MIT 4.

602, Modern Art and Mass Culture (HASS-D/CI) Spring 2012

Professor Caroline A. Jones Notes
History. Theory and Criticism Section. Department of Architecture Lecture 12

NEW SUBJECTS FOR MODERNITY:

Lecture 12: Futurism's and Dadaism's Popular Mechanics

I. Picasso's exorcism and its import for "peripheral" Europeans: the sign and/or the fetish

II. Futurist Programs (Avant-Garde in celebration of war and the state)

A. Approaching the Great War: ..... the world's only hygiene"
1 ) the poet Marinetti in Ie Figaro, Paris, 20 February 1909
2) the poet D'Annunzio's flights over Trieste (winter 1915-16), expanding to
Vienna (1918-19) - propaganda as cultural war
3) Italian Irredentism, "parole in Liberta," and fascist modernism
B. Speed, dynamism, and simultaneity
1) The visual culture of technology's impact on the body
2) The futurist fetish: the externally hardened and artificially stabilized body,
enhanced by its "other"

III. Dadas at large (Avant-Garde in critique of war and the state)

A. Cosmopolitan cities, the Avant-Garde in exile, and the anti-commodity fetish
1) Zurich, Berlin, New York, Hannover, Barcelona ...
2) The dadaist fetish: prosthetics and eroticism, a destabilized body
B. Tactics - Performance, journalislTI, art objects, exhibition events, montage, politics
1) Performance (1916-19, Ball, Tzara)
2) From collage to montage (1919-40s, Hausmann, Hoch, Heartfield)
3) "Dada Messe" (1920) - Int'I Dada Fair, a new kind of market?
4) Dada environment in exile (1920s-40s, Schwitters' Merzbau)

Images (selected) for Lecture 14

unspecified medium=oil on canvas

Futurism
Carlo Carra, Absinthe Drinker. 1911
Carra. 10lts of a Cab, 1911
Carra, Interventionist Demonstration 1914 (collage)
Filippo Tomasso Marinetti, "A Tumultuous Assembly," Les mots en liberte futuristes, 1919 (poem)
Marinetti Parole in Liberta, 1932 (poem)
Giacomo Balla. The Worker's Day, 1904/07
Balla, The Street Light, 1909
Balla, Dynamism of a Dog on a Leash. 1912
Anton Bragaglia. Fotodynamic Portrait, 1911 (photograph)
Bragaglia, Typist. 1911 ("Photodynamic" photograph)
Umberto Boccioni. The Street Pavers 1911
Boccioni, Riot, 1911
Boccioni, Simultaneous Visions. 1911
Boccioni. Unique Forms of Continuitv in Space. 1913 (bronze)
Gino Severini, Soldier in the Trench, 1915 (drawing)

For Dada images. see verso

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Images (Selected) for Lecture 12, cont.

Dadaism
Tristan Tzara, Cabaret Voltaire May 15,1916 (program)
Francis Picabia, Fille nee sans mere (daughter born without a mother) 1913-15 (drawing, lithograph)
Picabia, Jeune tine Americaine dans retat de nudite (Young American girl in a state of nudity) 1915 (drawing/litho)
Raoul Hausmann, Phonetic Poem 1918 (poem! typography)
"Hugo Ball in Cubist Costume, reciting "Caravan" at Cabaret Voltaire, 1916 (photograph ofperfonnance)
"Fancy Dresses on a poem by Hugo BalL" 1918 (photograph)
Hausmann, Svnthetisches Cino der Malerei (Fabricated Cinema of Painting), 1918 (photomontage)
Hausmann, Dada-Kino 1920 (collage, photomontage)
Hausmann, Mechanical Head! The Spirit of our Time, 1921 (assemblage sculpture)
Hannah Hoch, Man and Machine 1921 (watercolor)
Hoch, Cut with The Kitchen Knife through the Last Weimar Beer-Belly Cultural Epoch of Germany, 1919 (collage,
photomontage)
Hoch, The Beautiful Girl, 1920
Johann Herzfeld! John Heartfield, Heartfield and Police Commissioner Zorgiebel, 1929 (photomontage)
Heartfield, Keine Angst! Er ist Vegetarier (Don't WOrry! He's Vegetarian) 1936, (printed photomontage in Regard
magazine, Paris)
Heartfield, Adolf die Ubennensch: Schluck Geld und Redet Blech (Adolf the Supennan: Swallows Gold and Spews
Junk), 1932 (printed photomontage, published in AIZ magazine: Illustrated Workers' Times)
Schwitters, Merz Picture 9B - The Great "Ich" fll Picture, 1919 (collage painting)
Schwitters, The "Worker" Picture, 1919 (collage, assemblage)
Schwitters, Merzbau, (Hannover version), 1923-1936 (altered architecture, destroyed)

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MIT OpenCourseWare
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4.602 Modern Art and Mass Culture

Spring 2012

For information about citing these materials or our Terms of Use, visit: http://ocw.mit.edu/terms.
MIT 4.602, Modern Art and Mass Culture (HASS-D/CI) Spring 2012
Professor Caroline A. Jones Notes
History, Theory and Criticism Section. Department of Architecture Lecture 11

NEW SUBJECTS FOR MODERNITY:

Lecture 11: Soviet Avant-Garde

"We are all primitives of the 2(Jh centwy" - Ivan Kliun. 1916

UNOVIS members' aims include the "study of the system of Sup rem a tist projection and the designing of
blueprints and plans in accordance with it; ruling off the earth's expanse into squares, giving each energy
cell its place in the overall scheme; organization and accommodation on the earth's surface of all its
intrinsic elements, charting those points and lines out o.fwhich theforms of Sup rem atism will ascend and
slip into space. " - Ilya Chashnik , 1921

I. Making' "Modem Man"

A. Kasimir Malevich - Suprematism
1) Suprematism begins ca. 1913, influenced by Cubo-Futurism
2) Suprematism launched officially 1915 - manifesto and exhibition titled "0.10-
The Last Futurist Exhibition" in Petrograd.
B. EI (Elazar) Lissitzky
1) "Proun" as utopia (acronym, see below)
2) Types, and the new modem man
3) Working for the Stalinist state
C. Modem Woman? Sonia Terk Delaunay in Paris
1) "Orphism" or "organic Cubism" 1911
2) "Simultaneous" clothing, ceramics, textiles, cars 1913-20s

II. "Monuments without Beards!" (per the poet Vladimir Mayakovsky)

A. Vladimir Tatlin
1) Constructivism (developed in parallel with Suprematism as sculptural variant)
2) Productivism (the tweaking of "1' art pour l' art" to be more socialist)
3) Monument to the Third International (Tatlin's Tower), 1921
4) MIT Professor Takehiko Nagakura's virtual Tatlin, 1999
B. "Letatlin" - Tatlin's retreat into personal utopia

GroupslProjects/Terms:

UNOVIS = society for the promotion of new art (Suprematism, Malevich)

OBMOKHU = Society of Young Artists (free state workshops. "crucible of Constructivism")
VKHUTEMAS = Higher Artistic-Technical Workshops (Constructivism, Tatlin)
PROUN = "The Project for the Affirmation of the New" (PROekt Utvershdeniya Novogo), Lissitzky

selected images on verso

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Images (selected) for Leetu re 11
unless indicated, works are oil on canvas

Kasimir Malevich, The Woodcutter, 1912

Malevich, Perfected Portrait of l.V. Kliun, 1913
Ivan Kliun, Landscape Rushing By, 1915 (wood, porcelain, painted relief)
Malevich, Woman at Poster Co Iumn, 1914
Malevich, Red Square, (Peasant Woman in 2 Dimensions)1913
Malevich, composer Mikhail Matiushin, and others, Victory over the Sun (opera), 1913
Malevich, Black Suprematist Square, 1914-15
Malevich, Suprematist Composition (a.k.a. "Aim lane Flying")' 1915
Malevich, installation view of paintings at 0-10 exhibition, 1915 (photograph)
Malevich, Suprematist Composition: White on White, 1918
Malevich, Self-Portrait 1933
EI Lissitzky, The New Man, 1920-1 (work on paper, reproduced)
Lissitzky, Beat the Whites with the Red Wedge, 1919-20 (poster)
Lissitzky, Proun, IA: Bridge, 1919 (gouache on paper)
Sonia Delaunay, Self-Portrait, 1916 (work on paper)
Delaunay, Textile design for Paris Exposition, 1925 (printed textile)
Delaunay, clothing for models and paint design for SCV Citroen, 1925 (painted automobile, textiles)
Popova, Painterly Architectonics, 1916-18
Lissitzky, Tatlin working on Monument, 1921-2, collage
Vladimir Tatlin, Counter-Relief. Comer, 1915, construction
Tatlin, Model for Tower (or Monument) to the Third International, 1918-19, construction sculpture (dismantled)
Tatlin, Functional Worker's Outfit, 1918-19, design on paper
Tatlin, Letatlin, 1931, sculpture plan, sculpture (or machine)
virtual Tatlin tower in St. Petersburg (formerly Leningrad), 1999 still from film by MIT prof. Takehiko Nagakura
Lenin's tomb and body in Red Square, 1924 (evolving to the present)

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MIT OpenCourseWare
http://ocw.mit.edu

4.602 Modern Art and Mass Culture

Spring 2012

For information about citing these materials or our Terms of Use, visit: http://ocw.mit.edu/terms.