Francis Picabia

Dancefilm: Choreography and the Moving Image is a rich exploration of the choreographic in cinema.  It traces the history of the dancefilm form from some of its earliest manifestations in the silent film era, through the historic avant-garde, musicals and music videos to contemporary experimental short dancefilms. In so doing it also traverses some of the most significant collaborations between dancers, choreographers, and filmmakers.  Bringing film theory and dance theory into dialogue, the book argues that the combination of dance and film produces cine-choreographic practices that are specific to the dancefilm form. As whole, the book thus presents new models of cinematic movement that are historically informed and interdisciplinary in nature.  An extensive companion website provide key video illustrations and links to online resources.

It is a commonplace in certain areas of art theory and contemporary art practices to consider Marcel Duchamp's ready-mades as ordinary objects, which have an artistic value that depends more on a theoretical or institutional framework than on an aesthetic experience. The aim of this paper is, on the one hand, to show the historical emergence of these artifacts on the light of the impact of the industrial production in avant-garde movements of the early twentieth century. Discussing Walter Benjamin' s and Jean Brun's insights, it argues that Duchamp's practice has an explanatory principle, both in the mechanical reproduction of the work of art and in the aestheticization of the machine. On the other hand, it brings forward some observations regarding Duchamp's insight on the "total lack of good or bad taste" and the perceptual dimension of a sculptural object as the Large Glass, coming back to Arthur Danto's interpretation of ready-mades and to the notion of "implementation" introduced by Nelson Goodman to define "the process of bringing about the aesthetic functioning that provides the basis for the notion of a work of art".

BC: Before Concrete focuses on two centers where the modern visual poem developed, Paris and New York City.  This an overview of  individuals adding to the wider development of Latin and Cyrillic alphabets’ visual poem types and movements by individuals associated with the early stage development of modern visual poetry and the field of visual text arts.  Centered in the discussion is the controversy surrounding the Poeme Simultané first developed by Henry-Martin Barzun and the contribution by members of the Stieglitz Circle to the visual poem, painted word and painted symbol. Visual text art types, movements and individuals covered or mentioned include, visual poetry, concrete poetry, Abbaye de Creteil, Guillaume Apollinaire, Henry-Martin Barzun, Blaise Cendars, E E Cummings, Stuart Davis, Robert Delaunay, Sonia Delaunay, Charles Demuth, Arthur Dove, Albert Gleizes, Marsden Hartley, J. B. Kerfoot, Adon Lacroix, Mina Loy, Agnes Ernest Meyer, Francis Picabia, Torres Palomar, Man Ray, Katharine N. Rhoades, Pamela Colman Smith, Alfred Stieglitz, the Stieglitz Circle, Jose Juan Tablada, Max Weber, Marius de Zayas, Poeme Simultané, Ideogramme, Calligramme, Orphism, Painted Word, Psychotype and machine portraitures, Camera Work, and 291 magazine.

Examines the December 1914-January 1915 exhibition of Picasso and Braque's work at Alfred Stieglitz's 291 Gallery.  As the first New York exhibition of 1912-13 Cubism, with its new combination of a spare linear scaffolding and collaged elements, this elicited a mixed reception from New York critics, some incredulous, others surprisingly perceptive about the artists' goals.

Dada "smells of nothing, signifies nothing". Quoting Francis Picabia, the linguist Roman Jakobson concluded  in his penetrating 1921 analysis of the Dada movement, that the painter's words could be likened to 'Armenian riddles', puzzles which, as they evolve, become utterly nonsensical and hence unsolvable. An avoidance of all explanation, a taste for cryptic language and an innate defiance toward any form of analysis characterized him throughout his life, the subject of writing being no exception.

L'avventura sinestetica di Satie, nata in clima simbolista, attraversa come una meteora il cubismo e l'orfismo, riemergendo in una veste dada e surrealista. Sullo sfondo della Parigi della Belle Époque Satie tesse una fitta rete di legami con i poeti, i pittori, i cineasti del suo tempo.

L'impatto della poetica surrealista sul cinema d'avanguardia si traduce in un rivoluzionario sguardo sulla realtà. "L'occhio selvaggio" di Bréton ispira artisti e registi che collaborano col proposito di sovvertire la mentalità borghese, i cui risultati sono sintetizzabili in una sostanziale identificazione tra arte e vita.

Nella ricerca del compositore Erik Satie il dialogo con le arti visive è sempre costante e fecondo, ma in particolare nei suoi lavori orchestrali (Parade, Relâche, Socrate) si fa ancora più assiduo. Picasso, Cocteau, Picabia, Brancusi, Clair sono solo alcuni dei compagni di viaggio di un'avventura che tocca i campi del teatro, del cinema e del balletto per approdare all'estetica del bianco e del silenzio.

The Ends of Collage, was an exhibition that spread over three platforms, each offering a different perspective from which to review the medium of collage and its legacies. At Luxembourg & Dayan, New York, the exhibition was dedicated to some of the technical preconditions of collage (variety of cuts, masks and windows, image manipulations and the notion of ‘edge’). At Luxembourg & Dayan, London, the show shifted the focus towards some of the major themes that characterise the medium (fantasy, the domestic sphere, dismemberment of the social or private body, and the mobility of images). The third platform continues to live on the pages of a printed publication that brings together various theoretical motivations that precipitated the emergence of collage at the beginning of the twentieth century along with those that expanded the medium beyond its traditional limits with the emergence of digital cultures in the late 1970s.

The title chosen for the exhibition, The Ends of Collage, refers both literally and metaphorically to the place where collage fulfils its calling — at the ends or edges of pictures and fragments, where separate worlds come together or break apart from one another. It also suggests an historical paradigm, where collage is considered as a medium that existed in the so called ‘age of mechanical reproduction’ and has now been overcome by the new logic of the digital age.

The Ends of Collage was an exhibition that spread over three platforms, each offering a different perspective from which to review the medium of collage and its legacies. At Luxembourg & dayan, New York, the exhibition was dedicated to some of the technical preconditions of collage (variety of cuts, masks and windows, image manipulations and the notion of ‘edge’). At Luxembourg & dayan, London, the exhibition shifted the focus towards some of the major themes that characterise the medium (fantasy, the domestic sphere, dismemberment of the social or private body, and the mobility of images). The third platform continues to take place on the pages of a printed publication, edited by Yuval Etgar, the curator of the exhibition, which brings together various theoretical motivations that precipitated the emergence of collage at the beginning of the twentieth century along with those that expanded the medium beyond its traditional limits with the emergence of digital cultures in the late 1970s.

The title chosen for the exhibition, The Ends of Collage, refers both literally and metaphorically to the place where collage fulfils its calling — at the ends or edges of pictures and fragments, where separate worlds come together or break apart from one another. It also suggests an historical paradigm, where collage is considered as a medium that existed in the so called ‘age of mechanical reproduction’ and has now been overcome by the new logic of the digital age.

Eine Einführung in die gleichnamige Ausstellung. Auf ca. 40 Seiten stellt die Publikation die wichtigsten Arbeiten der gleichnamigen Ausstellung vor und legt die künstlerischen und gesellschaftlichen Zusammenhänge dar.
Herausgegeben von der Schirn Kunsthalle Frankfurt, Text: Laura Heeg und Antje Lindner, Bramsche 2013.

Der Vortrag handelt vom Motiv des Affen hauptsächlich in der Kunst, jedoch auch in Bildern allgemein, auch solchen, die nicht das Gütesiegel der autonomen Kunst (im Sinne des 19. Jahrhunderts) aufweisen - sonst hieße der Vortrag „Affen in der Kunst seit Darwin“. Meine Fallbeispiele versammeln ein breites Spektrum unterschiedlicher visueller Medien: Neben Malerei, Skulptur, Fotografie und Grafik befrage ich Gebrauchsgrafiken, Werbung, Musikvideos, Kinofilme ebenso wie literarische Quellen.
In diese Bildlektüren beziehe ich jeweils kurz die zu ihrer jeweiligen Entstehungszeit bekannten naturwissenschaftlichen Erkenntnisse ein. Dies äußert sich im Vortragstitel im Zusatz „seit Darwin“. Dieser Zusatz beinhaltet zudem eine zeitliche Komponente, nämlich das Er-schein-Datum von Charles Darwins Büchern “On the origin of species by means of natural selection, or the preservation of favoured races in the struggle for life” von 1859, wo vom Affen nur indirekt die Rede ist, und “The Descent of Man, and Selection in Relation to Sex” von 1871.
“Seit Darwin” beinhaltet die chronologische Grobstruktur meines Vortrages. „Seit Darwin“ impliziert „bis heute“. „Bis Darwin“ ist in etwa der zeitliche Schlussstrich, den H.W. Janson 1952 in seinem Standardwerk zum Affen im Bild „Apes and Ape Lore“ zieht. Darin behandelt er laut Untertitel Affen im Mittelalter und der Renaissance. Tatsächlich reichen seine Untersuchungen teils bis um 1850, wenngleich sein Schwerpunkt schon der genannte, Mittelalter bis Renaissance, ist. Janson baut auf dem Buch „The Ape in Antiquity“ des US-amerikanischen Archäologen Willi-am Coffman McDermott von 1938 auf. Mein Ziel ist nicht in erster Linie, eine Fortsetzung oder Neuauflage dieser beiden Bücher zum „Affen im Bild“ zu verfassen. Stattdessen präsentiere ich Fallbeispiele unterschiedlicher visueller Medien vom der Mitte des 19. Jahrhunderts bis zur Gegenwart. Aufgrund des schieren Umfanges der heute verfügbaren Bildfülle (teils im Gegensatz zu Jansons und McDermotts Untersuchungszeitraum) war eine gewisse Selektion nötig. Das zentrale Anliegen meines Vortrages ist es, den Affen als Figur in der Vielgestaltigkeit seiner Repräsentationen und insbesondere mit einem Fokus auf seine mediale Verortung in historischer Perspektive zu greifen und zu analysieren.

La exposición Picasso-Picabia. La pintura en cuestión une, por primera vez, a estos dos artistas fundamentales del siglo XX a través de un recorrido por la historia del arte moderno. El diálogo que se establece entre las obras de los dos artistas mostrará los vínculos reales o imaginados entre ellos. Así, la muestra comienza con la aparición del cubismo y continúa con el surgimiento de Dadá -del que Picabia es sin duda uno de sus protagonistas-, sin olvidar los años veinte, cuando ambos comparten el gusto por una personal vuelta al clasicismo. La muestra finaliza con una selección de sus últimos lienzos: si Picasso vuelve incansablemente a la figura humana hasta su muerte, Picabia, por su parte, reduce el acto de pintar a sutiles monocromos salpicados por puntos.

Against the common view that appropriation—of images, words, and machines—was the surest mark of Francis Picabia's modernism, Verdier posits that Picabia's constant reuse of visual and textual material was a melancholic symptom. Many of Picabia's pronouncements were, in fact, the very condemnation of his own system opposing the hand and the machine. Drawing from this analysis, Verdier argues that Picabia's art was never unambiguously modern nor reactionary; it was instead what Freud called “reactional.”

Short piece on diagrams and theory, drawing and thinking, published the book Drawing A Hypothesis: Figures of Thought ed. by Nikolaus Gansterer , Vienna/New York: Springer, 2011, pp. 65–76. Original illustrations in the PDF by Nikolaus Gansterer. Documentary illustrations in the link.