<p>ABSTRACT</p><p>My dissertation studies the intersection of popular entertainment and the visual arts in Paris during the first decades of the twentieth century and the dialogue that formed between this subculture and the avant-garde factions of Paris and Italy. While this project will focus on the Italian Futurist Gino Severini (1883-1966), it is not conceived of as a monograph. Instead I will use Severini as a case study to help make sense of a complicated world in which the boundaries between bohemia and the bourgeoisie, masculinity and femininity, and art and popular culture are transgressed and blurred. Severini is particularly well suited to this discussion because nearly all of the 170 paintings, sketches, and pastels that he produced between the time that he arrived in Paris and the outbreak of the First World War take as their subject a prime example of Parisian popular culture--Montmartre's dance-halls. My study will address how form and content interrelate in these works, analyzing the ongoing evolution of his style and the manner in which he developed his imagery to cater to both commercial and avant-garde audiences. It will also seek to make sense of the reception of Severini's work both in France and elsewhere. In order to make sense of his artistic career and to divine the importance of his life and work to the greater political and cultural environment of early twentieth-century Europe, I will also explore Severini's actual participation in dance-hall culture, his self-fashioning as a dandy and a foreigner, and his attempt to find a niche for himself in Paris while still maintaining a foothold in the Italian avant-garde. Gino Severini's unique posturing within the culture of Bohemian Paris and the rich visual record that he left behind provide a perfect platform from which to deepen our understanding of the multitude of factors influencing the Parisian avant-garde and its subsequent impact on avant-gardes throughout the rest of the Western world.</p> / Dissertation

Photomontage has more to do with film than with any other art form - they have in common the technique of montage. (Sergei Tretyakov) By considering that photomontage and film use the technique of cutting and gluing as dominant artistic device, and that montage, a technique unifying art and technology for the first time, emerged as a dominant artistic feature of the avantgarde, this thesis will explore the ideological and perceptual implications of its advent in avant-garde art and film. The technological advances of the beginning of the twentieth century, and particularly the advent of photography, allowed avantgarde artists to break free from traditional concepts of artistic production – they dispensed with the old criteria of uniqueness, originality, handicraft and personal style. At a time when many avant-garde artists abruptly ceased to paint, photomontage emerged as the privileged locus for a caesura with traditional art forms. Photomontage envisioned film aesthetics insofar as it combines and juxtaposes images of various perspectival planes and angles (Raoul Hausmann described his early photomontages as “motionless moving pictures”). A corresponding observation can be made on the use of montage in cinema, a technique which crucially underpins the illusion of movement created through the succession of photographic stills. The present thesis will investigate photomontage and film in order to examine the effect technological reproduction played in revolutionising artistic production, perception and ideology – where the technique and philosophy of montage was key.

Mémoire numérisé par la Direction des bibliothèques de l'Université de Montréal.

The early twentieth-century avant-garde has cast a long shadow over the popular imagination as producers of manifestos, public scandals, and some of the most enduring art and literature of the last century. In this study, I examine the works of three poets who are not only considered leading avant-gardists, but who are foundational to how both popular consciousness and academic scholarship have understood the avant-garde’s theory and practice: Guillaume Apollinaire, F. T. Marinetti, and Ezra Pound. In particular, this study focuses on the recurring themes of prophecy and apocalypse in their work. These themes occur through reference to prophetic and apocalyptic literary or mythical figures, but also through stylistic innovations such as the use of literary personae or the attempt to synthesise diverse artistic forms. Focusing on these themes allows this study to re-engage the question of how these poets, and the avant-garde more broadly, regarded their practice as a social act. Using a comparative methodology in this thesis, prophecy is viewed not simply as a declamatory literary style that foretells the future, but as a particular kind of social relationship to an audience that is at turns mutually supportive and antagonistic. Similarly, apocalyptic thought is presented not merely as an expectation or belief in the end of the world, but as a specific method of imagining a new world that is, in spite of itself, dependent upon the social world of the present. Apollinaire, Marinetti, and Pound were major figures in the so-called ‘Pre-war Avant-Garde’ having established their reputations in the decade prior to World War I. While they each began formulating and proclaiming their views on aesthetics prior to the war, the experience of war had a profound impact on all three. Accordingly, this thesis examines a number of poems from Apollinaire’s two major collections: Alcools (1913) and Calligrammes (1918), the latter containing significant reflections on avant-gardism and war. Marinetti acted as a journalist in the Italo-Turkish war of 1911-1912, which inspired the work central to this study: his Futurist novel-in-verse Le Monoplan du Pape (1912). Pound, unlike Apollinaire and Marinetti, did not participate in World War I, and this study explores his sequence Hugh Selwyn Mauberley (1920), a long rumination on art, war, and his engagement with Imagism and Vorticism, but also analyses poems from his collections Personae (1908), Ripostes (1912), and Lustra (1916). This study examines how the acute crisis of the war pressed each of these poets to reconsider their view of the poet-as-prophet in society. In doing so it explores the ethical or political implications of avant-garde aesthetics influenced by and as a response to war. This study also closely compares these poets’ works to the biblical literature from which they frequently derived prophetic and apocalyptic themes. Apollinaire, Marinetti, and Pound’s relationship to religion, particularly Christianity, spanned from ambivalence to hostility, but they each engage biblical literature in unique and unorthodox ways. While these poets all sought to be identifiably modern, this study demonstrates the ways in which they attempted to recover values from biblical literature that each felt was necessary to establish the independence and autonomy of contemporary art and literature. Therefore, this study’s comparative framework is intended to engage the conversation over the spiritual, religious, or transcendent values to which avant-garde art aspired. And drawing significantly from the social theories of art, religion, and culture developed by Max Weber and Pierre Bourdieu, this thesis contributes to the study of avant-gardism as a social, as well as aesthetic, phenomenon.

George Dickie’s Institutional Theory of Art satisfies necessary and sufficient conditions for definition, but by leaving evaluation open cannot address artistic capacities to outstrip the usefulness of the theory for appreciating the concept of art comprehensively or meaningfully. Artworks that are known to members of the central and peripheral artworld seep into the general purview of the population at large as known “great works” of art. Upon examination of works that garner significant cultural influence, works broadly appreciated as great works, we find that their resistance to Dickie’s concept of “the artworld” and its associated behaviors is that which makes them conspicuously significant.

A tese examina a primeira obra escrita por Vilém Flusser com objetivo de buscar as raízes do pensamento do futuro filósofo e apontar as características nela presentes que se tornariam relevantes na sua obra futura. Trata-se da peça de teatro Saul, redigida em alemão, em 1936, em Praga, sua cidade natal. A primeira parte da pesquisa foca o ambiente no qual Flusser nasceu e onde se formou sua visão do mundo. Esboçamos uma breve história da comunidade judaica nas terras tchecas, mencionamos figuras importantes da vida literária do país, assim como tendências culturais marcantes, para entender particularidades do seu universo. Na parte biográfica da pesquisa acompanhamos a vida intelectual de Flusser, que se desdobrava entre a Europa e o Brasil, encerrando-a com o levantamento da fortuna crítica que mostra o alcance de seu legado. A segunda parte da pesquisa dedica-se à análise do drama Saul e sua contextualização dentro das correntes artísticas e filosóficas da sua época. No campo da arte, identificamos sua proximidade sobretudo com o movimento expressionista e o teatro épico brechtiano; no âmbito da história do pensamento, por sua vez, com os pensadores cuja obra pode ser considerada dialógica e crítica ao pensamento instrumental. Abordamos nomes como Ortega y Gasset, Martin Buber, Mikhail Bakhtin ou Walter Benjamin e nos detemos nos próprios princípios do diálogo socrático. Reconhecemos uma série de pontos comuns entre os pensadores em questão e a obra de Vilém Flusser, tanto no drama Saul como nos ensaios posteriores. Destacamos sobretudo o caráter dialógico e não conclusivo dos seus textos, a busca pelas novas formas de expressão e pelo discurso científico alternativo. Com essa finalidade o pensador desenvolve uma série de estratégias que visam subverter as normas do discurso filosófico tradicional e acadêmico. Para ele, a posição filosófica carrega uma dimensão ética ela é um meio de engajamento social. Encerramos o trabalho com a reflexão sobre a influência do Fausto de J.W. Goethe no jovem praguense. Salientamos a transformação do papel da ciência no período que separa a vida de Goethe da de Flusser e mostramos como a preocupação com o reducionismo e a instrumentalização da ciência tornou-se um dos temas centrais dos textos de Flusser. / The thesis examines the very first Vilém Flusser\'s work purposing to search for the roots of his thought as well as to point the features in it that would become relevant in his future creation. It is a theatre play Saul written in German, in 1936, in Prague, his hometown. The first part of my research focuses the environment within which Flusser was born and in which his vision of the world was shaped. We have outlined a brief history of the Jewish community in the Czech lands, we have mentioned local important literary life figures and significant cultural tendencies to understand his particular universe. The biographical part of the research follows Flusser\'s intellectual activities unfolded between Europe and Brazil, and it is closed with a mapping of the critical resources that reveals the reach of his legacy. The second part of the thesis is dedicated to the analysis of the drama Saul and its contextualization within artistic and philosophical movements of that time. In the fields of art, we have identified the proximity, especially, to Expressionism and to Brecht\'s epic theatre; in the area of the thought\'s history, in turn, to thinkers whose work can be considered dialogical and critical in respect of the instrumental thinking. We have approached names as Ortega y Gasset, Martin Buber, Mikhail Bakhtin or Walter Benjamin and we have dwelled also on the principles of the Socratic dialogue. We have recognized a number of common aspects between the thinkers under discussion and the Vilém Flusser\'s work, both as in the drama Saul and as in the further essays. We emphasise mainly the dialogical and non-conclusive character of his texts, his pursuit of the new forms of expression and of an alternative scientific discourse. With that purpose, the thinker built up a number of strategies up, that aim to subvert the rules of the traditional and academic philosophical discourse. For him, a philosophical position is filled with an ethical dimension, it is an instrument of social engagement. We terminate the research with a reflection on the influence of J.W. Goethe\'s Faust on the young Prague citizen. We have pointed out the transformation of the role of the science in the period that separates Goethe\'s and Flusser\'s lives and have demonstrated how the concerns about the reductionism and the instrumentalization of the science became one of the central themes of Flusser\'s works.

Orientador: Lia Vera Tomás / Banca: Marcos José Cruz Mesquita / Banca: Celso Luiz de Araújo Cintra / Resumo: O seguinte trabalho tem por objetivo abordar a natureza da música humorística em Erik Satie, sua aplicação, função e caráter estético. Para isto, através de sua obra musical, seus escritos, estudos acadêmicos realizados sobre o compositor, relatos e críticas musicais da época, buscou-se, inicialmente, reconstruir a lógica pessoal e composicional do compositor, ambas inerentes. Em seguida, a fim de tornar possível uma análise adequada do humor em suas obras, procurou-se, através da reflexão existente sobre o tema no âmbito da filosofia, atribuir uma definição clara e prática da natureza do humor, do riso, assim como, determinar a gênese de sua má reputação. A partir disto, com base no conceito de humor e em textos musicológicos sobre a música humorística, desenvolvemos um aparato técnico de reconhecimento e aplicabilidade do humor no âmbito da música. Com este referencial teórico em mãos, fez-se possível a análise da aplicação e função do humor em quinze conjuntos de peças humorísticas do compositor: Gnossiennes; Pièces Froides; Troix Morceaux en forme de Poire; Préludes Flasques (Pour un Chien); Véritables Préludes Flasques (Pour un Chien); Descriptions Automatiques; Croquis et Agaceries d'un Gros Bonhomme en Bois; Embryons Desséchés; Chapitres Tournés en Tous Sens; Vieux Sequins et Vieilles Curaisses; Choses Vues à droite et à gauche; Heures Séculaires et Instantanées; Trois Valses distinguées de précieux dégoûté; Avant-dernières Pensées; e Sonatine Bureaucratique. Em seguid... (Resumo completo, clicar acesso eletrônico abaixo) / Abstract: The following work aims to approach the nature of Erik Satie‟s humorous music, its application, role played and aesthetical disposition. In order to do this, we sought, initially, through his musical works, writings, academical studies about the composer, reports and musical criticism at the time, to rebuild his personal and compositional logic, both inherent. Thereafter, for the purpose of making an appropriated analysis of humor in his works, we searched, through the existing reflection on the subject in the field of philosophy, to ascribe a clear and practical definition upon the nature of humor, laughter, as well as to determine the genesis of its bad reputation. Thus, based on the concept of humor and in musicological texts about humorous music, we developed a technical apparatus of recognition and application of humor in the musical‟s scope. With that theoretical referential in hands, it was made possible an analysis of the applicat ion and function of humor in fifteen groups of humorous pieces written by the composer: Gnossiennes; Pièces Froides; Troix Morceaux en forme de Poire; Préludes Flasques (Pour un Chien); Véritables Préludes Flasques (Pour un Chien); Descriptions Automatiques; Croquis et Agaceries d‟un Gros Bonhomme en Bois; Embryons Desséchés; Chapitres Tournés en Tous Sens; Vieux Sequins et Vieilles Curaisses; Choses Vues à droite et à gauche; Heures Séculaires et Instantanées; Trois Valses distinguées de précieux dégoûté; Avant-dernières Pensées; and Sonatine Bureaucratique. Subsequently, through humorous articles published by Satie and critics published on the composer, we made a comparative analysis of the countercriticism role played by Erik Satie‟s humor against the canon and tradition. Thus, we could demystify the superficial and innocuous character and the idea of eccentricity, amateurism and insanity which trespass his humorous practice, (Complete abstract eletronic acess below) / Mestre

Flotsam is a collection of writing. Flotsam examines divisions of the self. Flotsam is made of fiction, nonfiction, and visual representations of both. Flotsam is made of the truth. Flotsam is made of lies. Flotsam is pretty. Flotsam is a beast. / by Jacob Henson. / Thesis (M.F.A.)--Florida Atlantic University, 2011. / Includes bibliography. / Electronic reproduction. Boca Raton, Fla., 2011.

This dissertation focuses on the relationship between new American music and National Public Radio (NPR) during the 1970s and 1980s. NPR directly supported American experimental music, most often billed as "new music," through programming that both consolidated a tradition and extended it by commissioning new works. I address three exemplary broadcasts, proposing that public radio utilized existing historical narratives of musical experimentalism while simultaneously revising and strengthening those narratives. I demonstrate ways in which the shows themselves, as well as their planning phases and promotional materials, served to gather individuals and musical practices together, defining and constructing musical experimentalism in the process. Chapter 1 covers the importance of sonic experimentation in NPR's original Statement of Purposes, claiming that author William Siemering's attention to sound created a climate that was especially hospitable to musical and radiophonic experimentation. In Max Neuhaus's Radio Net (1977), NPR's very infrastructure became a musical instrument, showing the radical potential of NPR in its early days. Chapter 2 chronicles the production history of RadioVisions (1981) to establish the ways in which NPR's imaginary listeners were essential during its planning phase: in the conception of the show, in the grant proposal to the NEA, and in the show's content. I conclude that experimentalism's potential for imagining an NPR audience allowed "new music" to become "American experimental music" as the RadioVisions project moved through the infrastructure of NPR. Chapter 3 explores the cultural valences and authorities of the musical voices in RadioVisions's segments "Details at Eleven," "Shoptalk," and "The Oldest Instrument," as well as Schuller's hosting voice in the context of public radio broadcasting. Chapter 4 presents a history of the composition, production, and radio broadcast of Maritime Rites (1984). I argue that the differences between Maritime Rites and RadioVisions were, in part, representative of changes in NPR from 1981-85, particularly the role of the newly established Satellite Program Development Fund in supporting adventuresome programming. Maritime Rites served not only as a sonic documentation of the Eastern seaboard, but also as a sonic documentation of the landscape of improvisational experimental music in the mid-1980s, enhancing its fit on NPR as new music/radio documentary. Chapter 5 offers an analysis of the second segment of Maritime Rites, which featured Pauline Oliveros and her improvisation "Rattlesnake Mountain," as well as the voice of Karen MacLean (the only female lighthouse keeper in the series). This dissertation contributes to a deeper understanding of NPR's history by addressing lesser-known yet significant cultural programs, as well as to a broader musicological understanding of how public radio contributed to the construction of musical experimentalism.

This study addresses the intersection of the avant-garde and mass culture through a close reading of three singular works from the Weimar Republic in Germany. Bauhaus founding director Walter Gropius (1883-1969) designed a "Total Theater" (1927, unbuilt) whose multiple screens encircled an interior structure for the presentation of twelve simultaneous film projections. In 1930, Hungarian-born Bauhaus professor László Moholy-Nagy (1895-1946) completed a rotating, metallic sculpture for the projection of light effects, which has assumed a number of different configurations within theater, film, and the museum since its inception in 1922. In the 1910s and 20s, Swedish-born Viking Eggeling (1880-1925) experimented with the properties of line by transferring static, two-dimensional collages from the animation table to the cinematic screen. In addition to undoing experimental film's logic as a genre, this study addresses the epistemological questions each of these works introduce--namely, the production of artistic and scientific knowledge in the early twentieth century, the evidentiary status of reproducible media, and the institutional framing of works of art. Rather than establish a genealogy between early twentieth-century kinetic and light experiments and the "expanded cinema" practices of the 1960s and 70s, this dissertation approaches these objects as "adjacencies" to the cinematic dispositif, within which their relationship to art and politics, technological determinism, the ontology of the work of art, and the compartmentalization of media are examined.