Description

For Peter Bürger, the movements which flourished after the First World War in France and Germany such as Dada and Surrealism are characterized by a common desire to reintegrate art and society. This is not just at the level of a return to representation but their shared goal to transform social relations through the power of art. Such ambition was sometimes also manifested in the tendency to dethrone art, as in the case of the Dada ready-made or the Surrealist object, and literally make it part of the real world. This module is intended to investigate such phenomena and test the theory of the avant-garde as it has been proposed against other forms of historical evidence.

The module is structured as a comparative analysis of the art worlds in France and Germany from the end of the First World War to the beginning of the Second, a period that saw enormous change politically and socially, reflected in the growing emancipation of women, the expansion of mass culture through technologies of reproduction (photography, radio and phonograph) and the rise of totalitarian regimes across Europe. As we shall see, although there is a strong desire to see the avant-garde as an international effort, there are significant national differences in the artistic response to the aftermath of the First World War and the emergence of Communism and Fascism.

The art movements that will form the basis of the discussion are Dada, Surrealism, Constructivism and Neue Sachlichkeit. Themes that may be tackled in the module include representations of war and masculinity, concepts of utopia and nostalgia, women and the avant-garde, and avant-garde use of the ‘new media’ of the time such as film and photography.

Objectives

By the end of the course the student should have acquired:

• a familiarity with the range of artworks made in the period, including those such as photomontages, performance art and found objects that challenged the status of the art
• an understanding of the connections between art practice and the politics of class, gender and race pertinent to the period
• an understanding of theories of the avant-garde

Preliminary reading

1. General Surveys

We will not be using these texts in our seminars but they all provide useful introductions to the period and the artists we will be discussing.

Briony Fer, David Batchelor & Paul Wood, Realism, Rationalism, Surrealism. Art between the Wars (New Haven & London: Yale (in association with the Open University), 1993), 0300055196

David Hopkins, Dada and Surrealism. A Very Short Introduction (Oxford University Press, 2004), 0192802542

Matthew Gale, Dada and Surrealism (London: Phaidon, 1997), 0714832618

Douglas and Madeleine Johnson, The Age of Illusion: Art and Politics in France 1918-1940 (Thames and Hudson, 1990) 0500274843

Hans Richter, Dada. Art and Anti‑Art (London: Thames & Hudson (World of Art Series), 0500200394

2. Specialised Texts

The following books represent some of the more interesting recent approaches to the art of the period and we will be making some use of them.

Katharina von Ankum, Women in the Metropolis: Gender and Identity in Weimar Culture (University of California Press, 1997), 0520204654

Petrine Archer‑Straw, Negrophilia: Avant‑garde Paris and Black Culture in the 1920s (London: Thames & Hudson, 2000) 0500281351

Lewis Kachur, Displaying the Marvellous: Marcel Duchamp, Salvador Dali, and the Surrealist Exhibition Installations (Cambridge MA: MIT, 2001) 0262611821

Amy Lyford, Surrealist Masculinities: Gender Anxiety and the Aesthetics of Post-World War I Reconstruction in France (Berkeley, Los Angeles, London: University of California Press, 2007) 0520246403

3. Novels 

Another really good way to introduce yourself to the period is by reading some novels, such as any of these classics.

Louis Aragon, Paris Peasant (Boston: Exact Change), 1878972103

Georges Bataille, Story of the Eye (London: Penguin), 0141185384

Georges Bataille, Blue of Noon (London: Penguin), 0141184094

Andre Breton, Nadja (London: Penguin), 0141180897

Alfred Doblin, Berlin Alexanderplatz (London: Continuum, 1994), 080446121X

Christopher Isherwood, The Berlin Novels (a double edition of Mr Norris Changes Trains and Goodbye to Berlin) (London: Vintage), 0749397020

Erich Maria Remarque, All Quiet on the Western Front (London: Vintage), 00995328816