The crazy race for the hazy future

 The Latin term Modo. (From Wiktionary )

 only
 recently
 presently

 Modus – only just

 Mode – fashion, style.
 At the end of the sixth
century, Cassiodorus, a
Roman statesman,
writer and librarian used
the term ‘modernus’ in
the sense of
contemporary, but
wanted to conserve the
knowledge and ideas of
antiquity. (Both
Christianity and
Plato/Aristotle etc).
 The Venerable Bede,
wrote of ‘moderni’ and
‘antiqui’ in the eighth
century. He called his
present times ‘Tempus
modernum’. The term
modernus came to
have a negative
connotation.
 Alcuin of York, who
thought of himself and
his contemporaries as
‘insignificant people of
the end of the world’
warned of the dangers of
decay, which could
herald the coming of the
Antichrist. Only a return
of moral renewal and the
ways of the ancients
could save the world.
 Scholars in the 12th
century, believing that
the world was made in
six days, began to
conclude that the
world was becoming
old. There was a sense
of doom and
apocalypse.
 William, the ageing
abbot of Saint-Thierry,
when told that King
David, when he was old,
ruled the kingdom from
his bed, concluded that
in those biblical times,
the world was youthful
and people had more
strength and vitality that
in his own times.
 Also in the twelfth
century, Bernard of
Chartres wrote about the
‘antiqui’ and ‘moderni’,
saying in essence that
modern scholars were
dwarves who could see
farther, but only because
they stood on the
shoulders of giants.
 In the early 17th Century,
Rene Descartes argued
for new ways of judging
and seeking truth. He
rejected the ancients .
He accounted for things
by mechanical
explanations. He began
ideas which laid the
groundwork for the
scientific method. He
said ‘I think, therefore I
am’ (Cogito ergo sum)
 In the late 17th century.
John Locke argued
against Augustine and
the church who said that
man was inherently
sinful. Locke said that
man was essentially
borne with a clean slate,
or ‘tabula rasa’. He also
suggested that the
people had the right to
overthrow their leaders.
He broke out of the
‘sacred circle’.
 Locke’s ideas went into
the ‘Declaration of the
Rights of Man and of the
Citizen’ of the French
Revolution of 1789. The
declaration asserts that
all men are equal and
that there is no divine
right of kings and no
special privilege for the
church. No mention,
however, of the rights of
Women or slaves.
 The Industrial Revolution
began in England in the
late 18th Century. The use
of the steam engine in
pumping water from
mines was a big factor.
William Blake famously
spoke of the ‘dark
satanic mills’. Massive
social changes began as
workers were needed in
the factories. Cities Philip James de Loutherbourg,
began to grow. Coalbrookdale by Night, 1801
  The Romantics reacted
‘Wanderer Above the Sea of
Fog’ Caspar David Friedrich,
1818.
against the industrial, the
mechanical and the
controlled. In art, literature
and music, they
emphasized the individual,
the subjective, the
irrational, the imaginative,
the personal, the
spontaneous, the
emotional, the visionary,
and the transcendental.
 The Victorian Era was
in some ways, a
synthesis of Romantic
and Enlightenment
ideas. A longing for the
Gothic, Romantic and
medieval past and at
the same time, great
scientific and technical
progress. Photography
takes off. Film begins.
MODERNITY MODERNISM

 Charles Darwin  Cubism

 Einstein's Theory of  Futurism (and Vorticism)
Relativity  Abstraction(ism)
 Sigmund Freud and  Stream of Consciousness
Psychoanalysis
 Communism  dada(ism)
 Cars  Surrealism
 Airplanes  Expressionism
 Telephones  Existentialism
 Radios  Pop art
 WWI  Celebration of Technology
 Avant-Garde.
 1. The advance group in any
field, esp. in the visual, literary,
or musical arts, whose works are
characterized chiefly by
unorthodox and experimental
methods.
 2. Of or pertaining to the
experimental treatment of
artistic, musical, or literary
material.
 3. Belonging to the avant-garde:
an avant-garde composer.
 4. Unorthodox or daring; radical.
Pablo Picasso. The Two From dictionary.com
Saltimbanques (Harlequin and
his Companion), 1901
 The world seen from
multiple viewpoints.
Picasso’s ‘Les
Demoiselles d'Avignon’,
1907.
 ‘There's something
anarchist and ruthless
about it that contains
dada and Marcel
Duchamp and punk’.
Jonathan Jones, The Guardian
 ''On or about December
1910 human character
changed,'' Virginia Woolf
observed. Relations
between ''masters and
servants, husbands and
wives, parents and
children'' shifted, she
wrote, ''and when
human relations change
there is at the same time
a change in religion,
conduct, politics and
literature.''
 ‘Nude Descending a
Staircase, No. 2’ by
Marcel Duchamp,
1912. Successive
superimposed images
– influenced by stop-
motion images of
Etienne Jules Marey.
Criticised as ‘an
explosion in a shingle
factory’.
  Futurists were fascinated
with dynamism, speed,
and restlessness of
modern urban life. ‘We
want no part in the past’
wrote Marinetti in Italy.
Old art should be
‘heaved over the side of
the steamship of
modernity’ said
Mayakovsky in Russia.
Umberto Boccioni – Elasticity 1912.
 Hans Richter wrote that
the beginnings of Dada
correspond to the
outbreak of World War I.
The movement was a
protest against the
bourgeois nationalist and
colonialist interests which
many believed were the
root cause of the war, and
against the cultural and
intellectual conformity —
in art and more broadly in
society — that
corresponded to the war.
  A reviewer from the
American Art News stated
at the time that "The Dada
philosophy is the sickest,
most paralyzing and most
destructive thing that has
ever originated from the
brain of man." Art
historians described Dada
as being "in reaction to
what many ...saw as
nothing more than an
insane spectacle of
collective homicide."
‘Fountain’ by Marcel Duchamp,
1917
 The art of the Surrealist
movement was centred
around the irrational and
the subconscious.
Surrealists sought to affect
the viewer, to clash
together the external
reality and the world of
dreams. Many Surrealists
knew and interacted in
various ways with Freud
and Jung. ‘The Elephant Celebes’, Max Ernst. 1921.
  Dali said that the
shapes were “nothing
more than the soft,
extravagant, solitary,
paranoiac-critical
Camembert cheese of
space and time”.

‘The Persistence of Memory’, Salvador

Dali, 1931
 Un Chien Andalou was born
when Luis Bunuel told Salvador
Dali of a dream he had in which
a cloud sliced across the moon.
Dali, too, had been having
strange dreams. His consisted of
ants crawling from inside a
hand.
 There was one rule when it
came to writing the screenplay.
The only thing the succession of
images would have in common
is the fact that they have
nothing in common. Its purpose:
to document desire and shock.
 "I suggested that we burn
the negative... something I
would have done without
hesitation had the group
agreed. In fact I'd still do it
today; I can imagine a
huge pyre in my own little
garden where all my
negatives and all the
copies of my own films go
up in flames. It wouldn't
make the slightest Screenshot from ‘Le Chien Andalou’, 1929
difference." Luis Bunuel.
 Precisionists were
American painters who
painted mammoth urban
structures devoid of
human activity, standing in
mute testament to the
hardness and coldness of
modern life. Precisionism
was an American response
to Cubism and Futurism,
sometimes called ‘Cubist
Charles Demuth, Aucassiu
Realism’ and Nicolette, 1921
  Charles Scheeler had
spent time in Paris, as
did many American
artists. He created
Precisionist landscapes
and cityscapes. He
teamed up with Paul
Strand, a photographer
to make ‘Manhatta’ a city
film celebrating New
Skyscrapers, 1922 York.
 Camera movement is
kept to a minimum, as is
incidental motion within
each shot. Each frame
provides a view of the
city that has been
carefully arranged into
abstract compositions.
People are shown almost
as automatons. Screenshot from ‘Manhatta’, 1921
 In 1929, Dziga Vertov
made the film ‘Man with
a Movie Camera’ which
he wrote “Represents an
experimentation in the
cinematic transmission
of visual phenomena
without the use of
intertitle (a film without
intertitles) without the
help of a script (a film
without script)...
 ...without the help of a
Theatre (a film without
actors, without sets, etc.)
This new experimentation
work by Kino-Eye is
directed towards the
creation of an
authentically international
absolute language of
cinema – Absolute
Kinography – on the basis
of its complete separation
from the language of
theatre and literature."
 Tossing aside the
traditional notions of
cinematic narratives
(poignant love stories,
sweeping historical
accounts, spooky suspense
flicks), Léger zoomed in on
every day objects, like "a
pipe, a chair, a typewriter,
a hat, a foot." Finding
visual likeness between
shapes and movements, Screenshot from ‘Ballet Mécanique’ by
"Le Ballet Mécanique" painter Fernand Leger and
divorces an object’s visual cinematographer/journalist Dudley
aspects from its function. Murphy, 1924
 This Hollywood
experimental film
synthesizes different
strains of the European
avant-gardes, particularly
Soviet montage and
German expressionism, to
convey this uniquely
American story. The
filmmakers themselves Screen shot from ‘The Life and Death of
play the leading parts. 9413, a Hollywood Extra’ by Slavko
Vorkapich and Robert Florey, 1928
  ‘The medieval alchemist spent
his days attempting to turn
lead into gold. If only he had
glanced out his window as the
sun came from behind a cloud,
what a turning of lead into gold
he’d have seen–especially if the
sun got behind things to shine
through them. The sun doesn’t
have to shine on tropical
foliage to make magic; it
From ‘H2O’ by Ralph Steiner, 1929
makes it in your own backyard
if you are open to magic’.
 Closely aligned with
painting, photography
 Non-narrative, abstract
images
 Celebrating the city,
technology, energy
 Creating an effect,
including shock
 Experiments with
montage, form, close-ups
 Can be Romantic, idealistic
Fernand Léger,’The
Mechanic’. 1920