Cubism and Futurism : spiritual machines and the cinematic effect / R. Bruce Elder.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Elder, Bruce (R. Bruce), author.

Contributor:

Alumni and Friends Memorial Book Fund.

Series:

Film + media studies

Film and media studies series

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Cubism.

Futurism (Art).

Motion pictures--History.

Motion pictures.

History.

Genre:

History.

Physical Description:

xv, 667 pages ; 24 cm.

Place of Publication:

Waterloo, Ontario : Wilfrid Laurier University Press, [2018]

Summary:

Cubism and futurism were closely related movements that vied with each other in the economy of renown. Perception, dynamism, and the dynamism of perceptionthese were the issues that passed back and forth between the two. Cubism, Futurism, and Technologies of the Spirit: Spiritual Machines and the Cinematic Effect shows how movement became, in the traditional visual arts, a central factor with the advent of the cinema: gone were the days when an artwork strived merely to lift experience out the realm of change and flow. The cinema at this time was understood as an electric art, akin to X-rays, coloured light, and sonic energy. In this book, celebrated filmmaker and author Bruce Elder connects the dynamism that the cinema made an essential feature of the new artwork to the new science of electromagnetism. Cubism is a movement on the cusp of the transition from the Cartesian world of standardized Cartesian coordinates and interchangeable machine parts to a Galvanic world of continuities and flows. In contrast, futurism embraced completely the emerging electromagnetic view of reality.

Contents:

1 Modernism and the Visual Arts p. 35

Modernism and Abstraction p. 38

The Attributes of Aesthetic Experience p. 44

Optical Experience and the Higher Noesis p. 47

Producing Facts p. 51

Primordial Experience: A Non-reflexive, Pre-objective Awareness p. 65

The Influence of Emmanuel Kant p. 70

Basic Themes in Cubism and Futurism p. 85

The Senses' Disconnection from Reality p. 85

Time, Reality, and Meaning p. 89

Absolute Space, Relative Space p. 103

Nerves p. 114

2 Dudley Murphy, Fernand Leger, and Ballet Mécanique: Vorticism, Cubism, Collage, and Léger's New Realism p. 139

The New Vision p. 139

Prosthetics for the Senses: Reconciling Two Descriptions of the World p. 151

Cubism and the Crisis of Vision p. 155

Cubism and Passage p. 162

Understanding Simultaneity, Understanding Instantaneity p. 167

Cubist Painting Between Structure and Representation p. 170

The Transitional Phase: Towards Synthetic Cubism p. 172

Cubist Collage and Papier collé p. 176

Synthetic Cubism p. 183

Bergson's Importance for Cubism p. 190

Léger and Synthetic Cubism p. 199

Proceeding from Synthetic Cubism: Fernand Léger and the New Realism p. 200

Léger: Cubism, Quasi-Cubism, and Non-Cubism p. 202

Léger, the Object, and the Human Body p. 206

Léger and the "All-Over" Form p. 208

Léger's New Realism p. 211

Léger and the Theory of Contrasts p. 213

The Idea of the New Human and Its Contribution to Léger's Evolution p. 219

Equivalent to Life: Plastically Organized Intensity p. 221

Léger and Purism p. 228

Towards the Cinema: A Montage of Pre-existing Elements p. 235

Ballet mécanique and the Mechanical Ballet: Rhythm in Ballet mécanique p. 236

Diversity in Ballet mécanique p. 268

Another Appeal of the Cinema p. 270

Cubism, African American Art, and Infinite Plasticity p. 273

Cendrars and Léger on Language and Cinema p. 275

Léger's Collaborators p. 281

Another Key Collaborator: George Antheil p. 291

Pound's Antheil: Parallels Between the Film Ballet mécanique and Antheil's Theory of Composition p. 296

Pound, Antheil, Vorticism, and Harmony p. 302

A Mechanical Ballet: Music, Film, and Film Music p. 310

Shot Analysis of Ballet mécanique p. 318

3 Futurism p. 375

Futurism and New Italian Culture p. 379

Futurism: The Violence of the New Replacing the Old p. 381

Painting Becomes a Futurist Synthetic Art p. 385

Speed + Electricity + Collective Consciousness = Futurism p. 400

Futurism, Symbolism, Unanimism, and Bergson p. 404

Universal Dynamism and Perception p. 408

The Influence of Bergson p. 414

The Cinematic Condition of Futurism p. 419

Futurism's Occult New Man p. 423

Futurism, Electromagnetism, and the Issue of Homologies p. 458

The Futurist Theory of Perception p. 468

The Futurists, Universal Relations, and Space p. 476

Bergson, Symbolism, Unanimism, and Primordial Experience p. 479

The Serata futurista and the Variety Theatre p. 504

The Futurists' Dynamic View of Reality and Futurist Dynamism p. 513

The Serata futurista and the Cinema p. 518

Futurist Painting and Sonic Art p. 528

Futurism and the Cinema p. 538

Arnaldo Ginna, Bruno Corra, and Synaesthetic Cinema p. 552

Futurism and the Anti-anthropocentric Aspiration p. 568

In Lieu of a Conclusion p. 575.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Local Notes:

Acquired for the Penn Libraries with assistance from the Alumni and Friends Memorial Book Fund.

Other Format:

Elder, Bruce (R. Bruce), author. Cubism and Futurism.:

ISBN:

9781771122450

1771122455

OCLC:

945947761