On the necessity of wonder: how to explain an artwork to a committee

This essay emerged from an exhibition in 2006 in which notions of the Wunderkammer became central in the curation of the show. It brought together work by Anna Boggon, Silke Dettmers and Helen Maurer, three artists employing the language of what one could call the 'contemporary surreal' ('The Wrong End of the Telescope', Three Colts Gallery, London). The history and concept of the Wunderkammer is critical for the argument pursued in this article, which calls for the re-instatement of 'wonder' and the idea of 'the marvellous'. These are vital ingredients for visual arts practice but are unacknowledged in today's art academies. It takes on board the current debate of 'visual arts practice as research' and extends the argument of authors such as Sullivan (Art Practice as Research, 2005) and Barone, by demonstrating conventional academic definitions of 'knowledge' and artistic practice to be irreconcilable. The importance of not knowing. Wunderkammern and Curiosity Cabinets. Some thoughts on the real, the surreal and the contemporary surreal. The aspirations of words and the difficulties with 'proof'. Heterotopias. Questions rather than answers

Visualizing Shakespeare: Iconography and Interpretation in the Works of Salvador Dalí

Although William Shakespeare’s 16th century classical literature is rarely contextualized with the eccentricities of 20th century artist Salvador Dali, Shakespeare’s myriad of works have withstood the test of time and continue to be celebrated and reinterpreted by the likes of performers, scholars, and artists alike. Along with full-text illustrations of well-known plays, such as Macbeth (1946) and As You Like It (1953), Dali returned to the Shakespearean motif with his two series of dry-point engravings (Much Ado About Shakespeare and Shakespeare II) in 1968 and 1971. The series combine to formulate 31 depictions where Dali interprets Shakespeare’s text in a single image with classics like Romeo & Juliet as well as some of Shakespeare’s more obscure plays, such as Troilus and Cressida and Timon of Athens. Gettysburg College owns several of these prints, housed in the library’s Special Collections. Troilus and Cressida and Timon of Athens were on display in Schmucker Art Gallery as part of the Method and Meaning exhibit in the fall of 2014. Shakespeare’s plays are an eclectic repertoire of iconic characters such as Prince Hamlet and Othello as well as timeless themes (both comic and tragic) that easily lend themselves to an extraordinary diverse range of illustrations; from the 18th century historical narratives of Francis Hayman, 19th century whimsical paintings of William Blake, Victorian renditions of John Everett Millais, and then eventually leading to the 20th expressive freedom of Dali. Salvador Dali’s representations, like his predecessors, aim to capture the essence of each Shakespeare play using specific iconographic elements in order to create a visual narration, bringing together the interpretations of the author, artist, and the viewer

Film on Radio - The Case of Procession to the Private Sector

Sean Street's adaptation for Radio of David Gascoyne's Surrealist Film Scenario, "Procession to the Private Sector" was broadcast on BBC Radio 3 in September 1998. This paper reflects on the process of adaptation, and sets the project within the context of Surrealism in electronic media

Tolkien\u27s surrealistic pillow: Leaf by Niggle

This article proposes a link between J.R.R. Tolkien’s autobiographical short story Leaf by Niggle and twentieth century Surrealism. Elements of the story which are suggestive of surrealistic fantasy are discussed, alongside its singular origin and role as the antithesis of Tolkien’s slowly developed narratives, such as the monumental Middle-earth saga The Lord of the Rings and the more expansive The Silmarillion. The dream-like and subconscious qualities of Leaf by Niggle are outlined, as are Tolkien’s thoughts on that subject as revealed in his 1939 public lecture on fairy-stories. It is proposed that Leaf by Niggle, whilst occupying a unique place in Tolkien’s canon, can be placed within the long tradition of dream vision narratives dating back to the 1st century BC

Japanese Modernism And Cine-Text : Fragments And Flows At Empire\u27s Edge In Kitagawa Fuyuhiko And Yokomitsu Riichi

This article notes that Kitagawa Fuyuhiko\u27s writings from the 1920s and 1930s, together with the contemporaneous works of prose author Yokomitsu Riichi, are strongly marked by the confluence of the literary and the cinematic. Kitagawa and Yokomitsu\u27s engagement with film was not limited to a fascination with the precision, objectivity, or mobility of the “camera eye.” Rather, it extended to the entire ability of the cinematic apparatus to capture the temporality of objects in motion, and of the ability of the filmmaker to organize segments of space into a new synthetic whole. The article explores this confluence through a brief examination of four instances of “cine-text”: Kitagawa\u27 poetry collection War, Yokomitsu\u27 novel Shanghai, the concept of literary formalism Yokomitsu proposed around the year 1930, and the theory of the “prose film” that Kitagawa unveiled in the following decade

Who Were the Greatest Women Artists of the Twentieth Century? A Quantitative Investigation

Recent decades have witnessed an outpouring of research on the contributions of women artists. But as is typical in the humanities, these studies have been qualitative, and consequently do not provide a systematic evaluation of the relative importance of different women artists. A survey of the illustrations of the work of women artists contained in textbooks of art history reveals that art historians judge Cindy Sherman to be the greatest woman artist of the twentieth century, followed in order by Georgia O'Keeffe, Louise Bourgeois, Eva Hesse, and Frida Kahlo. The life cycles of these artists have differed greatly: the conceptual Sherman, Hesse, and Kahlo all arrived at their major contributions much earlier, and more suddenly, than the experimental O'Keeffe and Bourgeois. The contrasts are dramatic, as Sherman produced her greatest work while in her 20s, whereas Bourgeois did not produce her greatest work until she had passed the age of 80. The systematic measurement of this study adds a dimension to our understanding of both the role of women in twentieth-century art and the careers of the major figures.

Věra Chytilová's The Fruit of Paradise [Ovoce stromů rajských jíme, 1969]: Radical aura and the international avant-garde

This is the author accepted manuscript. The final version is available from Taylor & Francis (Routledge) via the DOI in this record.Věra Chytilová’s The Fruit of Paradise was filmed in 1969 on the heels of Chytilová’s now world-famous feature Daisies [Sedmikrásky (1966)]. It symbolically bridges the spirit of the Czech New Wave and the occupation of Czechoslovakia by Warsaw Pact troops, which began in August, 1968. The director herself has stated clearly that the film is a response to this invasion; it is a radical protest presented through abstraction, and a deliberate juxtaposition of mythology, classicism, eroticism, and formal experimentation, rather than a direct linguistic affront to the authorities. This article reflects on Chytilová’s film within the context of a wider twentieth-century avant-garde, noting particular correspondences and sympathies between international surrealisms, the early twentieth-century Czech avant-garde, and American experimental filmmaking. It explores the collaborative sensory affect created in the film through a synaesthetic blend of haptic encounters staged in an imaginary Eden. Through distortion, collage, convulsive chance, repetition, and slowness, the film build a radical aura in the Brakhagean sense, delivering an emotional and political intensity via formal rather than narrative elements. In the twenty-first century, Chytilová’s body of work occupies a prominent position in an international female avant-garde, forming dialogues across regional and political boundaries past and future

Painting with sound: the kaleidoscopic world of Lance Sieveking, a British Radio Modernist

In the late 1920s, British Radio became briefly and creatively entwined with a broader modernist culture. Largely through a series of spectacular programmes such as The Kaleidoscope (1928), made by the producer Lance Sieveking, the BBC started to develop an ‘art’ of sound. This episode has generally been passed over in histories of modernism and broadcasting: at best, it has been seen as a brief and whimsical piece of formal experimentation. But through examining Sieveking’s private papers, this article shows that this new art of sound was rich in meanings and symbolism, and had a wider influence than has hitherto been assumed. Sieveking drew heavily on his own life, which encompassed imprisonment and flying during the First World War, and a glittering array of social acquaintances, which connected him with the most advanced artistic thinking. This led him to find ways of representing in sound the subjective mental experiences and jumble of memories that so fascinated modernist artists in an age influenced by popular Freudianism. Sieveking’s life and writing also shows how he drew boldly from the visual language of experimental silent cinema at a critical moment in its own development. In creating a complex montage style for radio, Sieveking also anticipated some of the aesthetic devices that would be deployed in the coming era of sound on film. Sieveking and his programmes therefore illustrate a particular moment of British cultural history when the creative boundaries between different media were especially porous, with highly creative results