Reflections on Goldberg: Surrealism and Bauhaus

Jessica Wildman

The Bauhaus institution was a departure from the mostly anti-establishment ethos of the Futurist, Dadaist, and Surrealist art movements that preceded it. Bauhaus was the first institution to include performance in its interdisciplinary curriculum that sought a, “unification for all the the arts”, as written in Gropius’s Bauhaus manifesto (p 97). During the transition from Dada to Surrealism the arts eroded into violent grapples between artists and artist groups. Goldberg explains that during Tristan Tzara’s 1923 performance Le Cœur à barbe, “Breton and Péret protested loudly from the stalls, before climbing onto the stage to engage in a physical battle with the performers. Pierre de Massot escaped with a broken arm and Eluard, after having fallen into the stage sets, received a bailiff’s note demanding 8000 francs for damages” (p 88). 

While the performance world of the surrealists was escalating into attacks, “The cautious optimism expressed in the [Bauhaus] manifesto provided a hopeful yardstick for cultural recovery in a divided and impoverished postwar Germany” (p97). I wonder about the correlation between the escalating violence in the Dadaist/Surrealist performances and the postwar environment in Europe. Is there any evidence to connect the postwar environment and the violence that erupted between Dadaist artists? Was it simply that ideals of form and practice were at odds between?

I find it fascinating how influential the interdisciplinary Bauhaus model has become. The studio and critique structure of Cranbrook Academy of Art, without any actual classes, is perhaps one of many institutions that have emerged from the Bauhaus sensibility. I think the push for interdisciplinary fine art programs owes itself to the Bauhaus model. The definition of disciplines i.e. sculpture, has expanded as performance has become an ever growing field in the arts. Virginia Commonwealth University in Richmond, Virginia has a Sculpture and Extended Media program to include performance, while Cal Arts has its own Performance program. I wonder, did the world of art , it's critics and professionals require the institutionalization of performance for acceptance as an art form? Was Bauhaus truly the catalyst for this acceptance?  

Dada-Surrealism

            Chapter four of RoseLee Goldberg’s Performance Art begins to discus the Surrealism in connection to the previous style of Dadaism. At first, it seemed that surrealism was being described in correlation to the ‘anti-heroes’ and declaration of distaste of politics and/or culture performances of the Dadaists.

            The Surrealist Manifesto publication of 1925 marked the official foundation of the movement (p.88). Goldberg discusses ‘automatism’ and defines surrealism as  “pure psychic automatism, by which an attempt is made to express, either verbally, in writing, or in any other manner, the true functioning of thought” and it’s rested on the belief in the “higher reality of certain hitherto neglected forms or association in the omnipotence of the dream, in the disinterred play of thought” (p.89). This definition became unclear as I was having trouble understanding the difference between the movement from Dadaism. One can not be removed from the other.

Goldberg does argue that this definition gives understanding to the motives from the out of the ordinary performances. The lines seem blurred to me, though, especially when the surrealists ‘accept’ that dada describes their work. But, why? Would not defining and separating themselves (especially when they gave themselves a definition in their premiere manifesto) have avoided the later conflict of their principles (p. 90)?

At the end of chapter four, surrealism seems to be re-defined/ re-assigned as a product of Futurism and Dadaism. Goldberg chronicles the movements as fierce competitors and that surrealism came out on top right before WWII when everything came to an abrupt stop in Europe. I feel that same halt in the chapter when trying to understand the definition of Surrealism.

Chapter 4

            I had a difficult time distinguishing between discussions of the Dada movement and the Surrealist movement in chapter 4. A significant portion of the chapter seemed to focus on the Dada movement, which in essence, appeared as a continuation of chapter 3. Early in the chapter, Apollinaire is mentioned and ideas of surrealism are brought up but there is immediately a shift back to Dadaism. It’s not until the introduction of the Bureau of Surrealist Research, that Goldberg began to discuss Surrealism in depth and it’s relation to and disconnect from the Dada movement. Page 89 gave more detailed information regarding definitive discussion of differences between the movements but I don’t completely understand the similarities and differences or why the author chose to place so much emphasis on the Dada movement in a chapter titled Surrealism.

            Another misunderstanding that I had was why there was so much animosity between the Dada movement and the Surrealist movement and even within the movements themselves. I understand that the movements had differences regarding conceptual beliefs and beliefs about how art should be performed; however, I don’t understand why the Surrealist felt the need for the Dadaist to accept that their movement was dead. (p 88) It appears that the Dada movement, particularly Tzara was beginning to fail and fall apart, yet rather than accept failure, Tzara and other Dada artist attempted to reinvent themselves and the movement. Artists such a Breton attempted leave the Dada movement because of their disagreements with the artistic direction in which Dada was going, as well as their participation in failed performances. There was discussion regarding these issues but I had a difficult time understanding the arguments and what specific tactics were used to legitimizes Tzara’s, Breton’s, and Picabia’s decisions regarding the Dada movement.

Chapter Four

            Chapter four by Goldberg essentially explores the transition from Dada performance to Surrealist performance. The author focuses on the crumbling framework within Dada during its last years in Paris, and how this paved the way for a new movement of art and performance, known as Surrealism. The author seems to put a lot of focus on the tense relationships between some of the members of both movements, particularly between Picabia, Tzara, and Breton (p. 87). Picabia and Satie presented their ballet, Relache, as a sort of retaliation against the Surrealists (p. 90). Relache, in a sense, was a success in that it “…had broken the watertight compartment separating ballet from music hall (p. 95).” However, Relache did not affect the Surrealists and their own successes.   Antonin Artaud and Roger Vitrac founded the Theatre Alfred Jarry, in memory of Alfred Jarry, “innovator to ‘return to the theater that total liberty which exists in music, poetry, or painting, and of which it has been curiously bereft up to now (p. 95).’” In the Theater Alfred Jarry, Artaud presented his Le Jet de Sang, which reflected memory and the dream world that the Surrealists were obsessed with (p. 96). This performance, among others, “…was to affect most strongly the world of the theater with its concentration on language, rather than subsequent performance art (p. 96).”

Schlemmer

            I found Goldberg’s description of Bauhaus, particularly of Schlemmer’s “theory of performance,” as puzzling. Goldberg identifies a central problem, which Schlemmer means to address, as a conflict within the dialectic of the rational and the emotional. A variety of words are utilized in the chapter to evoke the sense of both: rational – rigorously intellectual, abstract, geometric, painting-oriented, philosophical-artistic, Apollo; emotional – practice, theatrical, impulse, unadulterated pleasure, Dionysian. (102-4, 112)

It seems to me that Schlemmer experimented with both the two-dimensional plane and three-dimensional space for the purpose, of which there were others, of constituting a stronger bond, or bridge, between the two opposing forces of rational and emotional. This is how I see the Bauhaus notion of Raumempfindung (‘felt volume’). Goldberg even defines the phases through which the dancers passed, from the ‘mathematical’ to the ‘gestur[al]’, in Schlemmer’s performances, including Figure in Space. (104)

Goldberg identifies the ‘Man and Machine’ theme, which existed in both the “Bauhaus analysis of art and technology” and the performances by the Italian Futurists and Russian Constructivists. According to Goldberg, costumes became the transformative element from man to machine, often constricting the movements of the performer (106-7). My initial question is: What of Schlemmer’s stage performances actually emits emotional impulse, let alone Dionysian passion?

Reflection on Jayna Brown: Babylon Girls/Letting the Flesh Fly...

Jessica Wildman

The body, the common denominator. However shaped, colored, disabled, scarred, or gendered, we all have a body; a unifying fiber of human existence. I find Jayna Brown’s chapter Letting the Flesh Fly…, to be a source of enlightenment. Brown explains the power of the body in it’s capacity to induce empathy through visceral connection (p 60). Of course! That’s why performance is such a powerful art medium. The corporeal and visceral are interconnected, and interdependent one might argue. From childhood on, the human brain is formed through sensory experience; the body’s interaction with the outside world stimulating brain circuitry. This is how we learn from the youngest age hot from cold, things that hurt. It is my opinion that we most often learn those cues from our own accidents in stumbling through life; however, when imposed with physical pain by the hand of another human being therein forms an emotional response, "Why me? Why would you hurt me?” 

When confronted with physical expenditures of the body via descriptions of histories of torture, performance, etc., I often feel sensations in my guts; an empathetic response. Brown explains, “Female abolitionist appeals were empathetic, imploring women to feel slave suffering in their own bodies as a way to engage their moral commitment” (p 57). I wonder then, is this experience different for men? I’ve observed a corporeal response in men when witnessing another man endure a kick to the testes. I also wonder, if the insensitive race mimicry performed by white women in the minstrels solely to entertain must somehow disassociate the pain endured by those they mimic?