Redefining Portraiture

edEfining PortraIture R Human Representation in Dada and Surrealism [First International Dada Exhibition, 1920] Project by Moriah L. Russo Dr. Jonathan F. Walz ARH355: Special Studies in Dada and Surrealism TABLE of contents Introduction to the Exhibition …………………………………………………………………………………………. 3 List of Included Works …………………………………………………………………...……………………….…… 4 Detailed Analyses (Un-Dix) .……………..………………………………………………….…….…………………… 5 Conclusion …………………………………………………………………………………………………………….. 15 Bibliography ……………………………………………………………………..…………………………………….. 16 Redefining Portraiture: Human Representation in Dada and Surrealism 2 INTRODUCTION Contradictions are inherent to the art of both the Dada and Surrealist movements of the early 20th century. Constantly striving to undermine and subvert art historical traditions, visual conventions, and customary art making, artists working in these groups challenged themselves to create works born of a critical intrinsic paradox: art that is in itself anti-art. Dada artists like Jean Arp worked in traditionally ‘low art’ materials—colored paper, glass, sand, and even dust—to create extraordinary works that challenged established ideals for fine art. Marcel Duchamp broke down convention and shocked the artworld with his submission of Fountain—a ‘rectified readymade’ that elevated the everyday—to the Society of Independent Artists exhibition in 1917. Surrealist artists borrowed from Dada absurdist activities in their creation of artworks that explored the subconscious mind through unexpected juxtapositions and the function of thought in the absence of reason through “pure psychic automatism.” Most, if not all, sub-categories of Dada and Surrealist art spring from this basic premise of innovative visual contradiction. This ‘redefinition’ of art by Dadaists and Surrealists can be clearly examined within one of the most central genres in western art history: portraiture. Traditionally, portraiture is defined as “a pictorial representation of a person usually showing the face.”1 Whereas artists working before the modern era strove for unembellished likenesses in portraiture, presenting the personality of the subject through both physical appearance and supplemental material props, avant-garde artists discovered unconventional and innovative ways to express identity through art. Redefining Portraiture: Human Representation in Dada and Surrealism places portraiture of the Dada and Surrealist movements under the microscope in order to examine not only the overarching formal juxtapositions and conceptual contradictions that are inherent to the work, but also concerns of subconscious expression, mechanization, gender expectations, and personal identity that reveal themselves upon second glance. The exhibition opens with archetypal examples of Dada portraiture by the artists Jean Arp, Charles Demuth, and Arthur Dove that present collaged biomorphic, abstract, and appropriated forms as accumulated representations of individual personalities. In the ‘object portraits’ by Francis Picabia that follow, mechanomorphic forms and automatons indicate the growing anxiety regarding mechanization that plagued the transition into modernity in the early 20th century, as the artist depicts his friends and contemporaries by means of nonhuman machine parts. Succeeding works in the exhibition by Man Ray reveal themes of gender roles and expectations for femininity through visual juxtapositions between material objects and the human (particularly female) body. Last but certainly not least, objects by female artists active in the Dada and Surrealist groups like Elsa von Freytag-Loringhoven and Meret Oppenheim counter these depictions through assertive depictions of female identity, experience, and perspective. Délectez-vous dans les juxtapositions! 1 http://www.merriam‐webster.com/dictionary/portrait Redefining Portraiture: Human Representation in Dada and Surrealism 3 WORKS Jean Arp, The Entombment of the Birds and the Butterflies (Head of Tzara), 1916-17. Painted wooden relief: 40 x 32.5 cm, 15 ¾ x 12 ¾ in. Kunsthaus Zurich. Charles Demuth, The Figure Five in Gold, 1928. Oil on cardboard: 90.2 x 76.2 cm, 35 ½ x 30 in. Metropolitan Museum of Art, Alfred Stieglitz Collection. Arthur Dove, Portrait of Ralph Dusenberry, 1924. Oil, folding wooden ruler, wood, and printed paper pasted on canvas: 55.9 x 45.7 cm, 22 x 18 in. Metropolitan Museum of Art, Alfred Stieglitz Collection. Francis Picabia, Ici, c'est ici Stieglitz, July-August issue of 291 (No. 5-6), 1915. Printed publication. Private collection. Francis Picabia, Portrait d'une Jeune Fille Américaine dans l'État de Nudité (Portrait of a Nude Young American Girl), July-August issue of 291 (No. 5-6), 1915. Printed publication. Private collection. Man Ray, L’Homme (Man), 1918. Gelatin silver print: 48.3 x 36.8 cm. Private collection, New York. Man Ray, La Femme (Woman), 1918. Gelatin silver print: 48.3 x 36.8 cm. Private collection, New York. Man Ray, Le Violon d’Ingres (Ingres's Violin), 1924. Gelatin silver print mounted on paper: 48.3 x 36.8 cm, 19 x 14 ½ in. Collection of Rosalind and Melvin Jacobs. Elsa von Freytag-Loringhoven, Portrait of Marcel Duchamp, c. 1920. Photograph by Charles Sheeler: 9 5/8 x 7 5/8 in. Museum of Modern Art, New York. Meret Oppenheim, Ma Gouvernante (My Governess), 1936. Object: 14 x 21 x 33 cm, 5 ½ x 8 ¼ x 13 in. Moderna Museet, Stockholm. Redefining Portraiture: Human Representation in Dada and Surrealism 4 UN Jean Arp, The Entombment of the Birds and the Butterflies (Head of Tzara), 1916-17. Painted wooden relief: 40 x 32.5 cm, 15 ¾ x 12 ¾ in. Kunsthaus Zurich. Jean Arp’s The Entombment of the Birds and the Butterflies (Head of Tzara) provides a brilliant basis for understanding just how groundbreaking Dada portraiture really was. Born in Alsace in 1886 to a German father and French mother, Jean Arp grappled with issues of identity throughout his artistic career, preserving both the French and German forms of his name.1 From his work within the Dada movement in Zurich from 1915-1920, Arp is most remembered for his collages ‘made according to the laws of chance’ and for his painted wooden reliefs. Within these works, Arp profoundly employed elements of chance and the search for universals in art. Through reducing figures to biomorphic shapes, Arp attempted to foreground basic forms that are universal to all experience, providing a platform for each viewer to relate the piece to their own experience. This particular woodcut relief is a portrait of Tristan Tzara, a contemporary of Jean Arp who worked within the Dada group in Zurich. As a result of identifying the painted relief as both a collection of biomorphs and as the ‘head’ of his artist-friend in the work’s title, Arp highlights the inbuilt contradictions in this work; the viewer is presented with the portrait of a particular individual that has been universalized to the extent of nonobjective biomorphic shapes. While some forms can be identified as flying creatures like birds and butterflies and the mounted layers of painted wooden planks create depth that implies a scene, the ‘collage’ relief retains the shape of a human head. 1. “Jean Arp: Introduction,” MoMA, The Collection. 2009 Oxford University Press. Web. <http://www.moma.org/collection/artist.php?artist_id=11>. Redefining Portraiture: Human Representation in Dada and Surrealism 5 DEUx Charles Demuth, The Figure Five in Gold, 1928. Oil on cardboard: 90.2 x 76.2 cm, 35 ½ x 30 in. Metropolitan Museum of Art, Alfred Stieglitz Collection. The Figure Five in Gold is a further example of portraiture ‘redefined’ in the modern era. Charles Demuth was an American artist who worked contemporaneously with Dada artists in New York in the early decades of the 20th century. Not wishing to align himself with any particular style or taste in order to maintain his autonomy, Demuth worked on the fringes of the New York Dada group. Nevertheless, his work displays shared concerns regarding the industrial revolution, mechanization of modern life, and subsequent interest in machinery, mechanomorphs, and automatons. There is an identifiable shift in Demuth’s work that can be linked to his growing friendship with—and resulting influence from—Marcel Duchamp after the Society of Independent Artists exhibition in 1917. Demuth discontinued his fine watercolors of residential houses and natural forms to explore the modern industrial landscape, factories, and mechanized forms. Restrained, geometrical, and precise, the work reflects anxiety concerning industrialization—a pertinent issue in the early 20th century. As part of a series of related works made in the late 1920s by Demuth, The Figure Five in Gold is an abstract portrait of the poet William Carlos Williams and was inspired from lines of “The Great Figure”: “Among the rain / and lights / I saw the figure 5 / in gold / on a red / fire truck / moving / tense / unheeded / to gong clangs / siren howls / and wheels rumbling / through the dark city.”1 The poet’s name and initials can be found within Demuth’s painting, as well as an “accumulation of images associated with him.”2 Nevertheless, Demuth chose to represent the poet’s identity not through physical resemblance but with words and imagery from his verse and feelings evoked by the poem. The Figure Five in Gold presents a severe scene of the city streets; the harsh angles and geometric forms recall Williams’ lines that describe the crashing resonance of “siren howls” from a bright red fire truck “rumbling” through the city streets. "Charles Demuth: The Figure 5 in Gold (49.59.1)". In Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2000. Web. <http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/works-ofart/49.59.1>. 2. Ibid. 1. Redefining Portraiture: Human Representation in Dada and Surrealism 6 TRoIs Arthur Dove, Portrait of Ralph Dusenberry, 1924. Oil, folding wooden ruler, wood, and printed paper pasted on canvas: 55.9 x 45.7 cm, 22 x 18 in. Metropolitan Museum of Art, Alfred Stieglitz Collection. Arthur Dove was an American painter who, in addition to contributing to the ‘redefinition’ of portraiture by the avant-garde, likely brought modernism to the United States after time spent observing artists like Henri Matisse and Paul Cezanne in France in the first decade of the 20th century.1 Upon his return to the United States in 1907, Dove “created some of the first distinctively nonrepresentational works produced by an American,” becoming close with Alfred Stieglitz, the modern photographer whose abstract portrait by Francis Picabia follows.2 Like Arp and Demuth in their respective works The Entombment of the Birds and the Butterflies (Head of Tzara) and The Figure Five in Gold, Arthur Dove presents accumulated biomorphic, abstract, and appropriated forms as collected representations of his subject’s individual personality in Portrait of Ralph Dusenberry. Similar to Demuth’s representation of William Carlos Williams, Dove illustrates his houseboat neighbor, Ralph Dusenberry, as a collection of objects associated with his personality rather than his physical likeness.3 The battered wooden boards, broken into pieces and arranged to connote fish forms, suggest elements of the “marine environment” the two men shared: docks, driftwood, building materials.4 Biomorphic forms in the background suggest coastal landscapes, sandy beaches, and tree-lined shores, while the large starry banner recalls ship sails and nautical flags. Other elements of Dove’s work also serve as collected associations with personal attributes of his subject; the rulers around the painting’s rim are linked to Dusenberry’s architectural career.5 Dove’s familiarity with his subject is made clear through his inclusion of personal elements like the sheet music placed at the lower center of the frame, symbolizing a favorite hymn often sung by the artist’s nautical neighbor.6 1. Haskell, Barbara. "Dove, Arthur." Grove Art Online. Oxford Art Online. 21 Apr. 2011 <http://www.oxfordartonline.com/subscriber/article/grove/art/T023508>. 2. ibid. 3. "Arthur Dove: Portrait of Ralph Dusenberry (49.70.36)". In Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2000. Web. <http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/worksof-art/49.70.36>. Redefining Portraiture: Human Representation in Dada and Surrealism 7 Quatre Francis Picabia, Ici, c'est ici Stieglitz, July-August issue of 291 (No. 5-6), 1915. Printed publication. Private collection. Francis Picabia’s mecanomorphic portraits demonstrate the same attack on art historical convention as Marcel Duchamp’s Fountain, created two years after Picabia’s object-portraits like Ici, c'est ici Stieglitz were published in 291. Painting mechanical apparatuses— let alone mechanical portraits—was entirely radical for a culture accustomed to creating and viewing human-based art. Picabia redefined and revolutionized portraiture by questioning how to create a likeness that gets to the core of an individual without relying on the arthistorical western tradition of realistic portrayal and physical resemblance. He made portraits of artist-friends contemporaries in the proto-Dada group in New York as mechanisms and machines representative of their identities and character traits, capturing the “modern human spirit” through machinist metaphors often borrowed from magazine advertisements.1 Addressing the viewer as if having to point out an ostensibly obvious resemblance, Picabia titled his mechanomorphic portrait of Alfred Stieglitz, “Here, This is Stieglitz Here.” Consistent with his other object-portraits, Picabia has portrayed his subject with an item associated with his or her personality. On an uncomplicated level, Stieglitz’s portrait is a camera because he was a photographer. In spite of this, the portrait can be read on more multifaceted levels as well. For example, Picabia depicts the camera so far open that the bellows have broken away from the camera frame. This element, along with the word “ideal” placed in an Old English font above the main form and the attached automobile break, call attention to Stieglitz’s photographic idealism that artists of Picabia’s circle considered out-dated and uninspiring—stuck in the past with a jammed parking break.2 "Francis Picabia: Here, This Is Stieglitz Here (49.70.14)". In Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2000. Web. <http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/works-of-art/49.70.14>. 2. ibid. 1. Redefining Portraiture: Human Representation in Dada and Surrealism 8 CInq Francis Picabia, Portrait d'une Jeune Fille Américaine dans l'État de Nudité (Portrait of a Nude Young American Girl), July-August issue of 291 (No. 5-6), 1915. Printed publication. Private collection. Picabia’s mechanomorphic object-portraits not only capture the zeitgeist of the industrial age, but they also provide a strong commentary on gender roles and relations in the early part of the 20th century. The familiar Dada theme of contradiction is evident in these mechanomorphic works in both the nature of Picabia’s non-human representations and in his juxtapositions of mechanical apparatuses with the human body, particularly with the female form. Portrait d'une Jeune Fille Américaine dans l'État de Nudité is a portrait of a woman, yet it does not resemble the natural body of a female, but an objectification of the female form. Although this work is not labeled with the name of a specific individual, Picabia’s title tells us that the work is indeed a portrait. As with the artist’s other works, Portrait d'une Jeune Fille Américaine dans l'État de Nudité can be read on multiple different levels. In general terms, this mechanic image of a spark plug is an indiscriminate portrait of American femininity, presenting an association between the female body and a material object. This reading reveals sexual overtones associating the spark plug with sexual arousal, as well as the mechanical form with the phallic. Further analysis reveals the possibility that Picabia’s ‘portrait’ may be of a specific individual—ostensibly, Agnes Meyer.1 This association can be drawn through connections that Picabia made between the function of the mechanical object depicted and personal qualities of Agnes Meyer that correspond to the spark plug’s function; Meyer was seen as a motivating force within the protoDada group in New York, functioning both as a patron and collaborator. Agnes was the “spark that ignited the new energies” within that group.2 Within this reading, Picabia’s title can be reinterpreted (away from sexual connotations) to imply the expressive honesty, or ‘nudity,’ of the portrait and its success in exposing Meyer’s identity. 1. Innes Homer, William. “Picabia's Jeune fille américaine dans l'état de nudité and Her Friends.”The Art Bulletin. Vol. 57, No. 1 (Mar., 1975), pp. 110-115. Redefining Portraiture: Human Representation in Dada and Surrealism 9 SIx Man Ray, L’Homme (Man), 1918. Gelatin silver print: 48.3 x 36.8 cm. Private collection, New York. This recurring theme of the juxtaposition of inanimate objects and the human form is central to much of Man Ray’s avant-garde and proto-Dadaist photography in the 1910s. Born in Philadelphia and brought up in New York, Man Ray became the only American artist to actively participate in the naissance and growth of both Dada and Surrealism.1 Man Ray moved to Paris in 1921 and lived there for twenty years, during which time he experimented with unusual media and developed the ‘rayograph,’ his personal adaptation of the photogram.2 L’Homme is the first readymade that Man Ray created and subsequently photographed.3 The main form, a rotary eggbeater, hovers vertically against a blank wall, casting an evident shadow that creates a duplicate image. About this work and Man Ray’s La Femme (to be discussed next), authors of the Original Copy exhibition text write: “Robbed of their familiar contexts, both objects are bathed in isolation, a photogenic strangeness amplified by the uncertainty between the forms of the objects and their shadows.” The general form of this readymade and its shadow combined unambiguously connote the form of male genitalia. This combinational use of object and light prefigures the Surrealist method of juxtaposing two things in order to create a unique third reality contingent upon the material grouping. L’Homme takes on an entirely new, sexual connotation that alludes to the phallic and power relations within gender interactions. 1. 2. 3. Foresta, Merry A. "Man Ray." Grove Art Online. Oxford Art Online. 21 Apr. 2011<http://www.oxfordartonline.com/subscriber/article/grove/art/T053862>. ibid. Roxana Marcoci, Geoffrey Batchen, and Tobia Bezzola, The Original Copy: Photography of Sculpture, 1839 to Today. New York: Museum of Modern Art, 2010. Print. 167. Redefining Portraiture: Human Representation in Dada and Surrealism 10 Sept Man Ray, La Femme (Woman),1918. Gelatin silver print: 48.3 x 36.8 cm. Private collection, New York. La Femme (Woman) is the counterpart to Man Ray’s L’Homme (Man) discussed previously. This work is sometimes confused with the artist’s variation of La Femme, entitled Integration of Shadows (1918)—merely a mirror image print of the original work.1 In titling these two works L’Homme and La Femme, Man Ray identified the objects as portraits of a male and a female, respectively. This acknowledgement challenged traditional notions of portraiture by manifestly branding accumulations of inanimate objects as symbols of human beings. La Femme was Man Ray’s first completed assisted readymade, in which he assembled pieces of different objects into a new whole. This method once again relates to a proto-Surrealist mode of combination and juxtaposition to create a new reality that redefines both the assembled objects and the mode of art itself. La Femme is a collection of photography equipment: two circular reflectors, a panel of glass, and clothespins.2 Like in L’Homme, Man Ray arranged these objects in order to suggest the female figure. Practically an upturned version of the ‘male’ portrait assemblage, the two spherical reflectors and extended glass plane recall the form of a female torso and breasts. Similar compositional trends are evident in other works by Man Ray, for example his photograph entitled Return to Reason (1923), which captures the “breasts and torso of a model ribbed with the shadow from a blind.”3 Roxana Marcoci, Geoffrey Batchen, and Tobia Bezzola, The Original Copy: Photography of Sculpture, 1839 to Today. New York: Museum of Modern Art, 2010. Print. 2. ibid 3. Gale, Matthew. “Beginnings of Surrealism 1924-1929.” Dada and Surrealism. New York: Phaidon Press, 1997. Print. 236. 1. Redefining Portraiture: Human Representation in Dada and Surrealism 11 HuIt Man Ray, Le Violon d’Ingres (Ingres's Violin), 1924. Gelatin silver print mounted on paper: 48.3 x 36.8 cm, 19 x 14 ½ in. Collection of Rosalind and Melvin Jacobs. Man Ray explored the physical relationships and comparisons between the human—particularly female—form and inanimate objects throughout his artistic career. Like L’Homme and La Femme, Le Violon d’Ingres presents an illustrative display of the complex relationship between animate and inanimate figures— specifically, a woman’s body and a violin. This visual play reveals Man Ray’s interest in a “fragmentation in reality,” as he creates an image that first presents a straightforward and natural truth (the female nude) and then subverts that reality through visual juxtapositions caused by transmogrificating techniques.1 Beyond his experimentation with visual juxtapositions that contributed to the ‘redefinition’ of portraiture, Man Ray’s works like Le Violon d’Ingres present important themes of complex gender roles and expectations for femininity through their visual juxtapositions. The title of this work reveals Man Ray’s influence by the French painter Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres; Le Violon d’Ingres is part of a series of photographs that pay homage to Ingres’ paintings that are often criticized in the modern era for presenting women as objets de luxe, or “luxury articles.”2 Such depictions of women for the ‘male gaze’ are ever-present in the western art historical tradition. In addition to the literal translation of the work’s title, Ingres’s Violin, which metaphorically gives possession of the female model to the French painter, its idiomatic meaning for the French—“hobby”—objectifies the woman even further.3 A “male 'colonization' of the eroticized female body is assumed” as if the woman-violin is passively waiting, ready to be ‘played.’4 Man Ray depicts the female model as armless, which at first sight contributes to the visual comparison between the shape of her body and the contours of a violin, but read ‘hysterically,’ strips the female of both her physical and symbolic agency. Thus, Le Violon d’Ingres teeters on the border between objectification and admiration of the female body.5 Gale, Matthew. “Beginnings of Surrealism 1924-1929.” Dada and Surrealism. New York: Phaidon Press, 1997. Print. 236. 2. Ribeiro, Aileen. Ingres in Fashion: Representations of Dress and Appearance in Ingres`s Images of Women. Singapore: Aileen Ribeiro, 1999. Print. 3. “Le Violon d'Ingres (Ingres's Violin),” The J. Paul Getty Museum. Web. <http://www.getty.edu/art/gettyguide/artObjectDetails?artobj=61240>. 4. Ribeiro, Aileen. Ingres in Fashion: Representations of Dress and Appearance in Ingres`s Images of Women. Singapore: Aileen Ribeiro, 1999. Print. 5. “Le Violon d'Ingres (Ingres's Violin),” The J. Paul Getty Museum. Web. <http://www.getty.edu/art/gettyguide/artObjectDetails?artobj=61240>. 1. Redefining Portraiture: Human Representation in Dada and Surrealism 12 Neuf Elsa von Freytag-Loringhoven, Portrait of Marcel Duchamp, c. 1920. Photograph by Charles Sheeler: 9 5/8 x 7 5/8 in. Museum of Modern Art, New York. Elsa von Freytag-Loringhoven was so well known as a female participant in New York Dada that she became known as ‘the Dadaist Baroness Elsa von Freytag-Loringhoven.’ Born in Germany, the Baroness travelled the world before settling in New York after marrying a German Baron.1 Soon after her arrival in the city, Elsa became extremely active in the Dada movement, socializing with artists there like Marcel Duchamp. Proof of the Baroness’ creative power and influence is evident in comparisons between her work with found rubbish—for example, God (1917)—and Duchamp’s readymades like Fountain (1917). It is even rumored that the Baroness served as an artistic inspiration for Duchamp’s anti-conventional work, sending him the porcelain urinal through the post. The Baroness contributed to the redefinition of portraiture by depicting Marcel Duchamp in this work through an accumulation of objects: among other things, a broken wine glass, feathers, and twigs. Like other female artists working within Dada and Surrealist groups like Meret Oppenheim (discussed next), the Baroness challenged not only traditional modes of portraiture, but also the established expectations for gender roles and femininity. Works by Elsa von Freytag-Loringhoven confront the female objectification so evident in works by her male contemporaries like Man Ray through bold declarations of creativity, individuality, and personal experience. Works like Portrait of Marcel Duchamp can even be read as a reversal of this sexual objectification of women; out of her infatuation for Duchamp, the Baroness created this assemblage-portrait to capture his essence and, in a way, have him for herself. Through adopting a performative and alternative way of life, the ‘Dadaist Baroness’ broke down social expectations for women, completely embodying the idea of the modern woman and pushing it to the breaking point through her aggressive sexuality. 1. “Baroness Elsa von Freytag-Loringhoven,” Daughters of Dada: Francis M. Nauman Fine Art. 2006. Web. <http://www.francisnaumann.com/daughters%20of%20dada/elsa.html>. Redefining Portraiture: Human Representation in Dada and Surrealism 13 DIx Meret Oppenheim, Ma Gouvernante (My Governess), 1936. Object: 14 x 21 x 33 cm, 5 ½ x 8 ¼ x 13 in. Moderna Museet, Stockholm. Meret Oppenheim is another striking female member of the Surrealist group, a typically male-oriented sphere. Born in Berlin, Oppenheim moved to Paris in 1932 and was soon incorporated into the Surrealist group there by Alberto Giacometti. Oppenheim worked within the atmosphere of hostility to female agency to her own advantage. She was viewed as the ideal surrealist woman—the femme-enfant or woman-child, “who through her youth, naivety and charm was believed to have more direct and spontaneous access to the realms of the dream and the unconscious.”1 Man Ray, who used her as a nude model for numerous photographs, particularly admired Oppenheim. This adoration by male Surrealists provided Oppenheim with a platform to introduce and address her own range of issues to the Surrealist dialogue. In her Surrealist object-portrait, Ma Gouvernante, Meret Oppenheim addresses the themes of female objectification and the ‘fine line’ that male artists like Man Ray walked between appreciation of the female form and sexual objectification of women. Pulling from Dada impulses to combine disparate objects—like Duchamp’s assisted readymade Bicycle Wheel (1913)—Oppenheim combined both contrasting objects and divergent realities in Ma Gouvernante. As an assemblage-portrait of a governess from her youth, Oppenheim combined everyday items like a silver platter, white women’s shoes, and string, to create a disturbing connotation of a woman on her back, tied down with her legs spread open. Ma Gouvernante juxtaposes the silver tray as a symbol of female vanity and admiration of the female form with the bound heels that signify the restriction of sexual objectification. 1. Whitney Chadwick. "Oppenheim, Meret." Grove Art Online. Oxford Art Online. 22 Apr. 2011<http://www.oxfordartonline.com/subscriber/article/grove/art/T063647>. Redefining Portraiture: Human Representation in Dada and Surrealism 14 ConclusIon On a broad scale, art of the early 20th century was preoccupied with challenging the limitations and destabilizing the conventions of western art of the pre-modern era. Artists working within the Dada and Surrealist groups achieved this subversion through a widescale redefinition of portraiture, altering established approaches for presenting identity. Dadaists and Surrealists like Jean Arp, Charles Demuth, and Arthur Dove replaced the traditional standard of literal likenesses with symbolic and meaningful accumulations of objects associated with the personalities of their subjects. These artists realize true representation through collections of personal elements that stimulate not only a visual experience but also an emotional one. Francis Picabia took this ‘redefinition’ one step farther with his mechanomorphic object-portraits that both captured the spirit of modernity and also commented on the human condition and gender relations. Man Ray’s readymades and manipulated photography juxtapose the human form with inanimate objects, providing a basis for the fundamental questioning of the human condition, gender roles, and femininity. Female artists like Elsa von Freytag-Loringhoven and Meret Oppenheim challenge this depicted objectification with bold declarations of creativity, individuality, personal experience, and the female condition. Redefining Portraiture: Human Representation in Dada and Surrealism 15 Bibliography "Arthur Dove: Portrait of Ralph Dusenberry (49.70.36)". In Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2000. Web. <http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/works-of-art/49.70.36>. Baroness Elsa von Freytag-Loringhoven,” Daughters of Dada: Francis M. Nauman Fine Art. 2006. Web. <http://www.francisnaumann.com/daughters%20of%20dada/elsa.html>. Bohn, Willard. “Picabia's 'Mechanical Expression' and the Demise of the Object,” The Art Bulletin, Vol. 67, No. 4 (Dec., 1985), pp. 673-677. “Charles Demuth: The Figure 5 in Gold (49.59.1)". In Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2000. Web. <http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/works-of-art/49.59.1>. Foresta, Merry A. "Man Ray." Grove Art Online. Oxford Art Online. 21 Apr. 2011. Web. <http://www.oxfordartonline.com/subscriber/article/grove/art/T053862>. Haskell, Barbara. "Dove, Arthur." Grove Art Online. Oxford Art Online. 21 Apr. 2011. Web. <http://www.oxfordartonline.com/subscriber/article/grove/art/T023508>. Innes Homer, William. “Picabia's Jeune fille américaine dans l'état de nudité and Her Friends.” The Art Bulletin. Vol. 57, No. 1 (Mar., 1975), pp. 110115. “Jean Arp: Introduction,” MoMA, The Collection. New York: Oxford University Press, 2009. Web. <http://www.moma.org/collection/artist.php?artist_id=11>. “Le Violon d'Ingres (Ingres's Violin),” The J. Paul Getty Museum. Web. <http://www.getty.edu/art/gettyguide/artObjectDetails?artobj=61240>. Ribeiro, Aileen. Ingres in Fashion: Representations of Dress and Appearance in Ingres`s Images of Women. Singapore: Aileen Ribeiro, 1999. Print. Roxana Marcoci, Geoffrey Batchen, and Tobia Bezzola, The Original Copy: Photography of Sculpture, 1839 to Today. New York: Museum of Modern Art, 2010. Print. Whitney Chadwick. "Oppenheim, Meret." Grove Art Online. Oxford Art Online. 22 Apr 2011. Web. <http://www.oxfordartonline.com/subscriber/article/grove/art/T063647>. Redefining Portraiture: Human Representation in Dada and Surrealism 16