Modernist art and poetry

Surrealism and Fashion - Clothing in surrealist objects

This paper examines surrealist work in fashion in the light of the historical theory of Walter Benjamin.

Fashion and clothing have played a central role as medium, material and motif from the outset of the surrealist movement. Either through the flânerie and window gazing in Paris commerce, the large quantity of fashion objects that find their way into the surrealist objects or through
collaborations between surrealists and designers in making surrealist fashion objects. The work in fashion sparked a heated debate whether fashion goes against the political project of surrealism.
The fashion objects of surrealism have not been granted a lot of attention in within art history. In this paper I am looking into how we can engage with the fashion object in surrealism and what these objects are able to reveal of surrealism and contemporary society.

Benjamin wrote extensively on fashion and created a historical theory that was similar to fashion, in its ability to make anachronistic leaps through history by actualizing old ideas in new silhouettes. Benjamin was contemporary to the surrealist movement, and he wrote about
their activities in essays and in The Arcades Project. This paper explores Benjamins relation to the surrealist movement and their common interest in the dream as metaphor and praxis.
The definition and workings of the surrealist object is explored through analysis of objects by Meret Oppenheim, Wilhelm Freddie, Eileen Agar, Salvador Dalí, Rita Kernn-Larsen, Yves Tanguy and more. With the surrealist engagement in fashion as a leading motive, a variety of surrealists presented. By a juxtaposition of assemblages and fashion objects made
by surrealists with theory on the surrealist object, the notion of the fetish and a theme of use and exchange value, the role of the commodity in surrealism is debated.

This paper argues that not only has surrealist work with the commodity and fashion been overlooked historically, the objects has hidden powers for making us see our capitalist reality and the ability to merge a surrealist figuration into the everyday life.
These considerations are brought forward by a contemporary perspective which makes the surrealist explorations of the commodity more relevant than ever.

Engaging with the complex history of visual art’s engagement with literature, this collection demonstrates that the art of the book is a fully interdisciplinary and distinctly modern form. The essays in the collection develop new critical approaches to the analysis of twentieth-century bookworks and explore ways in which European writers and painters challenged the boundary between visual and linguistic expression in the content, production, and physical form of books.

The Art Book Tradition in Twentieth-Century Europe offers a detailed examination of word-image relations in forms ranging from the livre d’artiste to personal diaries and almanacs. It analyzes innovative attempts to challenge familiar hierarchies between texts and images, to fuse different expressive media, and to reconceptualize traditional notions of ekphrasis. Having regard to the material qualities of books, the works discussed in this collection also test and celebrate the act of reading while locating it in the context of other sensory experiences. Essays examine works by Dufy, Matisse, Beckett, Kandinsky, Braque, and Ponge, among other European artists and writers active during the twentieth century.

In reading Chapter 20 of Steven Pinker's "The Blank Slate", there is much to be found that’s of value, to be sure. Pinker's explanation of, and opposition to, postmodernist posturing is eloquent and blameless. The problem (but sadly, whoa, it’s a doozy) is Pinker's inexplicable conflation of Postmodernism with Modernism. It is the very heart of Modernism, as it is best described by the great 20th c. critic Clement Greenberg, that Modernism embraces the common human aesthetic, the intuitive response, art and beauty for their own sakes. Because of this unfortunate misapprehension of Modernism at its most fundamental level, the sharp insights which would otherwise no doubt have been offered by Pinker here have been dulled enormously, and demand remedial consideration.

Part of the early Heide circle, Moya Dyring left Melbourne for Europe in the late 1930s and lived much of her life in Paris, in an apartment on the Ile St Louis which became known as Chez Moya. This exhibition follows Dyring’s transition from art student at the National Gallery School in Melbourne (1929-1932), where she met her future husband Sam Atyeo, to Parisian resident and charismatic salonniere – from Heide to the Left Bank. As a young artist, Dyring was among the first painters in Melbourne to respond to the influence of Cubism, evident in her painting Melanctha (1937), which John and Sunday Reed purchased from her first solo exhibition. Arriving in Paris in 1937, she immersed herself in the Parisian art world, meeting artists and attending studios and exhibitions. Later, on numerous excursions into the French countryside with artist friends she painted en plein air. Throughout the war years and up until her death in 1967, Dyring remained in close correspondence with John and...