Music and Art week 5

Department for
Continuing Education

Music and Art
Marilou Polymeropoulou
marilou.polymeropoulou@music.ox.ac.uk
Week 5
Symbolism - Avant-Garde
http://musicandartoxford.wordpress.com/

Saturday, 18 February 2012

Previously

• Deﬁnition of art and music
• Aesthetics and criticism
• Impressionism


Today

• Continuing with symbolism
• Avant-garde: 1) expressionism, 2) futurism,
3) dadaism, 4) musical avant-garde


Symbolism
Symbolist poems were attempts to evoke, rather
than primarily to describe; symbolic imagery was
used to signify the state of the poet's soul

Senses - scent, sound, and colour

Schopenhauer: Art providing refuge from the world of strife
and will
Charles Beaudelaire, Paul Verlaine, Arthur Rimbaud,
Stéphane Mallarmé
Inﬂuenced: Oscar Wilde, W.B.Yeats, T.S. Eliot


De Satan ou de Dieu, qu'importe? Ange ou Sirène,
Qu'importe, si tu rends, — fée aux yeux de velours,
Rythme, parfum, lueur, ô mon unique reine! —
L'univers moins hideux et les instants moins lourds?
Baudelaire, Hymne à la Beauté, Fleurs du Mal, 1861

From God or Satan, who cares? Angel or Siren,
Who cares, if you make, — fay with the velvet eyes,
Rhythm, perfume, glimmer; my one and only queen!
The world less hideous, the minutes less leaden?
William Aggeler’s translation, 1954


Charles Baudelaire - L’Horloge (The Clock)


Avant-Garde Pre WW1

• Expressionism, 1905-1925
• Aim: evoke expressions or ideas
• Reaction to realism and impressionism


Edvard Munch - The
Scream (Skrik)
1893-1910
Oil, tempera, and pastel on cardboard

“I was walking along a path with two
friends – the sun was setting – suddenly
the sky turned blood red – I paused,
feeling exhausted, and leaned on the
fence – there was blood and tongues of
ﬁre above the blue-black fjord and the
city – my friends walked on, and I stood
there trembling with anxiety – and I
sensed an inﬁnite scream passing through
nature.”


Vincent Van Gogh
• Born in Holland 1853 - suicide in France 1890

• 1886 moves to Paris

• “As for me, I shall go on working, and here and there something
of my work will prove of lasting value - but who will there be to
achieve for ﬁgure painting what Claude Monet has achieved for
landscape? However, you must feel, as I do, that someone like
that is on the way - Rodin? - he does not use colour - it won't
be him. But the painter of the future will be a colourist the like
of which has never yet been seen.”

• Examples: The Potato Eaters (1885), The Red Vineyard (1888)

• Brush strokes (impasto) technique. Examples of Starry Night
(1889)

Avant-Garde during
WW1
• Futurism. Italy. Futurist manifesto 1909 by
Marinetti.
• Aggression, militarism, nationalism,
demolition of traditional elements, “beauty
of speed”
• Inﬂuence on Fascism (gloriﬁcation of war)


Luigi Russolo’s “Art of Noises” manifesto

Musical evolution
Noise sounds
Creation of noise instruments


Avant-Garde during
WW1
• Dadaism, 1916 - 1922
• Visual arts, literature, poetry, theatre,
graphic design
• Anti-war politics. Anti-art. Rejection of
traditional culture. Ridicule. Criticism on
nihilist perspectives of modernity.
Anarchist


Marcel Duchamp, Fountain
(1917)
“Found object” (readymade)

“Whether Mr Mutt made the
fountain with his own hands or
not has no importance. He
CHOSE it. He took an article of
life, placed it so that its useful
signiﬁcance disappeared under
the new title and point of view
– created a new thought for
that object.”


Stravinsky - The rite of spring (Nijinsky’s choreography)


Musical Avant-Garde
Post WWII


Stockhausen - Kontakte (1958)


Iannis Xenakis - Metastasis (1953)


Brian Eno - Wind on water (1975)


Aphex Twin - Dream scape (1993)


Autechre - Bronchus (1993)


Curtis Roads - Half life (1999)


21st century avant-
garde


Music and Art week 5

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