Music and Art week 5

Music and ArtMarilou Polymeropoulou

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http://musicandartoxford.wordpress.com/

Department for Continuing Education

Week 5Symbolism - Avant-Garde

Saturday, 18 February 2012

mailto:[email protected]

mailto:[email protected]



Previously

• Definition of art and music

• Aesthetics and criticism

• Impressionism


Today

• Continuing with symbolism

• Avant-garde: 1) expressionism, 2) futurism, 3) dadaism, 4) musical avant-garde


SymbolismSymbolist poems were attempts to evoke, rather than primarily to describe; symbolic imagery was

used to signify the state of the poet's soul

Senses - scent, sound, and colour

Schopenhauer: Art providing refuge from the world of strife and will

Charles Beaudelaire, Paul Verlaine, Arthur Rimbaud, Stéphane Mallarmé

Influenced: Oscar Wilde, W.B. Yeats, T.S. Eliot


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/St%C3%A9phane_Mallarm%C3%A9

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/St%C3%A9phane_Mallarm%C3%A9

De Satan ou de Dieu, qu'importe? Ange ou Sirène,Qu'importe, si tu rends, — fée aux yeux de velours,

Rythme, parfum, lueur, ô mon unique reine! —L'univers moins hideux et les instants moins lourds?

From God or Satan, who cares? Angel or Siren, Who cares, if you make, — fay with the velvet eyes, Rhythm, perfume, glimmer; my one and only queen!

The world less hideous, the minutes less leaden?

Baudelaire, Hymne à la Beauté, Fleurs du Mal, 1861

William Aggeler’s translation, 1954


Charles Baudelaire - L’Horloge (The Clock)


Avant-Garde Pre WW1

• Expressionism, 1905-1925

• Aim: evoke expressions or ideas

• Reaction to realism and impressionism


Edvard Munch - The Scream (Skrik)

1893-1910Oil, tempera, and pastel on cardboard

“I was walking along a path with two friends – the sun was setting – suddenly

the sky turned blood red – I paused, feeling exhausted, and leaned on the

fence – there was blood and tongues of fire above the blue-black fjord and the

city – my friends walked on, and I stood there trembling with anxiety – and I

sensed an infinite scream passing through nature.”


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oil_painting

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oil_painting

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tempera

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tempera

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pastel

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pastel

Vincent Van Gogh• Born in Holland 1853 - suicide in France 1890

• 1886 moves to Paris

• “As for me, I shall go on working, and here and there something of my work will prove of lasting value - but who will there be to achieve for figure painting what Claude Monet has achieved for landscape? However, you must feel, as I do, that someone like that is on the way - Rodin? - he does not use colour - it won't be him. But the painter of the future will be a colourist the like of which has never yet been seen.”

• Examples: The Potato Eaters (1885), The Red Vineyard (1888)

• Brush strokes (impasto) technique. Examples of Starry Night (1889)





Avant-Garde during WW1

• Futurism. Italy. Futurist manifesto 1909 by Marinetti.

• Aggression, militarism, nationalism, demolition of traditional elements, “beauty of speed”

• Influence on Fascism (glorification of war)


Luigi Russolo’s “Art of Noises” manifesto

Musical evolutionNoise sounds

Creation of noise instruments



Avant-Garde during WW1

• Dadaism, 1916 - 1922

• Visual arts, literature, poetry, theatre, graphic design

• Anti-war politics. Anti-art. Rejection of traditional culture. Ridicule. Criticism on nihilist perspectives of modernity. Anarchist


Marcel Duchamp, Fountain (1917)

“Found object” (readymade)

“Whether Mr Mutt made the fountain with his own hands or not has no importance. He CHOSE it. He took an article of life, placed it so that its useful significance disappeared under the new title and point of view – created a new thought for that object.”


Stravinsky - The rite of spring (Nijinsky’s choreography)



Musical Avant-Garde Post WWII


Stockhausen - Kontakte (1958)


Iannis Xenakis - Metastasis (1953)


Brian Eno - Wind on water (1975)


Aphex Twin - Dream scape (1993)


Autechre - Bronchus (1993)


Curtis Roads - Half life (1999)


21st century avant-garde

