music and art week 5

Music and ArtMarilou Polymeropoulou

marilou.polymeropoulou@music.ox.ac.uk

http://musicandartoxford.wordpress.com/

Department for Continuing Education

Week 5Symbolism - Avant-Garde

Saturday, 18 February 2012

Previously

• Definition of art and music

• Aesthetics and criticism

• Impressionism

Saturday, 18 February 2012

Today

• Continuing with symbolism

• Avant-garde: 1) expressionism, 2) futurism, 3) dadaism, 4) musical avant-garde

Saturday, 18 February 2012

SymbolismSymbolist poems were attempts to evoke, rather than primarily to describe; symbolic imagery was

used to signify the state of the poet's soul

Senses - scent, sound, and colour

Schopenhauer: Art providing refuge from the world of strife and will

Charles Beaudelaire, Paul Verlaine, Arthur Rimbaud, Stéphane Mallarmé

Influenced: Oscar Wilde, W.B. Yeats, T.S. Eliot

Saturday, 18 February 2012

De Satan ou de Dieu, qu'importe? Ange ou Sirène,Qu'importe, si tu rends, — fée aux yeux de velours,

Rythme, parfum, lueur, ô mon unique reine! —L'univers moins hideux et les instants moins lourds?

From God or Satan, who cares? Angel or Siren, Who cares, if you make, — fay with the velvet eyes, Rhythm, perfume, glimmer; my one and only queen!

The world less hideous, the minutes less leaden?

Baudelaire, Hymne à la Beauté, Fleurs du Mal, 1861

William Aggeler’s translation, 1954

Saturday, 18 February 2012

Charles Baudelaire - L’Horloge (The Clock)

Saturday, 18 February 2012

Avant-Garde Pre WW1

• Expressionism, 1905-1925

• Aim: evoke expressions or ideas

• Reaction to realism and impressionism

Saturday, 18 February 2012

Edvard Munch - The Scream (Skrik)

1893-1910Oil, tempera, and pastel on cardboard

“I was walking along a path with two friends – the sun was setting – suddenly

the sky turned blood red – I paused, feeling exhausted, and leaned on the

fence – there was blood and tongues of fire above the blue-black fjord and the

city – my friends walked on, and I stood there trembling with anxiety – and I

sensed an infinite scream passing through nature.”

Saturday, 18 February 2012

Vincent Van Gogh• Born in Holland 1853 - suicide in France 1890

• 1886 moves to Paris

• “As for me, I shall go on working, and here and there something of my work will prove of lasting value - but who will there be to achieve for figure painting what Claude Monet has achieved for landscape? However, you must feel, as I do, that someone like that is on the way - Rodin? - he does not use colour - it won't be him. But the painter of the future will be a colourist the like of which has never yet been seen.”

• Examples: The Potato Eaters (1885), The Red Vineyard (1888)

• Brush strokes (impasto) technique. Examples of Starry Night (1889)

Saturday, 18 February 2012

Saturday, 18 February 2012

Saturday, 18 February 2012

Saturday, 18 February 2012

Avant-Garde during WW1

• Futurism. Italy. Futurist manifesto 1909 by Marinetti.

• Aggression, militarism, nationalism, demolition of traditional elements, “beauty of speed”

• Influence on Fascism (glorification of war)

Saturday, 18 February 2012

Luigi Russolo’s “Art of Noises” manifesto

Musical evolutionNoise sounds

Creation of noise instruments

Saturday, 18 February 2012

Saturday, 18 February 2012

Avant-Garde during WW1

• Dadaism, 1916 - 1922

• Visual arts, literature, poetry, theatre, graphic design

• Anti-war politics. Anti-art. Rejection of traditional culture. Ridicule. Criticism on nihilist perspectives of modernity. Anarchist

Saturday, 18 February 2012

Marcel Duchamp, Fountain (1917)

“Found object” (readymade)

“Whether Mr Mutt made the fountain with his own hands or not has no importance. He CHOSE it. He took an article of life, placed it so that its useful significance disappeared under the new title and point of view – created a new thought for that object.”

Saturday, 18 February 2012

Stravinsky - The rite of spring (Nijinsky’s choreography)

Saturday, 18 February 2012

Saturday, 18 February 2012

Musical Avant-Garde Post WWII

Saturday, 18 February 2012

Stockhausen - Kontakte (1958)

Saturday, 18 February 2012

Iannis Xenakis - Metastasis (1953)

Saturday, 18 February 2012

Brian Eno - Wind on water (1975)

Saturday, 18 February 2012

Aphex Twin - Dream scape (1993)

Saturday, 18 February 2012

Autechre - Bronchus (1993)

Saturday, 18 February 2012

Curtis Roads - Half life (1999)

Saturday, 18 February 2012

21st century avant-garde

Saturday, 18 February 2012

Saturday, 18 February 2012