming the urinal Fountain, Duchamp ensured that it would no longer simply be a urinal in the eyes of the viewer, but an art object that was unintentionally (on Duchamp’s part) aesthetically pleasing. When looking at Stieglitz’s image, one must admit that Fountain does possess an incredible beauty in its form. Furthermore, in the most amusing and paradoxical twist of all, given the urinal’s controversial origins, a survey was conducted in December 2004 amongst 500 artists, curators, critics and dealers, in which Fountain was acknowledged as the most important and influential work of art of the 20 th century. 21 As previously mentioned, Duchamp has been acclaimed as the forefather of Conceptual art, in that for him the artist’s idea was the key aspect rather than any resulting visual output. This was the premise behind Conceptual art of the 1960s and 1970s, where the concept and the process was paramount, rather than the material object itself. In fact, with some Conceptual art, there was at times, no finished object. This strategy is clearly outlined in the Conceptual art manifesto, Sol LeWitt’s Sentences on Conceptual Art. 22 In addition, a work’s title, which was often a pun or play on words, became one of the key components of a Conceptual artwork, as

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it had been previously for the Dadaists and Marcel Duchamp. The title of an artwork invites the viewer to step into the space between a work and its name, and come to their own conclusions and as Duchamp suggests, “create a new thought” about that work. 23 The other key legacy of Dada and Duchamp is that both the artwork and particularly the title can also include elements of nonsensical humor, irony, and irreverence.

Why did Conceptual art embrace those same Dadaesque strategies?

In 1964 , Bob Dylan sang the protest anthem, The Times They Are A-Changin’ which was a reflection of the social upheaval taking place during the 1960s in the United States. 2 4 The emergence of Conceptual art in the 1960s coincided with civil unrest and demonstrations on an unprecedented scale – protesting against racism and for civil rights, for women’s rights, as well as the anti-Vietnam War movement. Student protests on university campuses went from peaceful “sit-ins” in the early 1960s to violent conflagrations, culminating in the shooting deaths of four students by the National Guard at Kent State University in 1970. The Sixties also saw a five year period from 1963-1968, where key American figures such as President John F. Kennedy, Malcom X, Martin Luther King and Robert Kennedy were assassinated.

As had happened during the Dada period, war became the predominant socio-political factor during the 1960s and early 1970s. With the advent of nightly television news, the Vietnam War (1965-1973) became the first televised war. Thus the war and all its horrors, including the atrocities on both sides along with the mounting number of American casualties, entered into people’s homes on a nightly basis. As Marshall McLuhan so succinctly put it: “Television brought the brutality of war into the comfort of the living room. Vietnam was lost in the living rooms of America - not on the battlefields of Vietnam.” 25 Given this tumultuous backdrop, it is hardly surprising that, as the art critic and curator Jorg Heiser suggests, Conceptual art emerged in the mid-1960s because purely aesthetic and commodified art was no longer appropriate against the horrific backdrop of the Vietnam War. 26 Interestingly, like the Dadaists before them, some Conceptual artists looked at the social turmoil and absurdity swirling around them and turned to humor in all its many facets to create humorously ironic and irreverent art. One of those artists was John Baldessari, who is widely acknowledged as one of the leading Conceptual artists of his generation.

Baldessari’s Conceptual art practice began in earnest in 1970 at a local Californian crematorium where he cremated all of his paintings created between the years 1953 and 1966. He entitled this performance event, the Cremation Project (1970). Over 100 paintings were incinerated. The resulting ashes were placed in an urn and even baked into cookies. 27 Typical

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Fig. 2. JOHN BALDESSARI, Everything is Purged...,19 66-68 , Acrylic on canvas, 68 x 56.5 inches. Courtesy of the artist and Marian Goodman Gallery.

of Baldessari’s deadpan and playful sense of humor, he later wrote (in a letter to a critic): “I really think it is my best piece to date.” 28 In the early 70s, he began to embrace the then new technology of experimental video and in 1972 he created two iconic Conceptual videos: John Baldessari Sings LeWitt and Teaching a Plant the Alphabet.

In John Baldessari Sings LeWitt, in a deadpan and serious manner, he sings a cappella all thirty-five sentences of LeWitt’s Sentences on Conceptual Art to popular tunes from the Great American songbook. 29 At the beginning of the video, Baldessari explains that his reason for singing LeWitt’s Conceptual art theories is that he wants these sentences to “escape” because they “have been hidden too long in the pages of exhibition catalogues,” and by singing them, he would help them reach a much larger audience.30 Baldessari insists that his performance is a tribute to Sol LeWitt,

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but one cannot help feeling that a punchline is waiting to be revealed. By using humor and song, Baldessari is indeed “liberating” LeWitt’s words from the printed page. The incongruity of taking this seminal Conceptual art manifesto and juxtaposing it with popular music, by singing each of the sentences to a different popular song, including the Star Spangled Banner, Some Enchanted Evening, Singing in the Rain, amongst others, is hilarious.

However, there is a deliberately gentle silliness to the whole exercise and I concur with Russell Ferguson when he suggests, that it “reflects Baldessari’s doubts about his own (or anyone’s) capacity to speak from a position of authority on art.” 31 Baldessari’s fascination with the absurd is even more pronounced in a second video, Teaching a Plant the Alphabet, which as the title suggests, is an exercise in futility. In the video, a very ordinary plant is perched on top of a stool and the artist holds up a series of twenty-six flashcards, each with a letter of the alphabet. He repeats each letter to the “pupil”, a common houseplant, who unsurprisingly does not display any interest in, or comprehension of, the rote instruction. Humor is often created by putting numerous incongruous elements at play and this video is a clear example of that technique. But despite the humor, is there a message behind Baldessari’s self-described “educational” video? He has suggested in a number of interviews that in spite of being a highly regarded and influential art professor at the Californian Institute of Arts (CalArts) and University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) for four decades, he has concluded that it is impossible to teach art. I would suggest that perhaps Teaching a Plant the Alphabet reflects the view that teaching the alphabet to a lowly houseplant is as futile and impossible as trying to “teach” art to people. However, according to Baldessari, it was done during “the hippy times” when there were books available on how to communicate with plants, so this video was simply a reflection of the times. 32 Nevertheless, he did push communication with plants to its most nonsensical and amusing extreme by deciding, in his words, to “start with the alphabet and then we’ll talk.” 33 Much of Baldessari’s early Conceptual works were language and textbased paintings. Using Conceptual strategies, the words on these canvases are mostly appropriated text and drawing a direct line from Duchamp’s practice of appropriation, even the writing on the canvases is not done by his hand; instead he employed professional sign writers to paint the words on plain stretched canvas. Once again, he employs his deadpan, impish and ironic humor to great effect in the text-based painting from 1966, EVERY THING IS PURGED FROM THIS PAINTING BUT ART, NO IDE AS HAVE ENTERED THIS WORK, (figure 2). When first reading the mischievous

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and comic title, it is hard to keep from giggling, as it seems that Baldessari is lampooning Conceptual art pretentiousness. What makes the painting so hilarious at first glance is that this is a Conceptual art work mocking itself and even denying that it is actually Conceptual art. 34 Ultimately, this work questions not only the conventions of how art should be made and the craftsmanship aspect (did the artist’s hand touch it?), but it also revisits the essential question that Duchamp had posed with Fountain and that is, “what qualifies as art?” Like Duchamp, Baldessari’s work is always a little bit off-center, where the familiar has a slight twist, and challenges the viewer to think about things differently. Or, as Baldessari said about Duchamp, “he plants the bomb and runs” leaving the viewer to interpret the work.35 The same can be said about Baldessari’s work. He also “plants a bomb” with the intention of allowing the viewer to come to their own conclusions about his work once they have finished chuckling. Baldessari accomplishes this by employing an absurd and irreverent world-view to his Conceptual art works, unlike the austere rationality utilized by other Conceptual art practitioners.

In conclusion, as Heather Diack suggests, the study of art history appears to have a certain reservation about taking humor in art seriously or “as an issue of aesthetic consideration and art historical research.” 36 This is rather ironic, given the central role that humor, in all its aspects, has played in the art practices of Dada, Marcel Duchamp, and John Baldessari. As we have seen, the socio-political conditions during the Dada era and during the 1960’s when the Conceptual art movement began were so tumultuous and chaotic that the liberating power of humor and satire was injected into their respective art practices and used as a mechanism to point out the absurdity of the world around them. Baldessari has described this as the “serious unseriousness” of his art. 37 His Conceptual art works have illustrated that humor can be just as cerebral and thought-provoking as the more rational, drily intellectual works that have been produced by other Conceptual art practitioners and I would suggest, perhaps even more so because they draw the viewer in by making them laugh. From the beginning of his Conceptual art practice, John Baldessari has always walked on the “funny side of the street”, and this continues to guide and govern his art practice to the present day.

Endnotes 1

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The essay title is a twist on the song title On the Sunny Side of the Street, 1930,

from the Great American Songbook. It is in tribute to John Baldessari’s song

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2

3

4

5

6

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selections when he is singing LeWitt.

Free Online Dictionary, Random House Kernerman Webster’s College Dictionary, © 2010 K Dictionaries Ltd. Copyright 2005, 1997, 1991 by Random House, Inc. All rights reserved. Accessed October 10, 2014. http://www. thefreedictionary.com/humour Transcript of Radio Canada television interview with Marcel Duchamp July 17, 1960 (translated by Sarah Skinner Kilborne), accessed October 11, 2014. http://www.toutfait. com/issues/volume2/issue_ 4/ interviews/md_guy/md_guy.html Julie Belcove, “Interview with artist John Baldessari”, Financial Times, September 6, 2013, accessed October 11, 2014 , http://www.ft.com/ cms/s/2/3a58622a-13c011e3-9289-00144feabdc0. htmlse#axzz3FZPkgVRF Marcel Duchamp, “Apropos of Readymades,” in Marchand du Sel / Salt seller: the writings of Marcel Duchamp, ed Michel Sanouillet and Elmer Peterson, (New York: Oxford University Press, 1973), 141-142.

Martin Rayford, “Duchamp’s Fountain: The practical joke that launched an artistic revolution”, The Telegraph, February 16, 2008, accessed September 25,

7

8

9

10

2014 , http://www.telegraph. co.uk/culture/art/3671180/ Duchamps-Fountain-Thepractical-joke-that-launchedan-artistic-revolution.html Lucy Lippard, “Escape Attempts,” in Six years: the dematerialization of the art object from 1966 to 1972, (New York: Praegar, 1973), vii-xxii.

Ernestine Daubner, Lecture Notes –ARTH 367: “Aspects of 20 th Century Art – Modernism, the Historical Avant-Garde and Other Revolutionary Art Practices”, (Concordia University Fall semester 2012).

Paul Trachtman, “Dada.

The irreverent, rowdy revolution set the trajectory of 20th-century art”, Smithsonian magazine, May 2006, accessed October 18, 2014 , http:// www.smithsonianmag. com/arts-culture/dada115169154/?no-ist.. “Without World War I there is no Dada,” says Laurent Le Bon, the curator of the Pompidou Center’s show. “But there’s a French saying, ‘Dada explains the war more than the war explains Dada.’”

PBS: W WI Casualty and Death Tables, http://www.pbs.org/ greatwar/resources/casdeath_ pop.html, accessed October 10, 2014. Note that the total

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12

STREET

13

14

15 16

17

18

19

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figures vary and are in dispute, but these figures seem to be consistent with most sources.

Lecture Notes –ARTH 367: Aspects of 20 th Century Art. SEE COMMENTS IN FOOTNOTE 8 Ibid. Also Trachtman, “Dada. The irreverent, rowdy revolution set the trajectory of 20th-century art”.

Daubner, Lecture Notes – ARTH 367: Aspects of 20 th Century Art. Fred S. Kleiner, Gardner’s Art through the Ages: The Western Perspective. 13th ed. (Australia, Brazil, Japan, Korea, Mexico, Singapore, Spain, United Kingdom, United States: Wadsworth Cengage Learning, 2010). 707.

Ibid., 708.

“Dada and Surrealism, Introduction”, Oxford Art Online, accessed October 4 , 2014 , http:// www.oxfordartonline. com/public/page/themes/ dadaandsurrealism Marcel Duchamp, “The Richard Mutt Case”, Blind Man (New York) 2 (1917): 5.

Rayford, “Duchamp’s Fountain: The practical joke that launched an artistic revolution”.

Ibid. Author’s note: in email correspondence with Antoine Monnier of the Association

20 21

22

23 24

25

Marcel Duchamp in Paris, it seems that photos exist that show Fountain in Duchamp’s atelier. There is some uncertainty as to whether these photos were taken before or after the Society of Independent Artists exhibition in New York in 1917.

Antoine Monnier feels that is probable that the original Fountain was still extant after the exhibition and after Stieglitz’s photo.

Duchamp, “The Richard Mutt Case”, 5.

“Work of art that inspired a movement ... a urinal”, The Guardian, December 2, 2004 , accessed October 4 , 2014 , http://www.theguardian. com/uk/2004/dec/02/arts. artsnews1 Sol LeWitt, “Sentences on Conceptual Art”, ART LANGUAGE: THE JOURNAL OF CONCEPTUAL ART, 1.1 (May 1969), 11-13.

Duchamp, “The Richard Mutt Case”, 5.

Bob Dylan, The Times They Are A-Changin’, Copyright © 1963, 1964 by Warner Bros.

Inc.; renewed 1991, 1992 by Special Rider Music, accessed October 25, 2014 , http://www. bobdylan.com/ca/node/25833 “Vietnam War.”Oxford Essential Quotations, edited

by Ratcliffe, Susan.: Oxford

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University Press, accessed October 25, 2014 , http:// www.oxfordreference.com/ view/10.1093/ aref/9780191735240.

001.0001/q-oro-00011177 26 Jorg Heiser, “Emotional Rescue: Romantic Conceptualism”, Frieze Magazine 71 ( Winter 2002): 146-149. Heiser writes, “… one of the reasons why Conceptual art developed in the mid-1960s was a disgust with the beautiful commodifications of art in the face of the Vietnam War.” 27 Jennifer Mundy, “Lost Art: John Baldessari”, Tate Gallery website, accessed October 25, 2014 , http://www.tate.org.uk/ context-comment/articles/ lost-art-john-baldessari 28 Ibid.

29 Great American Songbook Foundation, http://www. thecenterfortheperformingarts. org/Great-AmericanSongbook-Inititative/ About-the-Great-AmericanSongbook, 4 October 2014.

30 Words taken from watching the video clip, John Baldessari Sings LeWitt, accessed September 27, 2014 , http:// www.youtube.com/ watch?v=Q6eSfKeJ_VM 31 Russell Ferguson, “Unreliable Narrator”, (excerpt) in John

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32

33

34

35

Baldessari. Pure Beauty, eds.

Jessica Morgan and Leslie Jones (London: Tate Modern; Barcelona: Museu d’Art Contemporani de Barcelona; Los Angeles: Los Angeles County Museum of Art; New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2009), 93.

Note: this except was found on the website for the Museu d’Art Contemporani de Barcelona, accessed October 19, 2014, http://www.macba.cat/ Jessica Morgan, “Interview.

Somebody to talk to, John Baldessari”, Tate Gallery, 1 September 2009, accessed October 12, 2014 , http://www. tate.org.uk/context-comment/ articles/somebody-talk Jessica Morgan, “Interview.

Somebody to talk to, John Baldessari”, Tate Gallery, 1 September 2009, accessed October 12, 2014 , http://www. tate.org.uk/context-comment/ articles/somebody-talk “No More Boring Art John Baldessari’s crusade”, The New Yorker, October 18 2010, accessed October 11, 2014 , http://www.newyorker. com/magazine/2010/10/18/ no-more-boring-art Interview with John Baldessari (1973) by Moira Roth, X-TR A online, accessed October 18, 2014 , http://x-traonline.org/

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article/interview-with-johnbaldessari-1973/ Heather Diack. “The Gravity of Levity: Humour as Conceptual Critique”, Revue d’art canadienne / Canadian Art Review [Online], Volume 37 Number 1 (13 August 2012): 75.

Moira Roth, X-TR A online, accessed October 18, 2014 , http://x-traonline.org/ article/interview-with-johnbaldessari-1973/

Critique” Revue d’art canadienne / Canadian Art Review [Online], 36 Volume 37 Number 1. 13 August 2012.

Duchamp, Marcel. “Apropos of Readymades.” In Marchand du Sel / Salt seller: the writings of Marcel Duchamp. Edited by Michel Sanouillet and Elmer Peterson.

37 141-142. New York: Oxford University Press, 1973.

Duchamp, Marcel, “The Richard Mutt Case”, Blind Man, New York 2 (1917): 5.

Dylan, Bob. The Times They Bibliography Are A-Changin’, Copyright © 1963, Baldessari, John.

1964 by Warner Bros. Inc.; renewed Baldessari Sings LeWitt (1972).

1991, 1992 by Special Rider Music, Accessed October 15 2014. http://www.bobdylan.com/ca/ http://www.youtube.com/ node/25833 , 25 October 2014. watch?v=udljwzJcTiU. Ferguson, Russell.

---. Teaching a Plant the “Unreliable Narrator.” Excerpt Alphabet (1972). Accessed October in John Baldessari. Pure Beauty.

15 2014. http://www.vdb.org/titles/ Edited by Jessica Morgan and teaching-plant-alphabet.

Leslie Jones. 93. London: Tate Belcove, Julie. “Interview Modern; Barcelona: Museu d’Art with artist John Baldessari.”

Contemporani de Barcelona; Los Financial Times, 6 September 2013. Angeles: Los Angeles County Accessed October 11, 2014 , http:// Museum of Art; New York: The www.ft.com/cms/s/2/3a58622aMetropolitan Museum of Art, 13c0-11e3-9289-00144feabdc0.

2009. Note: this excerpt was found htmlse#axzz3FZPkgVRF. on the website for the Museu Churney, Linda. “Student d’Art Contemporani de Barcelona.

Protest in the 1960s”, Yale-New Accessed October 19, 2014. http:// Haven Teachers Institute. Accessed www.macba.cat/.

October 11, 2014 , http://www.

Free Online Dictionary. yale.edu/ynhti/curriculumuRandom House Kernerman nits/1979/2/79.02.03.x.html Webster’s College Dictionary, © Diack, Heather. “The Gravity 2010 K Dictionaries Ltd. Copyright of Levity: Humour as Conceptual 2005, 1997, 1991 by Random House,

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Inc. Accessed October 10, 2014. http://www.thefreedictionary.com/ humour.

Gayford, Martin. “Duchamp’s Fountain: The practical joke that launched an artistic revolution.” Daily Telegraph, 16 February 2008. Accesed September 25, 2014. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/ culture/art/3671180/DuchampsFountain-The-practical-joke-thatlaunched-an-artistic-revolution. html.

Great American Songbook Foundation, “What is the Great American Songbook?” Accessed October 4 , 2014. http://www. thecenterfortheperformingarts. org/Great-AmericanSongbook-Inititative/ About-the-Great-AmericanSongbook,.

Heiser, Jorg. “Emotional Rescue: Romantic Conceptualism.”

Frieze Magazine 71, Winter 2002.

Accessed October 5, 2014. http:// www.frieze.com/issue/article/ emotional_rescue/ Kleiner, Fred S. Gardner’s Art through the Ages: The Western Perspective. 13th ed. 704-708.

Australia, Brazil, Japan, Korea, Mexico, Singapore, Spain, United Kingdom, United States: Wadsworth Cengage Learning, 2010.

Lecture Notes –ARTH 367: “Aspects of 20 th Century Art – Modernism, the Historical AvantGarde and Other Revolutionary Art

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Practices”, (Concordia University Fall semester 2012).

LeWitt, Sol. “Sentences on Conceptual Art”. ART LANGUAGE: THE JOURNAL OF CONCEPTUAL ART.1.1. May 1969: 11-13.

Lippard, Lucy. “Escape Attempts.” In Six years: the dematerialization of the art object from 1966 to 1972. vii-xxii. New York: Praegar, 1973.

Morgan, Jessica. “Interview.

Somebody to talk to, John Baldessari.” Tate Gallery. Accessed October 12, 2014 , http://www.tate. org.uk/context-comment/articles/ somebody-talk.

Mundy, Jennifer. “Lost Art: John Baldessari.” Tate Gallery website. Accessed October 25, 2014. http://www.tate.org. uk/context-comment/articles/ lost-art-john-baldessari.

“No More Boring Art John Baldessari’s crusade.”

The New Yorker, October 18 2010. Accessed October 11, 2014. http://www.newyorker. com/magazine/2010/10/18/ no-more-boring-art , Oxford Art Online. Grove Art: Subject Guide. “Introduction.

Dada and Surrealism.” Accessed October 4 , 2014. http://www. oxfordartonline.com/public/page/ themes/dadaandsurrealism.

PBS. W WI Casualty and Death Tables. Accessed October 10, 2014. http://www.pbs.org/greatwar/ resources/casdeath_pop.html.

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Roth, Moira. “Interview with John Baldessari (1973).” X-TR A online. Accessed October 18, 2014. http://x-traonline.org/article/interview-with-john-baldessari-1973/.

Song referred to in the Essay title: On the Sunny Side of the Street, (1930), Songwriters, Jimmy Mc Hugh (music), Dorothy Fields (lyrics). Published by Lyrics © EMI Music Publishing, SHAPIRO BERNSTEIN & CO. INC. Trachtman, Paul. “Dada: The irreverent, rowdy revolution set the trajectory of 20th-century art.” Smithsonian Magazine, May 2006. Accessed October 18, 2014.http://www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-culture/ dada-115169154/?no-ist,.

Transcript of interview with Marcel Duchamp on Radio Canada Television, July 17, 1960, (translated by Sarah Skinner Kilborne).

Accessed October 14 , 2014. http:// www.toutfait.com/issues/volume2/ issue_ 4/interviews/md_guy/md_ guy.html .

“Vietnam War.” Oxford Essential Quotations, edited

by Ratcliffe, Susan. : Oxford University Press. Accessed October 25, 2014. http://www. oxfordreference.com/view/10.1093/ acref/9780191735240.001.0001/ q-oro-00011177.

“Work of art that inspired a movement ... a urinal”, The Guardian, 2 December 2004.

Accessed October 4 , 2014. http:// www.theguardian.com/uk/2004/ dec/02/arts.artsnews1.

C C Un Jo A X El Th Un Jo

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Art History Mixer

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For Love & Money

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Research Workshop

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Annual Conference

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Acknowledgements All efforts have been made to contact the owners of the images printed in this journal. All images printed in this journal have received rights to use such images, with the exception of the William Kentridge’s image (from Stéphanie Hornstein’s essay) and the Andrea Richard’s image (from Zoe Wonfor’s essay).

CUJAH wishes to thank the following persons and places for the permissions to use their images in Volume XI of the journal: Heidi Ulrichsen, Phil Harvey, Hans Christian Adam, the Marian Goodman Gallery, the Sonnabend Gallery, John Baldessari, the Geogia O’Keefe Museum, Johnson Tsang, Ronit Baranga, the Polo Museale Fiorentino, and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. Printed in Montreal, QC, Canada Les imprimeries Rubiks, Rubiks.ca

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