(from R. Krauss, Passages in Modern Sculpture)
A. 1) Cubism, 2) Futurism, 3) Constructivism, comparison of
Gabo + Tatlin, 4) Dada, 5) Surrealism, 6) Abstract Concretion
B. A comparison: Brancusi + Duchamp (Rosalind Krauss)
C. An avant-garde legacy- video The Way Things Go
D. Finish ‘ Creativity: BBC, The Creative Brain, How Insight Works’
Jonathan Schooler, Dr. Simon Ritter, John Kounos
Pouring plaster for current project
Extra credit offering – play with food and photograph
(1pt. on exam, could depict scenario based on real life)

30 True/False questions, T/F = 60pts.
13 Multiple Choice = 26pts.
2 essay questions = 20pts.
(I subtract the three questions that most people missed).
T/F
Sergei Eisenstein, who filmed ‘October,’ thinks sculpture lacks inherent ideology.
Gotthold Lessing asserts that sculpture is about portraying bodies in space and that sculpture is distinct from poetry and music in that it is static and nonsequential.

A)
R. Krauss challenges the myth of originality in the Avant-garde – starts with
Rodin – moves to Modernism in Passages in Modern Sculpture
Your reading for this lecture :
1) Naum Gabo’s writings on Constructivism: (new norms for sculpture: Mass, Space, and Time 1937)
• Space as medium
• Material – expressive qualities – determine limits
• Any material is o.k.
• Problem of time – sees it as necessitating kinetics
2) Arthur Danto: Playthings and
Boris Groys: The Speed of Art
Fischli and Weiss, legacy to avant-garde

A.This lecture: Strategies of the Avant-Garde
(from R. Krauss, Passages…) :
Avant-garde definition: new and unusual or experimental ideas, esp. in the arts, or the people introducing them."works by artists of the Russian avant-garde” synonyms: innovative, original, experimental, left-field, inventive, ahead of the times, cutting/leading/bleeding edge, new, modern, innovatory, advanced, forward-looking, state-of-the-art, trend-setting, pioneering, progressive, Bohemian, groundbreaking, trailblazing, revolutionary;
Cultural conditions for the Avant-Garde:
Industrial Revolution
Movement from an agrarian-based society to urban
Two world wars

vs.
vs.
vs.
vs.

End of the 19th Century A.
Advent of photography. Industrial Revolution: the Machine Age - a new plasticity, mechanization of material and form
Into the 20th Century
1900 Sigmund Freud - Psychoanalysis
1914 World War I Begins
1917 Russian Revolution
New social orders and shifting realities embodied in ideology and aesthetics
Cubism: (Central Europe) Picasso, Braque
Futurism: (Central Europe) Marinetti, Boccioni
Constructivism: (Russia) Tatlin, Gabo, Pevsner
Dada: (Zurich, Cabaret Voltaire) Tristan Tzara,
Duchamp, Arp
Surrealism: Giacometti, Ray, Dali,
Oppenheim, Duchamp
Nude Descending a Staircase , Marcel
Duchamp , 1912
Abstract-Concretion: Arp, Moore, Hepworth

A.1) Cubism: (Central Europe) Picasso early 1900s many young artists hear about and travel to see his painting, collage, and sculpture
Nude Descending a Staircase , Marcel
Duchamp
, 1912 Head of a Woman , Picasso

A.1) Cubism: (Central Europe) Picasso
Planar break-down eliminates traditional perspectival space - not illusionistic, autonomous object accepts photography as recording tool

A.2) Italian Futurism: Marinetti (manifesto 1909),
Boccioni
“ Oh, maternal ditch, half full of muddy water! A factory gutter! I savored a mouthful of strengthening muck which recalled the black teat of my Sudanese nurse!
As I raised my body, mudspattered and smelly, I felt the red hot poker of joy deliciously pierce my heart.
A crowd of fishermen and gouty naturalists crowded terrified around this marvel. With patient and tentative care they raised high enormous grappling irons to fish up my car, like a vast shark that had run aground. It rose slowly leaving in the ditch, like scales, its heavy coachwork of good sense and its upholstery of comfort.
” Marinetti, 1909
Umberto Boccioni, The Unique Forms of Continuity in Space, 1913

A.2) Italian Futurism: Marinetti (manifesto 1909),
Umberto Boccioni
 grows out of Cubism
 added implied motion to the shifting planes and multiple observation points of Cubists
 celebrated natural as well as mechanical motion and speed
 glorified danger, war, and the machine age (in keeping with the martial spirit developing in Italy at the time)
“ Marinetti, thrown from his automobile one evening in 1909 into a factory ditch filled with water, emerges as if from amniotic fluid to be born - without ancestors - a futurist. This parable of absolute self-creation that begins the first Futurist Manifesto functions as a model for what is meant by originality among early 20thC avant-garde.
” RK
Umberto Boccioni, The Unique Forms of
Continuity in Space , 1913

A.2) Italian Futurism: Marinetti, Boccioni
Italian Futurism: Umberto Boccioni (1882-1916) Development of a Bottle in Space , 1912.
Drawing and Bronze, 15" x 24 ”
 a kind of synthetic vision (x-ray vision)
 introducing movement to planar study
 remains within traditional materials/means

A.2) Italian Futurism
Greek, 3rdC b.c.
“ … We declare that the splendor of the world has been enriched by a new beauty: the beauty of speed. A racing automobile with its bonnet adorned with great tubes like serpents with explosive breath ... a roaring motor car which seems to run on machine-gun fire, is more beautiful than the Victory of Samothrace.
”

A.3) Constructivism: comparing Naum Gabo, Vladimir Tatlin vs.
Naum Gabo, Model for Constructed Torso ,
1917
Vladimir Tatlin, Counter-Relief , 1915

A.3) Constructivism: Naum Gabo
VOLUME OF MASS VOLUME OF SPACE
Naum Gabo, volumetric cube
I, stereometric cube II

A.3) Constructivism: Naum Gabo
Stereometric figure sculpture from flat cardboard and plywood shapes (1915-17).
An “ interlacing of shapes in 3 dimensions through the interior, or structural core, of the normally closed volume.… ” rt. Jacques Lipchitz
1916, bronze

A.3) Constructivism: Naum Gabo
Light Space Modulator , Laszlo Moholy-Nagy http://www.sfmoma.org/explore/multimedia/videos/1
Naum Gabo, left, Construction in Space
1938-40, right, Linear Construction no. 2 ,
• Sculptural space has become a malleable material element (Not dematerializing sculpture)
• Space perception as new concept
• Non-narrative ideal forms

Context for Tatlin ’ s career:
1910: Martinetti ’ s Futurist
Manifesto translated into Russian.
1913: at age 28, goes to Europe to meet Picasso .
,
1915: Begins work on corner reliefs in the spirit of “ Productivism ” .
 radical perceptual shift:
 sculptures bring attention to the specific situation they inhabit
 real time and real space
1917: Russian Revolution
A.3) Constructivism: Vladimir Tatlin
(1885-1953)
Corner Counter Relief , Vladimir Tatlin,
1914-15

A.3) Vladimir Tatlin
Corner Relief , 1915, iron, aluminum, primer, 31 ” x60 ” x30 ” (original destroyed. Reconstruction 1966-70 by Martyn Chalk from photographs).

A.3) Tatlin ’ s corner reliefs:
1. Anti-illusionism of situation in space. Real time and space
(meeting of two real architectural walls).
2. Attitude manifested toward the materials of which they are made. Real materials (truth to materials + their inherent characteristics)

A.3) Tatlin ’ s monument:
Plans for real monument:
Taller than Eiffel Tower
Meant to be center of
Proletariat* communications and activities
Each section rotates
*proletariat – industrial wage earners – not bourgeoisie

A.3) Tatlin ’ s monument:
Scaled-down London version
Plans for real monument:
Taller than Eiffel Tower
Meant to be center of
Proletariat* communications and activities
Each section rotates
*proletariat – industrial wage earners – not bourgeoisie

A.3) Gabo ’s column:
Idealizing tower
– like structure
Never meant to be built
Transcendent space and time

A.3)
Naum Gabo - ideology of art as autonomous : Column , 1923, plastic wood and metal: structural/material essense of object – transcendent time + space . A summary of vantage points. Toward an immediate legible geometry, transparency. (Pevsner, Gabo, Malevitch, Kandinsky, El Lissitzky)
Vladimir Tatlin - ideology of art as “ of and for the people: ” Monument to the Third
International , 1919-20. Factual Reality. Steel Girders, 1/3 higher than Eiffel
Tower. An aesthetic technology in real time, real space, real materials .
Technology placed in service of revolutionary ideology. (Rodchenko, Tatlin)

A.4) Dada : Tristan Tzara, André Breton, Jean
Arp, Marcel Duchamp, Man Ray
(gives rise to Surrealism 1924)
Surrealism: Giacometti, Man Ray, Dali,
Oppenheim, Duchamp
Born out of the horror of WWI
“ Dada: abolition of logic, the dance of the impotents of creation; Dada: abolition of all the social hierarchies and equations set up by our valets to preserve values; …
Dada: abolition of archaeology; Dada: abolition of the prophets; Dada: abolition of the future; Dada: absolute and unquestionable faith in every god that is the product of spontaneity.
” TT
DADA: nihilistic, absurdist, shocking, unorthodox, decries bourgeois rationalism involved poetry, music, sound, performance, painting, photography,

Hausmann, Mechanical
Head Spirit of Our Time , Duchamp,
1919 Bottle Rack ,
1914
Surrealism found object, readymade, altered readymade
Degas, Little Dancer ,
1881
A.5) Marcel Duchamp, above, Bicycle Wheel , 1913, right,
Fountain

A.5) Surrealism: Andre Breton, Giacometti,
Man Ray, Dali, Oppenheim, Duchamp 1924
Meret Oppenheim, Luncheon in Fur ,
1936
 a means of joining dream and fantasy to everyday reality to form “ an absolute reality, a surreality.
”
 influenced by Sigmund Freud , the unconscious was the wellspring of the imagination .
 “ beautiful as the chance encounter of an umbrella and a sewing machine on a
Degas, Little Dancer ,
Lautreamont
1881
Man Ray, Indestructible
Object , 1923

Head with Annoying
Objects, Jean Arp, 1930
A.6)
Jean Arp:
“ Abstract
Concretions ” converts inert matter to living form….
Art belongs to a species of natural form

Henry Moore, Reclining Figures
A.6) Abstract-Concretion: Arp, Moore, Hepworth

B. Case study of two contemporaries:
Duchamp/Brancusi (RK)
Marcel Duchamp (1887-1968): un-worked, anti-representational, cerebral…
Princess X , Brancusi,
1916
Constantin Brancusi: (1876-1957) representational, raw material labored + polished to perfect reflectivity.
Like Duchamp, his polished surfaces
“ impenetrable ” to analysis (narrative) no relationships between parts exist.
In Advance of the Broken Arm , Duchamp,
1915

B. Marcel Duchamp (1887-1968):
The
Beginning of the
World , 1924
Constantin Brancusi: (1876-1957)
Duchamp ’s Bicycle Wheel

B. Marcel Duchamp (1887-1968)
Rrose Selavy ( Eros, c
est la vie ):
Selected serial objects that did not bear the stamp of an act of creation from personally held ideas or emotions
Readymades beg the question: What is a work of art? Why do we think of art as statements that must convey or embody a certain content?
Not intended to hold the object up for examination, but to scrutinize the act of aesthetic transformation itself. RK
1.Odd similarity btwn. Duchamp and
Brancusi - both end up with works that appear machine made
2.Both men stand out from movements
Constantin Brancusi: (1876-1957)
“ There is a purpose in all things. To get to it one must go beyond oneself.
” CB
Arduous and patient labor, reducing to refined elegant craft
Glossy surface deflects surface interpretations - courting the finish of machine-made objects

C. Der Lauf der Dinge, (The
Way Things Go ), Fischli and
Weiss:
Cause and effect - celebrating the banal
Element of play (opposite of Freud), politics of childhood - calculated to annoy
The thingness of the thing
(non-rep.) + things at hand -
Heidegger, Tatlin, Duchamp
Found object inversion since
Duch.:
Trompe l ’ oeil
Andy Warhol ’ s Brillo Boxes ,
1964
Jasper Johns, Ale Cans , 1960

Arthur C. Danto –
…as The Way Things Go makes manifestly clear, ordinary objects have their dark side, and the bland peaceful world of orderly routine which facilitates the conduct of ordinary life, is achingly fragile.

C. Fischli and Weiss:
Plötzlich diese Übersicht
(Suddenly This Overview), 1981-
2012
Unfired clay above, Sm all and Large rt. Freeway

C. Fischli and Weiss:
Plötzlich diese Übersicht
(Suddenly This Overview), 1981-
2012

C. Fischli and Weiss:
Plötzlich diese Übersicht
(Suddenly This Overview),
1981-2012 above, Mick Jagger and Brian
Jones Going Home Satisfied after Composing “I Can’t Get
No Satisfaction ” rt. Mr. and Mrs. Einstein Shortly
After Conceiving Their Genius
Son Albert

D. BBC video (58 minutes): http://www.dailymotion.com/video/xy9ag1_bbchorizon-the-creative-brain-how-insight-works_tech
Horizon: The Creative Brain, How Insight Works
Jonathan Schooler, Simone Ritter
Divergent Thinking