Class 3.1

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Collage and the Crisis of Meaning

The turn of the century in 1900 spurred futuristic dreams, but few anticipated the century brought into being fourteen years later by World War I. A generation of of young men lost their lives, apparently to no purpose. The ruling class lost its legitimacy, resulting in significant changes in Britain—and a revolutionary changes in Russia, Austria, Turkey, and Germany. The system of international trade collapsed, replaced by protectionism and isolationism. More fundamentally, the war’s brutality challenged a deep-set faith that technological and social progress would march ever forward in lockstep. In the wake of the conflict, Democracy seemed outdated, a relic of the Enlightenment; the new world called for a new mass politics, whether in the mode of Communism or Fascism.

Class Prep: Cubist Collage

Collage and the Modern Age

Both scholars listed below agree on the centrality of collage to modernist art; they disagree only in how broadly they define Modernism. Greenberg focuses wholly on developments within the field of painting, while Hopkins speaks of culture in the broadest sense: literature, film, etc.

Scholarly Reading: Two Perspectives on Collage

  • Clement Greenberg, “The Pasted-Paper Revolution” (1958) (Blackboard)
  • Budd Hopkins, “Modernism and the Collage Aesthetic” (1997) (Blackboard)

Viewing: Analytic and Synthetic Cubism

  • Pablo Picasso, Les Demoiselles d’Avignon (1907)
  • Georges Braque, Violin and Palette (1909)
  • Pablo Picasso, Still Life with Chair Caning (1911)
  • Georges Braque, Homage to J. S. Bach (1911-12)
  • Pablo Picasso, Guitar, Sheet Music and Wine Glass (1912)
  • Juan Gris, The Table (1914)

Writing: Respond to ONE of the following prompts. Keep your response short, posting as a reply under the appropriate heading in the comments section:

  1. Point to ONE quality that these Cubist works share in common with the Futurist art we examined last week. Alternatively, point to something that makes them distinct.
  2. Drawing on Greenberg or Hopkins—or just pointing to the art itself, should Cubist collage be classed as mimetic or expressive art? Or some third thing?
Class Prep: The Waste-Land

Eliot’s Crisis of Meaning

As Budd Hopkins suggests in an article linked in the preceding section, Eliot’s “Waste Land” has the formal structure of a collage. We encounter an extraordinary variety of language, fragments from classical literature, scraps of popular songs, bits from overheard conversations. These are piled together, apparently at random, in a way that suggests the breakdown of cultural coherence. As the final lines comment, “These fragments I have shored against my ruins.” This lack of structure forces the reader into a role ordinarily assumed by the author: that of making meaning.

Reading: T.S. Eliot, The Waste Land (link). Note: you may find it valuable to listen to Eliot’s poem read by professional actors Jeremy Irons and Eileen Atkins: YouTube. They bring to life the very different “voices” that form the patchwork of Eliot’s poem.

Writing: Respond to ONE of the following prompts. Keep your response short, posting as a reply under the appropriate heading in the comments section:

  1. An American living in Europe (mostly London), Eliot was likely struck by the rigid class hierarchies of the old world. Where does class enter into The Waste Land?
  2. Early in the poem Eliot references the loss of life in World War 1. Quote a key moment and comment as to how the poem contextualizes the war.
  3. Having plundered Western European myth and literature, in the final section Eliot turns to Hindu scripture: Da, Datta, Dayadhvam, Damyata. How is this similar to or different from the Orientalism we witnessed at the Royal Pavilion in Brighton, dating a century before Eliot’s poem?

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