Absurd Essentials

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PSCX4OXUj0I

In 1920, Picabia returned to Paris, bringing Dada’s cheekiness with him. “Portrait of Cézanne, Portrait of Renoir, Portrait of Rembrandt,” depicted a toy monkey in an embarrassing position. In the self-contradictory style common to Dada, he wrote in the “Dada Cannibal Manifesto”: “The speaker can only talk to you if you are standing” only to write after a few more lines “You have all sat down again? Good, that way you’ll listen to me more carefully.” On stage in the pitch darkness, Andre Breton, founder of Surrealism, famously recited the manifesto from memory. Apparently, the audience was so offended by the manifesto’s satire that they tore their theatre seats and hurled food at the reader. Furthermore, in 1921 Picabia signed famous Dadaist Tristan Tzara’s “Dada Excites Everything” in which Tzara stated: “If all of a sudden your head begins to crackle with laugher, if you find all your ideas useless and ridiculous, know that IT IS DADA BEGINNING TO SPEAK TO YOU.” Sacrilegiously, Picabia’s “Holy Virgin” was a mere red inkblot, highlighted on the cover of his “391” journal. Once Picabia renamed his journal “Journal de l’Instantanéisme” (Instantism Journal) as a jape about Dada. Instantism was his one-man movement about art without time in contradiction to his Dada ballet that required time to proceed in order for the audience to watch. His 1924 “anti-ballet” “Relâche” (Show Canceled) starred dancers and singers from a Swiss ballet and Tristan Tzara. At intermittent moments, three arches of stage lights faced towards the auditorium would blind the audience from viewing the show. During intermission, “Entr’acte” (Intermission), a film by Man-Ray, Duchamp and other famous Dadaists, played. In accordance with Dada, it presented several absurdities such as a crowd chasing a hearse pulled by a camel. Though “Relâche” was far from being the first “anti-art” show. “Ubu-Rex”, a parody on Shakespearean plays, would take that title. When the play premiered in 1896 Paris with the infamous first line “Sheeyit!”; it triggered a riot in the theatre. (Copelin, 65) Painting himself green for his uncle’s visit, the playwright Alfred Jarry was an extremely strange individual. Unfortunately he died of tuberculosis aggravated by drug and alcohol use. Avant-garde movements are indebted to Jarry as an early herald of absurd art.

While the randomness of modern memes in general resemble Dada art, an ironically titled 2011 Japanese animated show called “Nichijou” (Everyday Life) encompassed Dadaism succinctly. From the eminent studio Kyoto Animation, which tragically suffered an arson attack in 2019, came a genius girl inventing a wind-up robot and a principal suplexing a deer. Actually, an edit of the show by a French YouTuber called “RubyCube” began with a monologue resembling a Dada manifesto by the rock band called “My Chemical Romance”. As intro to “Na na na (na na na na na na na na na)”, the monologue “Look Alive Sunshine” declared: “I’ll be your surgeon, your proctor, your helicopter.” Moreover, the fierceness of the animation and monologue recall Marinetti’s Futurist manifesto. Befitting Dada’s absurd aesthetic, the show combined ridiculously assertive animation with cute schoolgirls; and even went beyond Dada to approach pure art aesthetic. While Japanese anime in general is abstracted, “Nichijou” stripped its backgrounds down to the essentials in color and form and resembled the 1963 anime “Astro Boy” in character design. As Dada developed around the world in 1918, pure art was being formed.

In his 2011 “Abstract Manifesto, in Twenty Parts” Jerry Saltz broadly defined abstract art as existing “in the interstices between the ideal and the real, symbol and substance, the optic and the haptic, imagination and observation,” leaving his 20th point open for comments.

Pure art is a diverse category made up of De Stijl, Suprematism, and Bauhaus. De Stijl was founded by Theo van Doesburg and Piet Mondrian. Each artist differed slightly in their conceptions of pure art, as well as in personality. The extraverted Doesburg’s early art was influenced by Vincent van Gogh; but changed in 1913 after he read Kandinsky’s “Rückblicke” (Retrospect) (1901-13). Realizing art reflected the spiritual realm more than everyday life, he drew the conclusion that abstraction was essential. He wrote in “Manifesto I of De Stijl” (1918), “The new art has brought forward what the new consciousness of time contains: a balance between the universal and the individual.” Creating typological “lettersound poems”, Doesburg ran a journal called “Mécano” with the Dadaist Kurt Schwitters. Doesburg was more lenient in his definitions of pure art. For example, he allowed diagonals by tilting the canvas of “Lozenge” (1925) 45 degrees. Another De Stijl artists, the architect and furniture designer Gerrit Rietveld, built chairs utilizing diagonals. On the other hand, the introverted Mondrian’s Neo-Plasticism rigidly limited pure art to 90 degree angles, primary colors, and primary values. In “Neoplasticism in Painting” (1917-18) he wrote: “Straight line and plane color remain the pure pictorial means.” Additionally, he claimed music, drama, and literature are tied to the particular and thus could not adequately represent the universal, deviating from Kandinsky’s theory that art is visual music.

Kazimir Malevich rejected the objectivity of natural forms for the supremacy of feeling. While his early art resembled Futurist and Cubist works, his Suprematist art resembled Kandinsky’s Bauhaus work. With simple geometrics, he pushed pure art to the brink with “Suprematist Composition: White on White” (1918), which featured a white square differentiated from the canvas only by a slight variation in pigment. Malevich defined Suprematism as reaching “a ‘desert’ in which nothing can be perceived but feeling.” Because every object either becomes dust or a museum exhibit, he claimed nothing in reality has true utility; the source of everything is pure feeling. Despite arguing that concrete naming conventions destroy the non-objectivity of art, he proceeded to name “Suprematist Composition: Airplane Flying” (1914-15) with an external reference to airplanes.

In contrast to many avant-garde artists are the Bauhaus artists; or should I say “craftsmen”? In Walter Gropius’ “Bauhaus Manifesto and Program” (1919) he proclaimed: “The unproductive ‘artist’ will no longer be condemned to deficient artistry, for their skill will now be preserved for the crafts.” Further on in the manifesto, Gropius outlined the educational program for the training of Bauhaus craftsman, including a range and division of instruction that influenced modern art education. Bauhaus is recognized for producing architecture and work with utility. Forced to relocate due to the Nazis, Bauhaus sprung an offspring in Black Mountain College of North Carolina which developed along an alternative route to the Abstract Expressionists (Rothko, Pollock) of New York. Black Mountain College was accepting African-American students in 1944.

Works Cited

A Chemical Romance “Na na na (na na na na na na na na na)” Danger Days: The True Lives of the Fabulous Killjoys, Reprise, 2010.

A Chemical Romance “Look Alive Sunshine.” Danger Days: The True Lives of the Fabulous Killjoys, Reprise, 2010.

“Dada Excited Everything” 12, Jan. 1921.

Doesburg, T. V. “Manifesto I of De Stijl.” 1918, pp. 424-429.

Gropius, Walter. “Bauhaus Manifesto and Program.” 1919.

Jarry, Alfred. “Ubu Rex.” Translated by David Copelin, Pulp Press, 1977.

Kandinsky, Wassily.“Rückblicke.” 1901-13.

Malevich, Kasimir. “Suprematism.” 1927.

“Nichijou.” Written by Hanada, Jukki, directed by Ishihara, Tatsuya, Kyoto Animation, 2011.

“NICHIJOU – NA NA NA.” YouTube, uploaded by RubyCube, 30 Sep 2016, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PSCX4OXUj0I

Picabia, Francis. “Dada Cannibal Manifesto.” 1920.

Saltz, Jerrt. “Ask an Art Critic.” Vulture, 11 Feb. 2011, https://www.vulture.com/2011/02/ask_an_art_critic_jerry_saltz_7.html

Stoll, D, C. “’A Very Unusual School’: Bauhaus, Black Mountain College, and Today.” BURNAWAY, 26, Sep. 2019, https://burnaway.org/bauhaus-and-black-mountain-college-today/