For my term paper, I am interested in looking at the Dada movement, particularly from France. I also want to look at the way that L'Étoile de Mer relates to the Dada movement in the notion of drawing meaning from various aspects of disconnected life. For example, in one case in L'Étoile de Mer, the movie compares the woman's beauty to that of a chair or of glass, among other things which I think relates to the notion of Dada art and its ability to challenge normalcy because we don't ordinarily think of things such as chairs to be beautiful.
In one of the Dada publications, shown below, there is a sentence that says, “Ce qu'on écrit sur l'art est oeuvre d'éducation et dans ce sens elle peut exister.” Translated this means, “That which one writes on art is the work of education and in this sense it can exist.” I think this speaks to both the consumption of art and also the belief shown in both L'Étoile de Mer and the dada magazines of challenging the normal because looking at something that is normally perceived one way and then showing it in another facet to shock gives it a new meaning. By writing about a piece of art, it is then given a meaning because someone was forced to interpret it. In my paper, I will explore this idea- of how a reader, or in the case of L'Étolie de Mer, the viewer, is forced to process and redefine the way they think of the art shown and therefore the objects are given a new meaning.
Comments
Valerie OBrien
Sat, 04/23/2011 - 01:22
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Hi Paige, It seems like
Hi Paige,
It seems like statements comparing the beauty of a woman to that of a chair not only ascribe unexpected values to everyday objects, but also perhaps destabilize the dominant cultural understanding of abstract ideas like 'beauty'. Likewise, not only do the objects featured in Dada art (like Duchamp's "Fountain") adopt new meaning, but also definitions of Art are expanded or subverted.
Are there other pieces you'll be considering that feature the synthesis of disparate images like that of l'Etoile de Mer? Will you be working mostly with art, or also with literary texts that pair seemingly unrelated entities together? You might want to check out Man Ray's first film, "Return to Reason," or Tzara's "Dada Manifesto on Feeble and Bitter Love."
Very interesting topic!
Noha El Toumie
Mon, 04/25/2011 - 21:06
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Dada anarchism maybe should
Dada anarchism maybe should be considered as a chaos toward order and/or a duality of a rational explained through the irrational or conscioius analysis of the unconsciousness. In a way moderism is all about juxtaposition of contradictions. One other thing you might consider is le coeur universel of Emerson as well as the archetype /universal consciousness (tower of babel in transition and the idea of espearanto). Finaly you need to distinct surrealism search for a higer reality and not only automatic intuition as a stream of consciousness and memory like Proust in search for the lost time that is clarified maybe to solve the conflict between tzara and aron about the role of the novel towards the discovery of reality and the engagement of the reader in a pact with the writer and the distance of objectivity of the writer...
. Just few points... maybe will be of help
will appreciate if you can comment on my paper proposal
Noha