Title: Dada and Surrealist Performance, Black Mountain, Fluxus and Happenings
1Dada and Surrealist Performance, Black Mountain,
Fluxus and Happenings
2Dada
- Dada is the groundwork to abstract art and sound
poetry, a starting point for performance art, a
prelude to postmodernism, an influence on pop
art, a celebration of antiart to be later
embraced for anarcho-political uses in the 1960s
and the movement that lay the foundation for
Surrealism." Marc Lowenthal Translator's
Introduction to Francis Picabia's I AM A
BEAUTIFUL MONSTER Poetry, Prose, And Provocation
(MIT PRESS 2007
3- Group of Dadaist form around the Cafe Voltaire in
Zurich. Basically a gathering of people who
disdained war. - As a movement Dada protested war and senseless
slaughter. - In Tristan Tzaras manifesto he called for the
destruction of good manners, an end to logic, the
destruction of memory, spontaneity and
forgetfullness
4Timeline
- 1913 - Duchamp makes the first 'readymade' - a
bicycle wheel mounted on a stool - 1916 - Cabaret Voltaire opens in Zurich on 5
February. It soon takes the name 'Dada' - 1917 - First issue of 'Dada' periodical
published. Issues 1-4 of '391' periodical
published by Picabia. Duchamp exhibits 'Fountain'
in New York. - 1918 - Tzara published his first manifesto, in
'Dada' issue 3. Club Dada in Berlin starts to use
photomontage - 1919 - 'Litterature' periodical edited by Breton
published. Ernst and Baargeld found Cologne Dada.
Kurt Schwitters makes the first Merz works. - 1920 - Tzara arrives in Paris. Club Dada tour of
Germany. Ernst and others stage the 'Spring
Awakening' exhibition in Cologne. - 1921 - 'New York Dada' periodical published,
edited by Duchamp and Man Ray. Dada stages the
trail of Barres and in doing so loses the support
of Picabia. - 1923 - Duchamp finally stops work on The Bride
Stripped Bare By Her Bachelors Even - 1924 - Breton publishes the first manifesto of
Surrealism.
5Marcel Duchamp
6Hugo Ball 1886-1927
- It is necessary for me to drop all respect for
tradition, opinion, and judgement. It is
necessary for me to erase the rambling text that
others have written. - The present does not exist in principles, but
only in association. We live in a fantastic age
that draws its decisions more from affiliation
than from unassailable axioms. The creative man
can do anything he wants with this age. It is,
all of it, common property, matter. - Nature is neither beautiful nor ugly, neither
good nor bad. It is fantastic, monstrous, and
infinitely unrestrained. It knows no reason, but
it listens to reason when it meets with
resistance. Nature wants to exist and develop,
that is all. Being in harmony with nature is the
same as being in harmony with madness.
7Hugo Ball Flight Out of Time
8Ball Reciting Sound Poem in the Cabaret Voltaire
9Hugo Ball performing Karawane
10(No Transcript)
11Café Odeon re-creation
12Emmy Hennings 1885-1948
- Dancer
- To you it's as if I was already
- Marked and waiting on Death's list.
- It keeps me safe from many sins.
- How slowly life drains out of me.
- My steps are often steeped in gloom,
- My heart beats in a sickly way
- And it gets weaker every day.
- A death angel stands in the middle of my room.
- Yet I dance till I'm out of breath.
- Soon lying in the grave I'll be
- And no one will snuggle up to me.
- Oh, give me kisses up till death.
13(No Transcript)
14Tristan Tzara
- Born Sami Rosenstock , Romanian, 1896-1963
- After 1929 attempted to reconcile surrealism and
marxism. Joined the French Communist Party in
1937. Fought in the French Resistance. Quit the
communist party in 1956 over the russian
repression of the Hungarian Revolution.
15(No Transcript)
16- The beginings of Dada were not the beginnings of
an art but of a disgustTristan Tzara - DADA is a virgin microbe DADA is against the
high cost of living DADA limited company for
the exploitation of ideas DADA has 391 different
attitudes and colours according to the sex of the
president It changes - affirms - says the
opposite at the same time - no importance -
shouts - goes fishing. Dada is the chameleon of
rapid and self interested change. Dada is
against the future. Dada is dead. Dada is absurd.
Long live Dada. Dada is not a literary school,
howl - Tristan Tzara
17Gas Heart 1923
18Costumes by Sonia Delaunay
19Delaunay Designs
20Sonia Delaunay (Sarah Stern) 1985-1979
21Simultaneous Store 1925
22Marcel Duchamp Fountain
23Dada Cards
24Man Ray Coat Stand
25Kurt Schwitters
26(No Transcript)
27(No Transcript)
28Surrealism
29- Au Rendez-vous des amis (1922) (First row)
Crevel, Ernst, Dostoyevsky, Fraenkel, Paulhan,
Péret, Baargeld, Desnos. - (Standing) Soupault, Art, Morise, Raphael,
Eluard, Aragon, Breton, de Chirico, Gala Eluard
30- Le Surrealist group 1924 Baron, Queneau, Breton,
Boiffard, de Chirico, Vitrac, Eluard, Soupault,
Desnos, Aragon. - Naville, Simone Collinet-Breton, Morise,
Marie-Louise Soupault
31Merce Cunningham and Buckminster Fuller at Black
Mountain
321953 1957
33Nocturnes 1956
34Crisis 1960
35Museum Event 1966
36Event 1968
37Rain Forest 1968
38Second Hand 1975
39Square Game 1976
40John Cage 1912-1992
41Cage and Fluxus
- John Cage's 'Experimental Composition' classes
from 1957 to 1959 at the New School for Social
Research have become legendary as an American
source of Fluxus, the international network of
artists, composers, and designers. The majority
of his students had little or no background in
music, most of whom were artists. His students
included Jackson Mac Low, Allan Kaprow, Al
Hansen, George Brecht, Alice Denham and Dick
Higgins, as well as the numerous artists he
invited to attend his classes unofficially.
Several famous pieces came from these classes
George Brecht's Time Table Music, and Alice
Denham's 48 SecondsWikipedia article on John Cage
42Water Walk on TV Game Show 1960
43Gutai Group
- The aim of the Gutai group was to break with the
past and blur the boundaries between art and life
in post-war Japan, seeking a new beginning in
order to put the horrors behind. - Yoshihara organized Gutai with the intent of
renewing art by saving it from commerce and
fetishism, and by allowing the material to
express itself freely, unhindered by extraneous
factors, non-material issues. The word Gutai was
a composite of gu (tool) and tai (body).
Yoshihara also took it as signifying
concreteness and embodiment.5 In his Gutai
Manifesto(1956), he denounced the way materials
are loaded with false significance by way of
fraud, so that, instead of just presenting their
own material, they take on the appearance of
something elsethe materials have been completely
murdered and can no longer speak to us.
Consistently, Yoshihara added to this the caveat
that nothing may be copied.
44Atsuko Tanaka 1932-2005
45Atsuko Tanaka Electric Dress 1956
46- In a related work, Stage Clothes, she made a
dress that included other dresses so that as she
undressed she stayed dressed, with ever more
garments appearing magically to clothe her. There
was no escaping, in modern culture, the surfaces
a woman could reveal. And yet her art was not a
gloomy meditation on authenticity. The power of
fashion also represented the freedom to remake
oneself again and again. - In Electric Dress, Tanaka seemed to fuse
technology and the flesh. During the original
performance, in fact, some people became
concerned that she would electrocute herself and
in Japan, the light of Hiroshima, which X-rayed
the body, quickly came to mind. But Tanakas
fusion went well beyond academic commentary on
technology and womens issues. She became, in her
dress, a kind of twinkling building on the
horizon and, by extension, a symbol of the modern
Asian city. She anticipated the delirium of light
that is Tokyo. A city, like a woman in a dress,
can be a mysterious object of desire. Tanakas
light conceals as it reveals. - Mark Stevens, New York Magazine, Sept. 27, 2004
47Yellow Cotton 1955
48Bells 1955
49- "The material as the actual source of interest
... lost its importance as soon as the
electricity was switched on suddenly the sound
of the bells were the work of art.Akira
Kanayama, Gutai artist and husband of Atsuko
Tanaka
50Work 1955
51- At the exhibition in July 1955, which was
organized by the Ashiya City Art Association,
other Gutai artists also performed Kazuo
Shiraga, swinging an axe, put red-painted wooden
cubes on top of each other, Saburo Murakami
trampled down and tore to pieces roofing
cardboard, Sadamasa Motonaga hanged up plastic
bags with coloured water on the trees, Tsuruko
Yamazaki hanged up sheet steel, Michio Yoshihara
showed objects, made of garbage. Yozo Ukita
described the exhibition as follows "At The
Experimental Outdoor Exhibition of Modern Art to
Challenge the Midsummer Burning Sun we did not
try to overcome nature nor to challenge nature
... We wanted to find out how we could survive in
this pine forest ..."
52Recent Paintings
53Shozo Shimamoto
54Crane performance Paintings 1994
- These works belong to a series realized all at
once during a quite famous crane performance in
Itami City ( Japan ). The performance, in
collaboration with the Paper-Cup Artist LOCO,
consisted of dropping colors contained in spheres
made of cups by Shimamoto who hung from a height
of 30 meters.
55Fluxus
- Fluxus is about spontaneity, chaos, and the
inherent beauty in the accidental. - Sometimes it concerns itself with the accident
in the box - Two formats are unique to Fluxus, a type of
performance art called the Event and Fluxkit
multiples, a collection of everyday objects or
inexpensive printed cards, collected in a box for
private and personal investigation
56George Maciunas Fluxmanifesto
- To establish artists nonprofessional,
nonparasitic, nonelite status in society, he must
demonstrate own dispensibility, he must
demonstrate self-sufficiency of the audience, he
must demonstrate that anything can substitute art
and anyone can do it. Therefore, this substitute
art-amusement must be simple, amusing, concerned
with insignificances, have no commodity or
institutional value. It must be unlimited,
obtainable by all and eventually produced by all.
57Fluxkits Claes Oldenburg
58Flux Year Box 2, ed. Maciunas late 60s
59Beuys Everess 1968
60Beuys The Silence 1973
61Beuys Banknote 1979
62Beuys New York Subway Poster 1983
63Fluxus Piano
64Happenings
- Generally credited as originating with Allan
Kaprows 18 Happenings in 6 Parts 1959 - A form of theater spectacle that rejects the
conceit that everyone in the audience should see
the same picture - Happenings are comparmentalized, each unit is a
whole in itself and there is no causal plot - Characters tend to be allegorical and persons are
treated like objects.
65Evolution of Happenings
- Kaprow credits the following evolution of the
form as a progression from action painting to
Assemblages, into Environments. - Environments incorporating sound and people
became happenings. - Kirby finds Happenings have nothing to do with
plastic arts but rather were a new kind of
theater.
66Darko Suvins Categories
- Four categories to Happenings
- Events as single non-verbal activities
- Aleatoric scenes or longer activities where text
is treated mainly as sound (chance construction) - Happenings that range from non-verbal activities
to clear compositions with well-rehearsed actors
and composed text. - Action Theater which may be like drama
67Allan Kaprow
68Kaprows notions
- Kaprow wants to introduce a new notion of space
in which events make the space or create isolated
nodes of spatial meaning. Time should be variable
and discontinuous. - Space and time cease to be conventions they
become problematic materials. Space becomes the
sum of all objects structured through
object-relations which include real objects, as
well as people. Happenings thus assign the
audience the same ontological status as the
performers both can provide performance-events,
both are treated as objects.
69Kaprow 18 Happenings in 6 Parts, Fall 1959
7018 Happenings redo 2007
71Jim Dine Car Crash Nov. 1960
72Allan Kaprow Push and Pull A Furniture Comedy
for Hans Hoffmann, 1963
73Push and Pull reinvention 2007
74Kaprow 2005
75Allan Kaprow Spring Happening 1961
76Robert Whitman Mouth 1961
77Ben Patterson Licking Piece 1964
78Josef Beuys I Like America and America Likes Me
1974
79Fluids by Allan Kaprow
- A single event done in many places over a
three-day period. It consists in building huge,
blank, rectangular ice structures thirty feet
long, ten feet wide, and eight feet high. People
set the structures up using rock salt as a binder
- which hastens melting and fuses the blocks
together. The structures are built about 20
places throughout Los Angeles. If one crosses the
city he might suddenly be confronted by these
mute and meaningless blank structures which have
been left to melt. The structures indicate no
significance, their very blankness and their
rapid deterioration proclaims the opposite of
significance.
80Esposizione by Ann Halprin
- .explored the architectonic concept of space
and was performed on a large stage. To make the
relatively large stage compared to the audience
sufficient for their six-member company
performance they suspended a cargo net across the
proscenium in the air, to allow the dancers to
move vertically. The dance evolved out of a
spacial idea. They said that the theatre was
their environment and they were going to move
through the theatre. They took a single task
burdening themselves with enormous amounts of
luggage. Each person had to carry all kind of
everyday objects automobile tires, gunnysacks
filled, bundles of rags, newspapers rolled up,
etc, and to allow his movements to be conditioned
to speeds that had been set up for him. They
started all over the place, so that it was like
an invasion. The music started at a different
time, dancers started at different times, so that
the audience had no idea when anything started.
The whole dance was a series of false beginnings.
As soon as something got started, something else
would be introduced. The dancers task was to
carry things and to penetrate the entire
auditorium. When they reached the high point they
let the objects roll down, the whole space
exploded. - From Happening and Other Acts, ed. Mariellen
Sandford, Routledge, 1995
81Anna Halprin
82Halprin Teaching
83- Beginning in 1955, after she returned from
performing in New York at the 92nd Street Y in a
concert curated by Martha Graham, Halprin was
disillusioned by what she saw as a lack of
individuality in the modern dance world. Halprin
began experimenting in her new scenic dance
laboratory, an outdoor deck that her husband and
Arch Lauterer had just designed for her in a
redwood grove on the steep hillside below their
Marin County home on the side of Mount Tamalpais. - ON THIS DECK Halprin learned to attend to nature
the way H'Doubler had listened to the body,
embracing everyday actions like dressing and
undressing or dragging the relaxed body of a
friend. Among the dancers who came to her summer
workshops in the early 1960s were Simone Forti,
Yvonne Rainer, Trisha Brown, Sally Gross, and
Meredith Monk. Back in New York at Judson
Memorial Church and other venues, they took
forward Halprin's ideas of task performance, of
the uncoupling of cause and effect in dance
theater, and the use of the real world as a site
for dance, into a new genre that became
postmodern dance. - It wasn't only nature, hut also the social
environment that fed Halprin as an artist. In the
late 1960s her interest turned toward community
and the urban rituals that sustain it. Her 1969
Ceremony of Us was shaped by racial tensions
among the cast, which drew from black performers
in the Watts section of Los Angeles and her white
dancers from the San Francisco Dancers' Workshop.
In the 1970s, as a cancer survivor, Halprin
became interested in movement as a healing
art--in social, psychological, and physical
terms. She moved from incorporating ordinary life
in her performance pieces toward an appreciation
of the dancer in every person, trained or
untrained.
84Alison Knowles
85Links
- Eco Art
- Happenings
- Fluxus.org
- The Fluxus Performance Workbook