I realise that moving from snowdrops to this is rather disconcerting. I apologise. Walter Benjamin is far nearer the mark.
I cannot see how I would be allowed to do this as a dissertation in my department, much to my annoyance, but I am hoping to research and perhaps write something on it anyway.
As usual, despite feeling rather unwell, I attended an advanced modernism lecture series at university. I would never be able to come near to summarising how interesting those talks were - but I shall mention a few points that struck me as rather interesting.
Firstly, a selection of Picasso works, charting his development as an experimental artist. Concepts of modernisation, fragmentation, industrialism, the broken self, and the female form.
The image fourth from the left seems particularly interesting, given its history and development. Originally, one of the characters was male, and the image was far less distorted. He was never happy with that painting. I personally love the first, third and final images in the selection. In the first image, the actual skin tone of the girl blends into the background, and only her striking clothing sets her apart from the wall. Also, her hands are severely posed, one seeming submissive and lowered, with a folded fan (repressed femininity), the other held in a strikingly dominant, forceful and arresting way, as though she is signaling or warning.
The second image seems clear from a distance, but when seen closely, the lady’s face has been strongly broken. I believe that this was a later development in the work. One eye is heavily slanted away from the viewer and her nose is heavily bent. Yet everything else in the image seems standard and relatively accurate. Only her body is fragmented.
The final image is almost completely fragmented, and cannot be viewed accurately from close by. Yet from a distance, the fragmentation actually reveals details, such as the man’s watch to his right side.
So anyway, from this, I started to think further about the representation of the female form in modernist art and literature. And then this image appeared:
Man Ray’s Cadeux/Gift.
Here, the traditionally female, pre-industrial, domestic image of a fire iron has been completely undermined with spikes artificially implanted onto its base. Thus, this iron will not heat properly and will only tear the garments a woman tries to iron. Furthermore, whichever version is seen, from whichever angle, the form is equally rigid, unforgiving and pointed (excuse the pun). So, I start investigating other works by Man Ray, mostly to satisfy my own curiosity.
Almost all of these images are heavily feminine, fetishised and eroticised. Yet in each of these images, the female form is either blurred, distorted or suggested, rather than directly revealed. As such, the woman becomes an object or event, rather than an individualised being. Indeed, I have refrained from including several images due to their violent and arguably pornographic subject matter. Yet most strikingly of all, when these women are represented as objects, they are not objects which exist for beauty’s sake, but rather for a use - the final two providing the clearest examples of a woman as a coat rack and cello respectively. There have also been some rather striking parodies of Man Ray’s work in recent years, namely with political undertones. I am led to consider how Man Ray would have thought of this work.
Another interesting point raised in the lecture series was that of the masculinised female - the flapper fashions of the time encouraging both femininity and extreme masculine forms - perhaps something to explore further?
I decided after the lecture to return home and research Dada on JSTOR to see if I could find the definition that was rather lacking in the lectures! I think such knowledge was assumed… Several articles later, I came across an article in the Woman’s Art Journal, vol. 22, entitled ‘Women in Dada’, and an even better article in ‘Art Journal, vol. 57′, entitled ‘Mama-Dada’, by Margaret Werth. Rather embarrassingly, I managed to read the first column before becoming distracted by the list of female contributors to the Dada movement, and soon ended up back on Google.
Thus, in a rather roundabout way, I came across Hannah Hoch, who specialised in photomontage as a political statement against Weimar Germany. I am not sure if this has already been pursued (more likely than not), but I believe that a study of techniques of photomontage within war literature could be fascinating. Interestingly, her most famous work - a collage of clips from newspapers of the time, is entitled ‘Cut with the Dada Kitchen Knife through the Last Weimar Beer-Belly Cultural Epoch in Germany’, again suggesting a link to the broken and politicised domestic space that the Dada movement arguably recognised.
This led me to the Baroness Else von Freytag-Loringhoven’s work, some of which can be read at the bottom of this page. Like many others, her work is intensely erotic - but why the obsession of both men and women with madness and the female form? Yet the Baroness’s work also has an element of spirituality and faith that is difficult to escape - yet direct reference to religion is often heavily negative in nature. Also, her literature reached beyond the written word, and into the particularly avant-garde sound, visual and street performance. Even the typeface of her books and writings was inkeeping with Dadaist ideas.
Finally, I was led to Djuna Barnes, a rather amazing character, who incidentally, was photographed several times by Man Ray, and her works, which I am now attempting to find in libraries - and thus far, am not succeeding in doing!
A truly remarkable woman and journalist, who prided herself on erotic anarchy, chaos and whose writings stemmed heavily from her rather turbulent experiences as a child. She even insisted on being force-fed herself in order to comprehend and be able to write about the violence of such action with full understanding - I have linked her reflections on the experience above.
This is only one of several dissertation concepts - but i’m quite a fan of this one. Not sure who could oversee this, but it would certainly be fascinating to explore the role and writings of the female Dadaists, Surrealists and the development of the female image during this time.
