Post-Impressionism to World War II BLACKWELL ANTHOLOGIES IN ART HISTORY The Blackwell Anthologies in Art History series presents an unprecedented set of canonical and critical works in art history. Each volume in the series pairs previ- ouslypublished,classicessayswithcontemporaryhistoriographicalscholarshipto offerafreshperspectiveonagivenperiod,style,orgenreinarthistory.Modeling itself on the upper-division undergraduate art history curriculum in the English- speaking world and paying careful attention to the most beneficial way to teach art history in today’s classroom setting, each volume offers ample pedagogical material created by expert volume editors – from substantive introductory essays and section overviews to illustrations and bibliographies. Taken together, the Blackwell Anthologies in Art History will be a complete reference devoted to the best that has been taught and written on a given subject or theme in art history. 1 Post-Impressionism to World War II, edited by Debbie Lewer 2 Asian Art: An Anthology, edited by Rebecca Brown and Deborah Hutton 3 Sixteenth-century Italian Art, edited by Michael Cole 4 Architecture and Design in Europe and America, 1750–2000, edited by Abigail Harrison Moore and Dorothy Rowe Forthcoming 5 Fifteenth-centuryItalianArt,editedbyRobertManiura,GabrieleNeher,and Rupert Shepherd 6 Late Antique, Medieval, and Mediterranean Art, edited by Eva Hoffman Post-Impressionism to World War II Edited by Debbie Lewer Editorialmaterialandorganization(cid:1)2006byDebbieLewer BLACKWELLPUBLISHING 350MainStreet,Malden,MA02148-5020,USA 9600GarsingtonRoad,OxfordOX42DQ,UK 550SwanstonStreet,Carlton,Victoria3053,Australia TherightofDebbieLewertobeidentifiedastheAuthoroftheEditorialMaterialin this Work has been asserted in accordance with the UK Copyright, Designs, and PatentsAct1988. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrievalsystem,ortransmitted,inanyformorbyanymeans,electronic,mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, except as permitted by the UK Copyright, Designs,andPatentsAct1988,withoutthepriorpermissionofthepublisher. Firstpublished2006byBlackwellPublishingLtd 1 2006 LibraryofCongressCataloging-in-PublicationData Post-ImpressionismtoWorldWarII/editedbyDebbieLewer. p.cm.—(Blackwellanthologiesinarthistory) Includesbibliographicalreferencesandindex. ISBN-13:978-1-4051-1153-9(hardcover:alk.paper) ISBN-10:1-4051-1153-4(hardcover:alk.paper) ISBN-13:978-1-4051-1152-2(pbk.:alk.paper) ISBN-10:1-4051-1152-6(pbk.:alk.paper) 1.Art,European—20thcentury.2.Art,European—19thcentury.I.Lewer,Debbie. II.series N6758.P682005 709’.03’4—dc22 2004030885 AcataloguerecordforthistitleisavailablefromtheBritishLibrary. Setin10.5/13ptGalliard bySPIPublisherServices,Pondicherry,India PrintedandboundintheUnitedKingdom byTJInternationalLtd,Padstow,Cornwall Thepublisher’spolicyistousepermanentpaperfrommillsthatoperateasustainable forestrypolicy,andwhichhasbeenmanufacturedfrompulpprocessedusingacid-free andelementarychlorine-freepractices.Furthermore,thepublisherensuresthatthetext paperandcoverboardusedhavemetacceptableenvironmentalaccreditationstandards. Forfurtherinformationon BlackwellPublishing,visitour website: www.blackwellpublishing.com Contents Series Editor’s Preface viii Preface ix Acknowledgments xii Part I: Programs and Manifestos –––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––– Introduction 1 1 Post-Impressionism 13 Roger Fry 2 Why Are We Publishing a Journal? 18 Ver Sacrum editorial 3 Notes of a Painter 21 Henri Matisse 4 The Founding and Manifesto of Futurism 28 F. T. Marinetti 5 Dada Manifesto 33 Hugo Ball 6 The Work Ahead of Us 35 Vladimir Tatlin 7 First Manifesto of Surrealism 36 Andre´Breton 8 Introduction to ‘‘New Objectivity’’: German Painting since Expressionism 50 Gustav Hartlaub v Contents ––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––– Part II: Spirit and Subjectivity ––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––– Introduction 53 9 Gustave Moreau 69 Joris-Karl Huysmans 10 Symbolism in Painting: Paul Gauguin 71 G.-Albert Aurier 11 From Abstraction and Empathy: A Contribution to the Psychology of Style 79 Wilhelm Worringer 12 From On the Spiritual in Art 93 Wassily Kandinsky 13 Mystery and Creation 128 Giorgio de Chirico 14 From Cubism and Futurism to Suprematism: The New Painterly Realism 130 Kazimir Malevich 15 Neo-Plasticism: The General Principle of Plastic Equivalence 146 Piet Mondrian Part III: Mass Culture and Modernity ––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––– Introduction 155 16 The Mass Ornament 165 Siegfried Kracauer 17 The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction 174 Walter Benjamin 18 Avant-Garde and Kitsch 188 Clement Greenberg 19 Modernism in the Work of Art 201 Victor Burgin 20 The Hidden Dialectic: Avantgarde–Technology–Mass Culture 218 Andreas Huyssen Part IV: Politics and the Avant-Garde –––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––– Introduction 231 21 The Politics of the Avant-Garde 240 Raymond Williams vi –––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––– Contents 22 From Theory of the Avant-Garde 253 Peter Bu¨rger 23 Jugglers’ Fair Beneath the Gallows 265 Ernst Bloch 24 Towards a Free Revolutionary Art 270 Andre´Breton, Diego Rivera, and Leon Trotsky 25 The Birth of Socialist Realism from the Spirit of the Russian Avant-Garde 274 Boris Groys Part V: Identity and Appropriation ––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––– Introduction 297 26 Going Native 304 Abigail Solomon-Godeau 27 Virility and Domination in Early Twentieth-Century Vanguard Painting 320 Carol Duncan 28 Men’s Work? Masculinity and Modernism 337 Lisa Tickner 29 What the Papers Say: Politics and Ideology in Picasso’s Collages of 1912 349 David Cottington 30 Dada as ‘‘Buffoonery and Requiem at the Same Time’’ 366 Hanne Bergius 31 Surrealism: Fetishism’s Job 381 Dawn Ades Index 400 vii Series Editor’s Preface The Blackwell Anthologies in Art History series is intended to bring together writingonagivensubjectfromabroadhistoricalandhistoriographicperspective. Theaimofthevolumesistopresentkeywritingsinthegivensubjectareawhileat the same time challenging their canonical status through the inclusion of less well-used texts, including relevant contemporary documentation and commen- taries, that present alternative interpretations or understandings of the period under review. Post-ImpressionismtoWorldWarIIskillfullynavigatesoneofthemostcomplex and frequently taught periods in art history. The well-chosen selection of texts, some of which appear for the first time in English, brings together key primary sources and ‘‘canonical’’ criticism as well as more recent critical interventions from a range of methodological perspectives. The thematic structure is extremely coherent and useful and the introductory essays to each of the five parts set out the historical and cultural origins of the texts as well as exploring the methodological approaches represented. Conse- quently,theanthologyprovidesavaluable,stimulating resourceforstudentsand teachers alike and offers new perspectives on the established canon, as well as being a useable anthology of interpretations of modernism. As one of the initial volumes to be published it is an important standard-bearer for the series. Dana Arnold 2004 viii Preface Thisanthologyisintendedtoprovideteachersandundergraduatestudentswithan accessible, stimulating, and diverse collection of texts to support study of the period in European art from Post-Impressionism to World War II. It brings togetherthreemainkindsoftext,inthematicsectionsthathavebeencomposed– it should be emphasized – to be suggestive rather than prescriptive. First, there areprimaryhistoricalsources.Theseincludetextswrittenbypractitioners,suchas the manifestos so central to avant-garde practice, and other statements and reflections by individual artists. They appear along with relevant examples of contemporary criticism, in Parts I and II, loosely thematized as ‘‘Programs and Manifestos’’ and ‘‘Spirit and Subjectivity,’’ (though the manifesto genre also resurfaces in Part IV, ‘‘Politics and the Avant-Garde’’). These texts have been selected to provide a ‘‘core’’ of sample material and are included because such primary sources are immensely valuable for the light they shed on the interplay between theory and practice in the period. They allow for readers to make comparisons between their content and between the different ways in which texts functioned (and continue to function, not least through anthologies such as this one) as part of the wider discourse of modernism and the avant- garde.Theycanbereadinisolation,butitisespeciallyhopedthattheirselection will encourage students to explore the interrelationships between different groups, tendencies, working methods, and concepts. Examples of productive comparisons in this manner might include reading F. T. Marinetti’s Futurist manifesto, Hugo Ball’s Dada manifesto, and Wassily Kandinsky’s Concerning the Spiritual in Art. In this case they could be used, for example, to consider the relationship between Futurism, Dada, and Expressionism. Alternatively, in a more specialized context they might suggest focused investigation of the impact that the ideas of both Kandinsky and Marinetti had on Ball and the origins of DadainZurich.Fromotherperspectives,Tatlin(PartI),Malevich(PartII),and Groys (Part IV) or Aurier (Part II) and Solomon-Godeau (Part V) would be similarly fruitful combinations that could well be used as a basis for seminar ix Preface –––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––– discussion, and there are many other such possibilities offered by the materials collected here. The secondkind of textis ofinfluential contemporary criticism. The inclusion of criticism by writers such as Roger Fry, G.-Albert Aurier, Wilhelm Worringer, Gustav Hartlaub, and Clement Greenberg allows students to consider the often decisive role of the critic in the development and affirmation of aesthetic terms and categories. Some of these writers – Worringer is a glaring case in point – are frankly unfashionable objects of art-historical investigation, but their influence has been very powerful in their historical contexts. Nonetheless, the categories and concepts such texts have produced are often strikingly arbitrary: Post- Impressionism, Symbolism, Expressionism, the so-called ‘‘New Objectivity’’ (Neue Sachlichkeit), and the ‘‘avant-garde’’ are among the most problematic. Meanings for the latter term, contested and promiscuous as it is through this period,areexploredinseveraltextsinthisvolume,providing,itishoped,another levelfordiscussion.Thevexednatureofmanysuchconceptsishighlightedfroma range of historical and critical perspectives by other texts in this volume. The third kind of text in this anthology is the broadest and most heteroge- neous.Theseessaysaregrouped,again,inthematicconstellationsintendednotto imposedivisions,buttosuggestcrosscurrents,inPartsIIItoV.Rangingintheir analysis across visual culture, from painting and sculpture to film and photog- raphy, these essays date from the 1920s to the 1990s. Methodologically, they involvearange,andsometimesacombination,ofMarxist,feminist,structuralist, psychoanalytical, and other theoretical procedures. The texts in Parts III and IV are specialized in their focus on (mainly) the visual culture of the 1920s and 1930s, but they have been selected to encourage informed consideration of key issuesrelevanttowiderstudyoftheperiod;first,ofthedialecticbetweenmodern art practice and mass culture and, second, what constitutes the ‘‘avant-garde’’ in respect of cultural and state politics. Part V, finally, brings together a small selection of essays, which can be read either discretely as case studies, or as a means for considering different methodological approaches to the practice of art history. Included here are important, but now fairly well-rehearsed, consider- ationsofissuesofraceandgender,forexample.Thesehavebeenselectedfor the clarity of their arguments’ emphasis, along with other essays concentrating in an accessible manner on key considerations of market, taste, and appropriations of concepts from wider culture, making them particularly appropriate for, for ex- ample, seminar discussion with students beginning study in history of art. The introductory essays to each section are less intended to provide blanket ‘‘background information’’ or biographical details than to highlight some of the key points of each text and, in places, to point to unusual or more commonly overlooked elements. They also seek to suggest interesting ways in which their arguments may be seen to confirm or challenge those in other texts in the volume. It is hoped that this may lead students themselves to recognize further commonalities and contradictions between the various interpretive methods and critical positions represented. Finally, the commentary seeks to encourage x