World War 1: artists and intellectuals

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World War 1 artists and intellectuals responses

• Roberta Piazza

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The Dreyfus Affair

• Political scandal that divided France (1890s
  beginning of 1900)
• Alfred Dreyfus, a Jewish Captain of artillery.
• Due to his Alsatian origins (German annexation of
  Alsace in 1871) although he remained French, he
  was accused of espionage (paper found in a waste
  basket).

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Dreyfus cont.ed

• France divided between pro and anti Dreyfus, i.e.
  socialists, republicans, anticlericalists, or
  conservatives, respectively.
• Zolas letter published in LAurore on Jan. 13,
  1898. Titled Jaccuse
• Emergence of intellectuals views vis-à-vis the
  case

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Dreyfus cont.

• The divide in French society persisted for
  decades.
• Dreyfus was rehabilitated in 1906

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Intellectuals artists and the great war

• Joyce, Kraus, Ezra Pound, Thomas Mann fiercely
  against the war
• Many others were pro war.
• Interventist Prezzolini (Italian journal, La
  Voce) Todays democracy is no longer
  satisfactory. It has lowered standards while it
  pretends to have raised to the higher level of
  the new citizens. Political parties no longer
  exist. People seek their own interest. One day
  they are with the left next they move to the
  right.

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• Italian poet DAnnunzio strongly pro war, accused
  by Mann of being a charlatan master of verbal
  orgies as well as Wagners parrot
• War as the object of visual representation
  regardless of the artists ideological
  persuasion. Why?
• WW1 as the first total mechanised warfare

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Some examples

• Against Dufys optimism (The End of the Great
  War, 1915), Chagalls realism (The Newspaper
  Vendor, 1914), Meidners 1912 Apocalyptic
  Landscape in war foreboding.

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Meidner
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Meidner
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Vorticism in Britain

• Wyndham Lewis, editor of Blast
• Belligerent polemical accusations to
  conservative mediocre bourgeoisie.
• Vorticism, an aesthetic movement NOT in favour of
  war, but its volcanic and boisterous enthusiasm
  well suited the spirit of the time.
• Monumental canvas, Plan of War (huge geometrical
  figures) six months before the hostilities.

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End of optimism

• War as politicians flood of lies (cf. BBC4, The
  Shock of the New powers That Be, in LC)
• Jacob Epstein, Rock Drill, 1913-15
• Torso in Metal from Rock Drill, 1913-16 (the
  stump of a maimed warrior replaces the original
  ardour of the drill)

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Avant-gardes and the great war

• Militaristic terminology from Saint-Simon. Part
  of the modernist challenge to conventions
• Mission of XX cent. avant-gardes abolition of
  any separation between art and experience of the
  world

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Some avant-gardes the Futurists

• Global phenomenon with impact on multiple fields.
• First movement aimed at a mass audience.
• Anti-bourgeois (against sentimentalism and women,
  functional to supporting the bourgeois status
  quo)

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Futurist principles

• Against anachronistic culture. For ex.
  repudiation of Symbolist poets, the last
  moon-lovers.
• In favour of modernity, technology (e.g.
  photography), dynamism, simultaneity, speed.

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Marinettis Manifesto of Futurism 1909 and 1911

• A roaring automobileis ore beautiful than the
  Victory of Samothrace
• Parole in libertà (words in freedom) i.against
  canons of syntax, grammar and punctuation ii.
  words freed form their conventional meaning
  (wireless imagination) iii. analogy as unusual
  correspondences between elements (as in Mallarmé
  Baudelaire) woman/gulf and man/torpedoboat

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Marinetti

• We will sing of great crowds excited by work, by
  pleasure, and by riot we will sing of the
  multicoloured polyphonic tides of revolution in
  the modern capitals we will sing of the vibrant
  nightly fervour of arsenals and shipyards blazing
  with violent electric moons greedy railway
  stations that devour smoke-plumed serpents
  factories hung from clouds by the crooked lines
  of their smoke...

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Futurism cont.ed

• Nothing is more beautiful than a great humming
  power station that contains the hydraulic
  pressures of whole mountain chain and the
  electric power of a vast horizon, synthesized in
  marble control panels bristling with dials,
  keyboards and shining commutators

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• Marinettis Zang Tum Tuum
• Marinettis Bombardamento poetic collage and
  onomatopoeic distortion
• Booooomboooombaaaardaaamento
• Futurist prescriptivism several manifestos

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• Futurist painters
• Boccioni (1st picture), Balla, Russolo, Severini,
  Carrà

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Balla
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Severini
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Severini
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Other futurists

• Futurist architect SantElia (Manifesto, 1914)
• Futurist musicians Pratella, Manifesto with
  Russolo, 1910

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Futurism and the war

• In favour of Italys African Campaign (Lybia,
  1911-1912), nationalism and war intervention.
• We will glorify war the worlds only hygiene
  militarism, patriotism, the destructive gesture
  of the anarchist, beautiful ideas worth dying
  for, and scorn for women (Futurist Manifesto
  1909)

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• Class conflict between bourgeoisie and the
  proletariat
• Similar clash between bourgeois and proletarian
  countries. Italy as the great proletarian
  (justification for war and annexation of foreign
  territories)
• Italy entered the war in 1915 with Britain and
  France

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Another avant-garde Dada

• Zurich, June 1915, venue Cabaret Voltaire
  (ironic echo of 18th century rationalist thinker
  of Enlightenment !)
• Hugo Ball (sculptor), Marcel Jancso (painter),
  Hans Arp (painter) Tristan Tzara (poet).

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• Equality accorded to visual and literary
  production
• Hennings sang and gave puppet shows
• Ball and Tzara recited poetry
• Marcel Jancso made masks
• Jean Arp contributed colourful wooden sculptures
  and paper collages (cf. Jones, 2005)

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34

• Magazine Dada (Hugo Ball)

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Dada cont.

• Two different currents in Dada contemplative and
  violent Zurich (age of innocence) and Berlin
  (1918 Weimar Republic after the end of the
  Monarchy, which lasted 15 yrs till Hitlers era).
• Hugo Ball volunteered but was unfit for the war.
  Pacifist after a visit to the front.

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Dada as protest against the war

• Away from the slaughterhouses of the world Hans
  Arp
• While the thunder of guns sounded in the
  distance, we pasted, we recited, we versified, we
  sang with all our soul. We searched for an
  elementary art that would save mankind from the
  furiously folly of these times. We aspired to a
  new order that might restore the balance between
  heaven and hell. the bandits were unable to
  understand us. Their puerile mania for
  authoritarianism leads them to use art itself as
  a means to stultify mankind (M. Dachy, 1990 34)

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The Dada spirit

• Criticism of the moral, political and cultural
  values of the bourgeoisie.
• Disgust and contempt for any form of
  conventionalism and conformism.

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Dada principles

• Desire to express absolute spontaneity
  provocative and scandalous gestures.
• Desire to go back to the beginning (Dada
  Rocking horse in Rumanian).
• Art is not a serious thing. Dadaist negation of
  art as an organically and logically elaborated
  product.

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• Dada means nothing, it stood for everything and
  nothing.
• Hans Arp says that Tzara found the word Dada on
  8 Feb 1916 at 6 pm!
• Aim Provocation and challenge.
• Provocativeness poet Arthur Cravan I prefer
  all the eccentricities of even a commonplace mind
  to the tame works of a bourgeois fool.

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• Tristan Tzara, Dada Manifesto, 1918
• Logic is a complication. Logic is always wrong.
  It draws the threads of notions, words, in their
  formal exterior, toward illusory ends and
  centers.
• (ibid. 37)

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• The admirals in Search of a House to Rent,
  collective poem published in Cabaret Voltaire.
• Jugo Ball and primitivism.
• Hausmanns experimentalism in The Art Critic
  Photomontage

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Dada cont.

• Dada ended in 1923 and many of its members moved
  to Surrealism (e.g. Picabia and Man Ray)
• Limit of Dada little beyond protest and
  provocation, e.g. Marcel Duchamps Urinal and
  Monna Lisa with moustaches.

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Marcel Du Champ

• Urinal sent to the New York 1917 Independent
  Artists Exhibition with the title Fountain.
• Mr Tutt No need to create art objects.
  Functional change.

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Du Champs The Fountain
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Dada and Futurism

• Differences.
• Pro-war Futurism (proto-fascists) v. Pacifist and
  Anarchist (Ball and Bakunin) Dada. Cravan against
  Futurists who were fighting evil with evil
• Dada as the taste of innocence, play and
  serendipity in art (Tzaras poetry, haphazard
  words out of a sac) v. Polemical and aggressive
  thrust of Futurism.

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More differences

• At the core of Dada aesthetics the notion of
  doubt. Assurance and belligerent chauvinism
  among Futurists
• Dadaist irony and satire. Self-assurance and
  assertiveness of Futurism

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Dada Futurism similarities

• Similarities.
• Praise of the new, tiredness with the old world.
• Multiplicity of arts involved
• However Dada machines are man-eating
  creatures AND (contradiction) they are
  eroticised and placed in a mysterious,
  alchemical system of relationship with the
  artist ingenieur and monteur (Bergius, 1980
  36).

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Similarities cont.

• Provocativeness (Marcel Duchamp in New York with
  Parisian air!)
• Anti-bourgeoisie attitude
• Presence of several manifestos
• Simultaneism the attempt to express reality in
  all its aspects not in succession but all at the
  same time (Delaunays rhythmical
  simultaneousness).

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Similarities

• Futurist evenings (Serate futuriste) Insults
  hurled at the audience, tomatoes and eggs flying
  about. Evening performances at Cabaret Voltaire.

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References

• Sheppard, R. 1980. Dada and politics. In
  Sheppard, R. (ed.) Dada. Studies of a Movement.
  Chalfont St Giles, Alpha Academic.
• Bergius, H. 1980. The aesthetic of Dada. In
  Sheppard (ed.)
• Cork, R. 1994. A Bitter Truth. Avant-Garde Art
  and the Great War. New Haven and London, Yale
  Univ. Press
• Faulkner, F. 1977. Modernism. London, Routledge.
• Dachy, M. 1990. The Dada Movement 1915-1923. New
  York, Rizzoli.
• Hopkins, D. 2004. Dada and Surrealism A Very
  Short Introduction. Oxford, OUP
• Jones, J. 2005. Make art not war. The Guardian
  08.11.05
• BBC4, The Shock of the New Powers That Be (SLI LC)