Embodying and balancing the European avant-garde movement of the 1920s and the dialectical U.S. n... more Embodying and balancing the European avant-garde movement of the 1920s and the dialectical U.S. neo-avant-garde aesthetics of the 1960s, Robert Breer encompassed various art forms in his painting, sculpture and film. In doing so, he created a distinct style that embraces both photographic representation and non-figurative abstraction – a heterogeneous assemblage of sorts – to advocate taking an intermediate stance in the act of rendering the relation between artistic tradition and innovation. By looking at A Man and His Dog Out for Air (1957), Fuji (1974) and LMNO (1978), I show three strategies devised by Breer that help generate the vital energy in these animations: metamorphosis, gradational abstraction, and self-moving objects. All three strategies point to Breer’s dualistic endeavour to experiment with the aesthetic and ontological possibilities of moving images and with the animated objects within the frame in spite of photographic, realist and rational confinements.
This essay seeks to offer an analysis of Todd Haynes’ film Safe (1995) in light of the ripened th... more This essay seeks to offer an analysis of Todd Haynes’ film Safe (1995) in light of the ripened theories of networking and assemblage one frequently finds in contemporary discourses of new materialism. By attending to both the thematic and cinematographic aspects of the film, I argue that Haynes offers a curious rendition on the dexterous capacity of the mind that allows us to freely associate with and dissociate from various kinds of surroundings. As the film progresses, one witnesses a transformation taking place in the mind of the protagonist Carol, as the exhaustion caused by external objects becomes mediated and reduced when she starts to regain the lost subjectivity. What the film celebrates is a Jamesian flexibility and freedom of mind, a human capacity that has been diminished and worn out by the consumerist and networking culture.
Embodying and balancing the European avant-garde movement of the 1920s and the dialectical U.S. n... more Embodying and balancing the European avant-garde movement of the 1920s and the dialectical U.S. neo-avant-garde aesthetics of the 1960s, Robert Breer encompassed various art forms in his painting, sculpture and film. In doing so, he created a distinct style that embraces both photographic representation and non-figurative abstraction – a heterogeneous assemblage of sorts – to advocate taking an intermediate stance in the act of rendering the relation between artistic tradition and innovation. By looking at A Man and His Dog Out for Air (1957), Fuji (1974) and LMNO (1978), I show three strategies devised by Breer that help generate the vital energy in these animations: metamorphosis, gradational abstraction, and self-moving objects. All three strategies point to Breer’s dualistic endeavour to experiment with the aesthetic and ontological possibilities of moving images and with the animated objects within the frame in spite of photographic, realist and rational confinements.
This essay seeks to offer an analysis of Todd Haynes’ film Safe (1995) in light of the ripened th... more This essay seeks to offer an analysis of Todd Haynes’ film Safe (1995) in light of the ripened theories of networking and assemblage one frequently finds in contemporary discourses of new materialism. By attending to both the thematic and cinematographic aspects of the film, I argue that Haynes offers a curious rendition on the dexterous capacity of the mind that allows us to freely associate with and dissociate from various kinds of surroundings. As the film progresses, one witnesses a transformation taking place in the mind of the protagonist Carol, as the exhaustion caused by external objects becomes mediated and reduced when she starts to regain the lost subjectivity. What the film celebrates is a Jamesian flexibility and freedom of mind, a human capacity that has been diminished and worn out by the consumerist and networking culture.
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