Androgyny in Dada and Surrealism: from Marcel Duchamp to Lady Gaga

Salvador Dalí

“It is in the freeing of both the natural and artificial bodies that art is created.”

Both Dada and Surrealism cannot be understood just as new art movements, but also as social ones. While the first began in Switzerland during World War I and the second started around the 1920s (when some people thought Dada was already dead, some other not, for instance it is clear i nthe essay written by Man Ray that you can find below) they share a lot of common things that cannot be avoided: "Both movements are widely known for their visual art works, art manifestos and theory. A crossover exists between the movements and artists associated with both occasionally worked together and shared ideas.”“. But truth is Surrealism kind of grew out of the ashes of Dada, expanding itself into limits that Dada could not achieve (such as international politics). The most important difference between them may be that while Dada was opposed to art itself and its aim was to object World War I, Surrealism rose using art as a means of communication.

Fountain, M.Duchamp

Nevertheless, I am going to focus on a big similarity they have: expressing art through ambiguity and androgyny. Marcel Duchamp started this in 1917 when he created his Fountain and following this his interpretation of Da Vinci's Mona Lisa (LHOOQ). Salvador Dalí's Mona Lisa just took 40 years to appear (even more androgynous). They both had some issues with their gender identity, To illustrate this you may know that Marchel Duchamp had an alter ego called Rrose Selavy and liked to dress up as a woman and be photographed (the picture here was taken by Man Ray, for instance). On the other hand, it is more familiar to us (due to Salvador Dalí's hometown) that the rumours of his homosexuality were quite loud. 

"By masking the Mona Lisa with masculine features, they are not only displaying a modern androgyny but reinforcing the adrogyny that was already depicted by DaVinci, something that led to rumors that the the Mona Lisa was truly a self-portrait of DaVinci himself in drag."

Claude Cahun was also an artist who exemplified androgyny.

Man Ray stated Dadaism wasn't dead at all... could it be dead these days? Most of us deduce that when something seems not to be mainstream (let's say, in this case, physically) it can be considered straight away kind of monstrous. Well, that perfectly fits Dada and Surrealism. Turning to the present and what we can understand accurately, is not that what a current artist like Lady Gaga is trying to do? "We infer based on something’s lack of ordinariness that it is disgusting or somehow linked to something inhumane, in some cases one might say uncivilized." As we said above, Dada was apart from art, but Surrealism wanted to create an art that could be established as a modern way to understand society. She doesn't only sing, she wants to create a magnificent perfomance including surrealistic aims in order to create art. She even has a male alter ego who provoked the shock of her fans. We mustn't forget to mention the great influence of Pop Art (and specially Andy Warhol) that is shown in her outfits and performances. All of this cannot be understood without the presence of androgynous elements, following Dada and Surrealism, since the LGBT community is growing more a more every day. Can we now dare to say that these movements have been, are or may someday be dead? 

Lady Gaga's male alter ego (Joe Calderone)

Thank you for reading and remember to ask any question you want through Formspring or Facebook!
Summer

Would you consider Oscar Wilde as a modern writer?

That is certainly a difficult question to answer accurately. Oscar Wilde, according to his period, was a late-victorian writer along with Hardy or Stevenson, for instance. However, we must bear in mind the fact that he may have some modern characteristics which may lead us to categorize him sometimes in the same modernist package.

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"True modernism is freedom of mind, not slavery of taste. It is independence of thought and action.It is science but not its wrong application to life.”

Modernism inspired me

In this new entrance we're going to do a briefly introduction of some important authors of this period.

Modernism music is characterized by a desire of progress, of and surrealism, anti-romanticism, surrealist, general intellectulism and a breaking with the past and rutinary practice. Later this modernism period will disappear and will begin a post-modernism period.




Gustav Mahler at his first symphony.

 The first author is Gustav Mahler, was an Austrian- Bohemian composer and one of the leaders of his generation. He was an earlypromise and he studied at the Vienna Conservatory in 1878. In 1897 he culminated his career being the director of the Viena Court Opera.

Mahler is considered one of the best intepreter of the stage works of Wagner and Mozart. Late in his life he was briefly director of New York's Metropolitan Opera and the New York Philharmonic.He composed ten symphonies in a very large scale with an important orchestra support. Some of his symphonies are:

- Der Trompeter von Säkkingen ("The Trumpeter of Säkkingen", his first work)

- Lieder eines fahrenden Gesellen ("Songs of a Wayfarer", love poems to Johanna Ritcher a love affair)

- Lieder und Gesänge ("Songs and Airs")



Claude-Achille Debussy (August 22, 1862 – March 25, 1918)was a French composer. He was one of the most prominent figures of impressionist music. He was made Chevalier de la Légion d'honneur.

His compositions reflected the turbulance of his life.

At age ten, Debussy entered the Paris Conservatoire, where he spent eleven years. When he was young he player fantastic pieces and movements of Bethoveen, Schumann and Weber and Chopin. It is conclude that Debussy's achievement was the synthesis of monophonic based "melodic tonality" with harmonies, albeit different from those of "harmonic tonality. His music has an own sign and language influenced by the Symbolist Movement. Some of his works are:

- The Deux Arabesques (Eraly work)

- Clair de Lune (One of the most important pieces)

- Pelléas et Mélisande (his only complete opera)

And the last but not the least is Richard Georg Strauss (11 June 1864 – 8 September 1949). He is a German composer of the late Romantic and early modern eras. Strauss is well known for his operas and his tone poems and orchestral works that we are going to mention later. 

In his youth, he received a thorough musical education from his father. He studied music at the Munich Court Orchestra and he also studied particual classes. Richard Strauss married soprano Pauline de Ahna on 10 September 1894, they shared  love of music. She was a great source of inspiration to him and he preferred the soprano voice for his works. His famous works are:

- Don Juan (1888), the first tone poem.

- Death and Transfiguration (Tod und Verklärung, 1889)

- Salome (1905) based on the play by Oscar Wilde.

- Der Rosenkavalier, an important opera such as Salome.

- Four Last Songs

- Metamorphosen (1945), his last orchestral work.

To finish we can see this masterpiece.Thanks.

Spring.

                      

A LITTLE BIT OF EVERYTHING (FAMOUS WRITERS DEALING WITH LITERATURE AND TECHONOLOGY)

In this entry, I am going mention, though only a little bit, all the authors I have come across when I was thinking about the power of literature and technology. I found unfair not to bring them up in this blog.

Being guided by a chronological order, I will start with Shakespeare (who else?).

Shakespeare is the most famous english writer, from seventeenth century, of all time. He was a poet and a dramatist whose biggest concern was ageing and death. Of course the love theme is almost always characterized in much of his work, but dying is what made him lose sleep.

For that reason, he believed in the power of writing so that he would be able to live forever; I mean, he was convinced of the power of poetry and literature over death.

Actually, in one of his most famous sonnets, Sonnet 18, we observe immediately how he is asserting this theory if we take a quick look at its last two verses:

"So long as men can breathe or eyes can see,

So long lives this and this gives life to thee."

On the opposite, Jonathan Swift from the eighteenth century . Within Gulliver's Travel there is so much about writing, but considered not as good as Shakespeare did. Swift, through Gulliver, shows his belief in writing as a mistrusting weapon.

Therefore, when Gulliver sat sail from Brobdingnag, the captain suggests that he should write a book with his memoirs but Gulliver tells him that each book which describes the journal of a sailor used to be full of lies and that he "doubted some authors less consulted truth, than their own vanity, or interest, or the diversion of ignorant readers".

However, this is quite ironic, considering the fact that he is himself writing a book of travelling memoirs.

Straight forward to the first half of nineteenth century, we find one of the best female writers of England: Jane Austen.

Jane Austen spent most of her living writing about love, morality, women and classes in general but in her not-so-known novel (which was the first she ever wrote), Northanger Abbey. It is a book with certain gothic characteristics in which she gets to talk, moreover, about novels, writing and reading, sometimes in an ironic way.

Catherine, the main character, consumes her life reading Gothic novels, wrapped up in the reading world so much that she herself recognises she is "delighted with the book" and that she should like to spend her whole life in reading it. Therefore, Austen deals with literature theme, though maybe in a weaker way, such as Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451 will later do, in a funny way, forcing her madeup characters to read reaching the point that they may not be able to tell apart reality from fiction.

<<He smiled and said, "You have formed a very favourable idea of the abbey?"

"To be sure I have. Is not it a fine old place, just like what one reads about?"

"And are you prepared to encounter all the horrors that a building such as 'what one reads about' may produce?">>

(Henry Tilney laughs at Catherine leaning to confuse reality with fiction.)

Now reaching the late Victorian (and almost modernist) period, we will slightly deal with Oscar Wilde's only novel, The Picture Of Dorian Gray.

Oscar wilde was an aestheticism philosophy follower, so he thought art was the second most important thing we have because it involves the most important thing in the world: beauty. However, he did not thought as good of culture. Furthermore, culture, according to his point of view, does not have to be good by definition, it could (and, DOES, in fact, in the book) corrupt people and be a bad influence, as it happens with the case of Lord Henry (a well-educated man who teaches Dorian not to follow anything but beauty and pleasure).

"There are no temptatios in the country," says Lord Henry to Dorian, "that is why people who live out of twon are so absolutely uncivilized. Civilization is not by any means an easy thing to attain to. There are only two ways by which man can reach it. One is by being cultured, the other by being corrupt. Country people have no opportunity to being either". 

So, Wilde proves through his alter-ego Lord Henry that civilization is a necessary mix between culture and corruption.

George Orwell created, as well, around the first half of the twentieth century, 1984, a political work in which techonology and literature are used for the State to control its citizens and have them in their pocket. Telescreens supervise everyone but the ones who are members of the Inner Party, allowed to turn them off any time they want. And also, as it happens in Fahrenheit 451, books are destroyed so that it is impossible to think for oneself, ergo, rebellion is inconceivable.

Summing up, we reckon that, even though ignorance may be bliss in several cases, literature is what makes us nonconformist, mavericks, rebels in a way we should not just accept the laws whcih are stablished, we should and must consider whether we agree or not with them. That is the power literature gives you, the capacity of discovering our own selves.

<<The Savage shook his head. "Listen to this," was his answer; and unlocking the drawer in which he kept his mouse-eaten book, he opened and read:

"Let the bird of loudest lay

On the sole Arabian tree,

Herald sad and trumpet be…"

Helmholtz listened with a growing excitement. At "sole Arabian tree" he started; at "thou shrieking harbinger" he smiled with sudden pleasure; at "every fowl of tyrant wing" the blood rushed up into his cheeks; but at "defunctive music" he turned pale and trembled with an unprecedented emotion.

Aldous Huxley - Brave New World

I say goodbye with a song by The Smiths, influenced by Virginia Woolf's previously explained theory of Shakespeare's Sister:

Autumn

Modernism in Music: And yet what is Modernism? It is undefined.

The relationship between Literature and Music has been one of the oldest and brilliant collaborations that occur between these disciplines.



Poetry was born together with the music and dance music was intended, originally had a liturgical and sacred.

Music and songs were used to reflect the different moral values and how people have to live acorrding this period.When the man felt the need to express and voice their feelings, used body movements accompanied by sounds that were progressively enriched with rhythm, melody and words finally.There is a strong tradition of oral literature, stories, histories and legends that have been passed from generation to generation through time.The earliest recorded simulate the pace and style of oral literature and song groups, before the stories were "singing", making use of elements of this type of literature such as repetition, alliteration, puns and, of course, rhyme.

           This photo shows a woman dancing as a corporal expression of the soul or feelings.

In these cases, the voice is the main tool, the means by which the word evokes images, places and characters, imaginary or real. In storytelling, the word comes to life, reveals different feelings and experiences.This is how a simple story that happens have a  literary effect, to be considered as literature.Now at days,and just like the movies or television, music is another of the arts in recent years has turned its attention to literature to provide updates, including adaptations of literary translations. That is why the film prefers to narrate, tell stories and in prose, music focuses on esthetics, metaphor and short poetry.

A painter paints pictures on canvas. But musicians paint their pictures on silence.(Leopold Stokowski).

Does art reflect life? In movies, yes. Because more than any other art form, films have been a mirror held up to society's porous face.

(Marjorie Rosen)

Spring

Virginia Woolf & the relation among Literature, Money and Women

When the time comes for dealing with literature and, mostly, with the role of women in it, it is required to talk about Virginia Woolf.

Virginia Woolf is one of the best female english writers. Throughout her life, she was worried about several issues: society and its clases, love, ageing and time, death, nature and our surroundings, gender, but also the literature for itself.

This time we will focus on Mrs. Woolf's concern for literature and writing and the impossibility of women to creat art on their own.

Therefore, her main work focused on this concern is A Room Of One's Own.

A Room Of One's Own is a feminist essay relating, mainly, the problem of female writers all through the years and why is that there were so many men compared to the presence of the women in the art.

Thus, Woolf concluded that "a woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to write fiction", using "room" as privacy, leisure time and financial independance. For that reason, women's presence in literary world has been rather deficient: women depend on men because women's financial independance in most cases was absolutely hopeless. Nowadays, maybe we women do not depend that much on men, but we surely need some financial independance to write; art does not usually lead to wealthiness without putting too much effort in it.

So, whether this fact remains, there will be no gender equality and women's literary achievements will always be inferior.

However, in Woolf's own case, who was highly lucky in this area (though maybe not that much in the others), did not happen as we are predicting: she was married to Leonard Woolf, who gave her each and everything she would need for her to create art and, being himself writer and editor, revised and corrected her texts.

To illustrate this alarming matter, Woolf creates Judith Shakespeare, Shakespeare's hypothetical sister he could have had, with a genious as big as his but unable to develop it because her parents would not ever let her obtain enough educational aptitudes. She would, cosequently, feel miserable enough to end up killing herself, leaving her brother William as the only art legacy, though she, with the required opportunities, could have been as (even better, if possible) good as William.

When looking at things under Woolf's perspective, one of the most important things when it comes to writing is money. That is why V. Woolf asserts that "Intellectual freedom depends upon material things. Poetry depends upon itellectual freedom. And women have always been poor, not for two hundred years merely, but from the beginning of time...".

Furthermore, one does not usually make enough profit to live loosely. In fact, most of people who have been devoted to art and, moreover, they have made a significant profit is due to the certainty that they surely had already money and credit facilities.

Another Virginia Woolf's book which it deals with pretty much a similar issue is Orlando. In this story, the theme of people needing economic freedom and leisure time in order to produce any kind of art, including literature, is frequent as well.

Orlando is a writer who is suffering from gender transformations and time travelling until he reaches the 20th century, when, according to Woolf's belief, women could have more freedom when it comes to writing:

"And she heaved a deep sigh of relief, as, indeed, well she might, for the transaction between a writer and the spirit of the age is one of infinite delicacy, and upon a nice arrangement between the two the whole fortune of his works depends. Orlando had so ordered it that she was in an extremely happy position; she need neither fight her age, nor submit to it; she was of it, yet remained herself. Now, therefore, she could write, and write she did. She wrote. She wrote. She wrote."

> Orlando.

On a different maner, in this blog, we all believe in good sense of humour in order to live life more peacefully and laugh at our problems so that we can minimize them.

You will be able to watch below a parody of Virginia Woolf, who was almost always in very low spirits made by the Muchachada Nui comedians.

Autumn.

¿Considerais que la película "Donde viven los Monstruos" es una buena adaptación al cine en relación al libro?

Mi compañero Winter dice que se leyó el libro mucho tiempo atrás y que en la película ha encontrado cosas que le han sorprendido porque no estaban en el libro. Por eso mismo, considera que es una buena adaptación, porque capta el alma del libro y a la vez pone pequeños detalles para hacerla suya.

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