Elizabeth Legge has written on Dada, Surrealism, and contemporary Canadian and British art, in a number of journals including Art History, Word and Image, and Representations. Her intellectual interests include: the ways that artists have worked with and against language, and the relationship of language and image; and the instrumental uses of religious, racial, and national stereotypes and rhetorics in art. She is completing a book on Michael Snow's work and international critical reception. Phone: 416 978 7891 Address: Department of Art,
University of Toronto
6040-100 St George St,
Toronto M5S 3G3
In 1966, at the height of minimal art in New York, artist Michael Snow chose not to make another ... more In 1966, at the height of minimal art in New York, artist Michael Snow chose not to make another object to be placed in a room but instead spent a year planning a film of a room: Wavelength, a forty-five-minute more or less straight-line zoom from the near to the far wall of a loft space, accompanied by a rising sine wave. In this illustrated study, Elizabeth Legge describes Wavelength as a film of virtuosically managed tensions, sensuous beauty, subtle light and color, and recession into perspectival depth. At the same time, she points out, it is also austere: the loft space where the action unfolds could be the last clerical outpost of a defunct business. The zoom is punctuated by what Snow laconically called "4 human events": a woman directs two men who carry in a bookcase and place it against the left wall of the room; two women come in and listen to the Beatles' "Strawberry Fields" on the radio; a man briefly appears after protracted crashing and glass-breaking noises, wheels around, and drops dead; a young woman comes into the room and makes a frightened telephone call reporting the dead man ("And he doesn't look drunk, he looks dead."). Wavelength won the grand prize for experimental film at Knokke-le-Zoute in 1967, and it was crucial to critics' efforts to establish a vocabulary for temporal art. It was a "wavelength" that could stand up to the French new wave, and it has has functioned ever since as a touchstone for art and film studies, and as a blue screen in front of which a range of ideological and intellectual dramas have been played.
THE "YBA" (YOUNG BRITISH ARTIST) CAME to international atten- .... more THE "YBA" (YOUNG BRITISH ARTIST) CAME to international atten- ... REPRESENTATIONS 71 * Summer 2000 (C THE REGENTS OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA ... ISSN 0734-6018 pages 1-23. All rights reserved. Send requests for permission to reprint to ...
The magician’s top hat, standardized handwriting, calligraphic flourish and ink blot of Man Ray’s... more The magician’s top hat, standardized handwriting, calligraphic flourish and ink blot of Man Ray’s cover for the new series of Littérature in 1922 open questions of style in both fashion and writing. The cover’s emblem-like visual components resonate not only with questions of style and cultural sophistication in such magazines as Monsieur and La Gazette du bon ton, but also with contemporary Dada squabbles with Cubism, and with a Paris Dada bugbear” Gustave Lanson’s magisterial text, Histoire de la littérature française (1894). In his 1924 Manifeste André Breton deftly capitalized on Lansonism in order to turn it against its own premises and devices. Finally, Man Ray’s emblem points to questions at the time of authenticity, authority and falsity.
Man Ray's Littérature cover In January 1922 André Breton proposed a conference with an ambitious ... more Man Ray's Littérature cover In January 1922 André Breton proposed a conference with an ambitious reach and unwieldy title, Congrès pour la determination des directives et la défense de l'esprit moderne. Breton intended the conference to seek common threads in the diverse art and literary movements of the time. Although one of the things the modern had to be defended against might have been Dada, Breton slyly asked whether Dada, Cubism and Futurism might not be part of a large pre-existing force 'dont nous ne connaissons encore précisément ni le sens ni l'amplitude'. 1 He thereby yoked Dada to two movements it had previously mocked and, at the same time, introduced a note of metaphysical mystery into the concept of the 'modern'. In doing so, was Breton ecumenically adapting Charles Jeanneret and Amadée Ozenfant's Purist principle that universal laws and 'universal transmittable' forms were retrievable from culturally variable individual modes? 2 Breton's framing question, 'Entre les objets dits modernes, un chapeau haut de forme est-il plus ou moins moderne qu'une locomotive?', was enigmatic. 3 While the black cylinder of a top hat and a locomotive chimney might be a visual pun, what could be the basis for making a comparison or relative evaluation of these two nineteenth-century vestiges? 4
Between art and Art traite d’aspects particuliers du travail des photographes de musee dont les p... more Between art and Art traite d’aspects particuliers du travail des photographes de musee dont les photographies grand format d’oeuvres d’art, de vues d’installation et d’autres details des operations d’un musee, de meme que de son architecture, ne constituent ni de la documentation purement technique, ni de l’art photographique. Ingelevics tire profit des nombreux details offerts par ce type de photographie, lesquels occultent souvent, et paradoxalement, l’intention ou le sujet de la photographie. Il porte un regard anomique sur la signalisation et sur les espaces improvises (bureau de securite, expositions temporaires, couloirs) du musee que le visiteur ne remarque normalement pas lorsqu’il se dirige vers ce qu’on imagine etre l’attraction principale.
This two-part catalogue, published on the occasion of Frenkel's touring exhibition of video i... more This two-part catalogue, published on the occasion of Frenkel's touring exhibition of video intallations and website project, contains essays by six authors who address a wide range of issues and concerns dealt with in the works. Topics discussed include: the experiences of being a stranger/foreigner, exile, migration, memory, history, identity and belonging. The essays also situate Frenkel's hybrid cultural practice within contexts of the Freudian model of trauma, the disappearance of artworks intended for the Fuhrer Museum in Linz, and Sweden's refugee policy. Includes transcribed excerpts from the video component of "Body Missing". Texts in English, Swedish and German (one text by Schade in Swedish and German only). Biographical notes on artist and authors. Circa. 70 bibl. ref.
... It ill alao important to situate L1. Sai1aJ6 V~ in the con.stellati.on of concerns ofPicabia ... more ... It ill alao important to situate L1. Sai1aJ6 V~ in the con.stellati.on of concerns ofPicabia and hiA colleagues at the time, cspccially 'art all religion.' In L1. &zDtu V~ Picabia was not just adapting this Dada clich~ all a way of mutually d:i8credi.ting art and religion. ...
In 1966, at the height of minimal art in New York, artist Michael Snow chose not to make another ... more In 1966, at the height of minimal art in New York, artist Michael Snow chose not to make another object to be placed in a room but instead spent a year planning a film of a room: Wavelength, a forty-five-minute more or less straight-line zoom from the near to the far wall of a loft space, accompanied by a rising sine wave. In this illustrated study, Elizabeth Legge describes Wavelength as a film of virtuosically managed tensions, sensuous beauty, subtle light and color, and recession into perspectival depth. At the same time, she points out, it is also austere: the loft space where the action unfolds could be the last clerical outpost of a defunct business. The zoom is punctuated by what Snow laconically called "4 human events": a woman directs two men who carry in a bookcase and place it against the left wall of the room; two women come in and listen to the Beatles' "Strawberry Fields" on the radio; a man briefly appears after protracted crashing and glass-breaking noises, wheels around, and drops dead; a young woman comes into the room and makes a frightened telephone call reporting the dead man ("And he doesn't look drunk, he looks dead."). Wavelength won the grand prize for experimental film at Knokke-le-Zoute in 1967, and it was crucial to critics' efforts to establish a vocabulary for temporal art. It was a "wavelength" that could stand up to the French new wave, and it has has functioned ever since as a touchstone for art and film studies, and as a blue screen in front of which a range of ideological and intellectual dramas have been played.
THE "YBA" (YOUNG BRITISH ARTIST) CAME to international atten- .... more THE "YBA" (YOUNG BRITISH ARTIST) CAME to international atten- ... REPRESENTATIONS 71 * Summer 2000 (C THE REGENTS OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA ... ISSN 0734-6018 pages 1-23. All rights reserved. Send requests for permission to reprint to ...
The magician’s top hat, standardized handwriting, calligraphic flourish and ink blot of Man Ray’s... more The magician’s top hat, standardized handwriting, calligraphic flourish and ink blot of Man Ray’s cover for the new series of Littérature in 1922 open questions of style in both fashion and writing. The cover’s emblem-like visual components resonate not only with questions of style and cultural sophistication in such magazines as Monsieur and La Gazette du bon ton, but also with contemporary Dada squabbles with Cubism, and with a Paris Dada bugbear” Gustave Lanson’s magisterial text, Histoire de la littérature française (1894). In his 1924 Manifeste André Breton deftly capitalized on Lansonism in order to turn it against its own premises and devices. Finally, Man Ray’s emblem points to questions at the time of authenticity, authority and falsity.
Man Ray's Littérature cover In January 1922 André Breton proposed a conference with an ambitious ... more Man Ray's Littérature cover In January 1922 André Breton proposed a conference with an ambitious reach and unwieldy title, Congrès pour la determination des directives et la défense de l'esprit moderne. Breton intended the conference to seek common threads in the diverse art and literary movements of the time. Although one of the things the modern had to be defended against might have been Dada, Breton slyly asked whether Dada, Cubism and Futurism might not be part of a large pre-existing force 'dont nous ne connaissons encore précisément ni le sens ni l'amplitude'. 1 He thereby yoked Dada to two movements it had previously mocked and, at the same time, introduced a note of metaphysical mystery into the concept of the 'modern'. In doing so, was Breton ecumenically adapting Charles Jeanneret and Amadée Ozenfant's Purist principle that universal laws and 'universal transmittable' forms were retrievable from culturally variable individual modes? 2 Breton's framing question, 'Entre les objets dits modernes, un chapeau haut de forme est-il plus ou moins moderne qu'une locomotive?', was enigmatic. 3 While the black cylinder of a top hat and a locomotive chimney might be a visual pun, what could be the basis for making a comparison or relative evaluation of these two nineteenth-century vestiges? 4
Between art and Art traite d’aspects particuliers du travail des photographes de musee dont les p... more Between art and Art traite d’aspects particuliers du travail des photographes de musee dont les photographies grand format d’oeuvres d’art, de vues d’installation et d’autres details des operations d’un musee, de meme que de son architecture, ne constituent ni de la documentation purement technique, ni de l’art photographique. Ingelevics tire profit des nombreux details offerts par ce type de photographie, lesquels occultent souvent, et paradoxalement, l’intention ou le sujet de la photographie. Il porte un regard anomique sur la signalisation et sur les espaces improvises (bureau de securite, expositions temporaires, couloirs) du musee que le visiteur ne remarque normalement pas lorsqu’il se dirige vers ce qu’on imagine etre l’attraction principale.
This two-part catalogue, published on the occasion of Frenkel's touring exhibition of video i... more This two-part catalogue, published on the occasion of Frenkel's touring exhibition of video intallations and website project, contains essays by six authors who address a wide range of issues and concerns dealt with in the works. Topics discussed include: the experiences of being a stranger/foreigner, exile, migration, memory, history, identity and belonging. The essays also situate Frenkel's hybrid cultural practice within contexts of the Freudian model of trauma, the disappearance of artworks intended for the Fuhrer Museum in Linz, and Sweden's refugee policy. Includes transcribed excerpts from the video component of "Body Missing". Texts in English, Swedish and German (one text by Schade in Swedish and German only). Biographical notes on artist and authors. Circa. 70 bibl. ref.
... It ill alao important to situate L1. Sai1aJ6 V~ in the con.stellati.on of concerns ofPicabia ... more ... It ill alao important to situate L1. Sai1aJ6 V~ in the con.stellati.on of concerns ofPicabia and hiA colleagues at the time, cspccially 'art all religion.' In L1. &zDtu V~ Picabia was not just adapting this Dada clich~ all a way of mutually d:i8credi.ting art and religion. ...
David Lomas’s meditative study is a résumé of the role of psychoanalytic theory in Surrealism in ... more David Lomas’s meditative study is a résumé of the role of psychoanalytic theory in Surrealism in several ways: as the writing of Sigmund Freud and others was consciously adapted by the Surrealists for their various intellectual ends; as psychoanalytic theory was used to produce the iconographic art history of Surrealism; and as contemporary psychoanalytically-inflected theory (that of Julia Kristeva, Jacques Lacan, Jacques Derrida, Gilles Deleuze, Hal Foster, Rosalind Krauss, and Judith Butler) elucidates, and implicitly retroactively legitimates, the projects of Surrealism.
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