Modernity lecture 2 2011

Editor's Notes

• #7: Francisco Goya, "The Sleep of Reason Produces Monsters," plate 43 from his famous etchings, "Los Caprichos" http://www.oldmastersnewperspectives.com/blog/2009/06/24/revisiting-masterpieces-francisco-goya-de-lucientes-los-caprichos/ 1799, a series of 80 etchings
• #9: With this painting, Munch met his stated goal of “the study of the soul, that is to say the study of my own self”. ( José María Faerna, Munch , Harry N. Abrams, New York, 1995, p. 16) Munch wrote of how the painting came to be: "I was walking down the road with two friends when the sun set; suddenly, the sky turned as red as blood. I stopped and leaned against the fence, feeling unspeakably tired. Tongues of fire and blood stretched over the bluish black fjord. My friends went on walking, while I lagged behind, shivering with fear. Then I heard the enormous, infinite scream of nature." ( Faerna, 1995, p. 1)
• #11: With this painting, Munch met his stated goal of “the study of the soul, that is to say the study of my own self”. ( José María Faerna, Munch , Harry N. Abrams, New York, 1995, p. 16) Munch wrote of how the painting came to be: "I was walking down the road with two friends when the sun set; suddenly, the sky turned as red as blood. I stopped and leaned against the fence, feeling unspeakably tired. Tongues of fire and blood stretched over the bluish black fjord. My friends went on walking, while I lagged behind, shivering with fear. Then I heard the enormous, infinite scream of nature." ( Faerna, 1995, p. 1)
• #12: With this painting, Munch met his stated goal of “the study of the soul, that is to say the study of my own self”. ( José María Faerna, Munch , Harry N. Abrams, New York, 1995, p. 16) Munch wrote of how the painting came to be: "I was walking down the road with two friends when the sun set; suddenly, the sky turned as red as blood. I stopped and leaned against the fence, feeling unspeakably tired. Tongues of fire and blood stretched over the bluish black fjord. My friends went on walking, while I lagged behind, shivering with fear. Then I heard the enormous, infinite scream of nature." ( Faerna, 1995, p. 1)
• #13: With this painting, Munch met his stated goal of “the study of the soul, that is to say the study of my own self”. ( José María Faerna, Munch , Harry N. Abrams, New York, 1995, p. 16) Munch wrote of how the painting came to be: "I was walking down the road with two friends when the sun set; suddenly, the sky turned as red as blood. I stopped and leaned against the fence, feeling unspeakably tired. Tongues of fire and blood stretched over the bluish black fjord. My friends went on walking, while I lagged behind, shivering with fear. Then I heard the enormous, infinite scream of nature." ( Faerna, 1995, p. 1)
• #14: With this painting, Munch met his stated goal of “the study of the soul, that is to say the study of my own self”. ( José María Faerna, Munch , Harry N. Abrams, New York, 1995, p. 16) Munch wrote of how the painting came to be: "I was walking down the road with two friends when the sun set; suddenly, the sky turned as red as blood. I stopped and leaned against the fence, feeling unspeakably tired. Tongues of fire and blood stretched over the bluish black fjord. My friends went on walking, while I lagged behind, shivering with fear. Then I heard the enormous, infinite scream of nature." ( Faerna, 1995, p. 1)
• #15: With this painting, Munch met his stated goal of “the study of the soul, that is to say the study of my own self”. ( José María Faerna, Munch , Harry N. Abrams, New York, 1995, p. 16) Munch wrote of how the painting came to be: "I was walking down the road with two friends when the sun set; suddenly, the sky turned as red as blood. I stopped and leaned against the fence, feeling unspeakably tired. Tongues of fire and blood stretched over the bluish black fjord. My friends went on walking, while I lagged behind, shivering with fear. Then I heard the enormous, infinite scream of nature." ( Faerna, 1995, p. 1)
• #16: With this painting, Munch met his stated goal of “the study of the soul, that is to say the study of my own self”. ( José María Faerna, Munch , Harry N. Abrams, New York, 1995, p. 16) Munch wrote of how the painting came to be: "I was walking down the road with two friends when the sun set; suddenly, the sky turned as red as blood. I stopped and leaned against the fence, feeling unspeakably tired. Tongues of fire and blood stretched over the bluish black fjord. My friends went on walking, while I lagged behind, shivering with fear. Then I heard the enormous, infinite scream of nature." ( Faerna, 1995, p. 1)
• #30: Magritte often juxtaposes ordinary objects in an unorthodox or changed context, and in doing so, assigns new meaning to familiar things, seen for example in The Treachery of Images ( La trahison des images ). This painting appears to be an advertisement for a pipe. By inserting the text, "Ceci n'est pas une pipe" ("This is not a pipe"), which seems a contradiction, it challenges the validity of the image and our perception of reality. However, it is actually true: the painting is not a pipe, it is an image of a pipe. Apparently, when Magritte once was asked about this image, he replied that of course it was not a pipe, just try to fill it with tobacco.
• #32: When pressed to explain them in Guernica , Picasso said, ‘ ...this bull is a bull and this horse is a horse... If you give a meaning to certain things in my paintings it may be very true, but it is not my idea to give this meaning. What ideas and conclusions you have got I obtained too, but instinctively, unconsciously. I make the painting for the painting. I paint the objects for what they are’. Ashton, Dore, ed. Picasso on Art , The Documents of 20th Century Art. New York: Viking Press, 1972.p.140 In "The Dream and Lie of Franco" a series of narrative sketches also created for the World's Fair, Franco is depicted as a monster that first devours his own horse and later does battle with an angry bull. Work on these illustrations began before the bombing of Guernica, and four additional panels were added, three of these relate directly to the Guernica mural. Picasso said as he worked on the mural: "The Spanish struggle is the fight of reaction against the people, against freedom. My whole life as an artist has been nothing more than a continuous struggle against reaction and the death of art. How could anybody think for a moment that I could be in agreement with reaction and death? ... In the panel on which I am working, which I shall call Guernica , and in all my recent works of art, I clearly express my abhorrence of the military caste which has sunk Spain in an ocean of pain and death. Ashton, Dore, ed. Picasso on Art: A Selection of Views , The Documents of 20th Century Art. New York: Viking Press, 1972.p.143 This painting apparently depicts the bombing of Guernica in Basque Country, by German and Italian forces at the behest of the Spanish nationalist forces, 1937, during the Spanish Civil War. The Spanish Republican government commissioned Picasso to create a large mural for the Spanish display at the 1937 World's Fair in Paris. Guernica shows the tragedies of war and the suffering endured. It was displayed around the world in a brief tour, becoming famous and widely acclaimed.
• #40: The Parallax View is Slavoj Zizek's most substantial theoretical work to appear in many years; Zizek himself describes it as his magnum opus. Parallax can be defined as the apparent displacement of an object, caused by a change in observational position.
• #41: Polke’s Seeing rays [Figure 43], draws from an engraving by Zahn that depicts two gentlemen observing the sky from different vantage points.
• #43: Albert Tucker (1914 –1999) was a member of the Heide Circle, a group of leading modernist artists and writers.The modernists included Albert Tucker, Joy Hester, Sidney Nolan, John Perceval, Arthur Boyd and Noel Counihan. The artists brought influences from European movements such as Surrealism, Cubism, Expressionism, Dadaism and Constructivism. Ivan Durrrant: ‘Pearce, as painted by Albert Tucker, is the summary of all and more that is bad in humans. He is the ultimate destructive intruder... Just look at those viciously protruding, cutting and slicing shark teeth; what a brutal axe-head, alien monster and the devil himself!’ pp27-.28 AMA
• #45: This group was stimulated by a modernist magazine of the same name published by the surrealist poet Max Harris. While the magazine first appeared in Adelaide, the subsequent radical modernist movement, the "Angry Penguins", was based largely in Melbourne. The name itself was derived from a poem by Harris.
• #46: The creation of the Ern Malley hoax proved the validity of surrealist procedures: by opening themselves to free association and chance, the authors McAuley and Stewart had created an icon of literary value, which is why this figure continues to haunt our culture. Image source:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Ern_Malley.jpg