Hannes Meyer, The new world [Die neue Welt] (1926)

Posted by Ross Wolfe

.
The flight of the “Norge” to the North pole, the Zeiss planetarium at Jena and Flettner’s rotor ship represent the latest stages to be reported in the mechanization of our planet. Being the outcome of extreme precision of thought, they all provide striking evidence of the way in which science continues to permeate our environment. Thus in the diagram to the present age we find everywhere amidst sinuous lines of its social and economic fields of force straight lines which are mechanical and scientific in origin. They are cogent evidence of the victory of man the thinker over amorphous nature. This new knowledge undermines and transforms existing values. It gives our new world its shape.

Motor cars dash along our streets. On a traffic island in the Champs Elysées from 6 to 8 p.m. there rages round one metropolitan dynamism at its most strident. “Ford” and “Rolls Royce” have burst open the core of the town, obliterating distance and effacing the boundaries between town and country. Aircraft slip through the air: “Fokker” and “Farman” widen our range of movement and the distance between us and the earth; they disregard national frontiers and bring nation closer to nation. Illuminated signs twinkle, loud-speakers screech, posters advertise, display windows shine forth. The simultaneity of events enormously extends our concept of “space and time,” it enriches our life. We live faster and therefore longer. We have a keener sense of speed than ever before, and speed records are a direct gain for all. Gliding, parachute descents and music hall acrobatics refine our desire for balance. The precise division into hours of the time we spend working in office and factory and the split-minute timing of railway timetables make us live more consciously. With swimming pools, sanatoria, and public lavatories, hygiene appears on the local scene and its water closets, faience washbowls and baths usher in the new line of sanitary fittings in earthenware. Fordson tractors and v. Meyenburg cultivators have resulted in a shift of emphasis in land development and sped up the tilling of the earth and intensive cultivation of crops. Borrough’s calculating machine sets free our brain, the Dictaphone our hand, Ford’s motor our place-bound senses and Handley Page our earthbound spirits. Radio, marconigram, and phototelegraphy liberate us from our national seclusion and make us part of a world community. The gramophone, microphone, orchestrion, and pianola accustom our ears to the sound of impersonal-mechanized rhythms: “His Master’s Voice,” “Vox,” and “Brunswick” see to the musical needs of millions. Psychoanalysis has burst open the all too narrow dwelling of the soul and graphology has laid bare the character of the individual. “Mazdaism,” “Coué” and “Die Schönheit” are signs of the desire for reform breaking out everywhere. National costume is giving way to fashion and the external masculinization of woman shows that inwardly the two sexes have equal rights. Biology, psychoanalysis, relativity, and entomology are common intellectual property: France, Einstein, Freud, and Fabre are the saints of this latterday. Our homes are more mobile than ever. Large blocks of flats, sleeping cars, house yachts, and transatlantic liners undermine the local concept of the “homeland.” The fatherland goes into a decline. We learn Esperanto. We become cosmopolitan.

Postcard featuring Mel’nikov’s Soviet Pavilion in Paris, 1925.

The steadily increasing perfection attained in printing, photographic, and cinematographic processes enables the real world to be reproduced with an ever greater degree of accuracy. The picture the landscape presents to the eye today is more diversified than ever before; hangars and power houses are the cathedrals of the spirit of the age. This picture has the power to influence through the specific shapes, colors, and lights of its modern elements: the wireless aerials, the dams, the lattice girders: through the parabola of the airship, the triangle of the traffic signs, the circle of the railway signal, the rectangle of the billboard; through the linear element of transmission lines: telephone wires, overhead tram wires, high-tension cables; through radio towers, concrete posts, flashing lights, and filling stations. Our children do not deign to look at a snorting steam locomotive but entrust themselves with cool confidence to the miracle of electric traction. G. Palucca’s dances, von Laban’s movement choirs, and D. Mesendieck’s functional gymnastics are driving out the aesthetic eroticism of the nude painting. The stadium has carried the day against the art museum, and physical reality has taken the place of beautiful illusion. Sport merges the individual into the mass. Sport is becoming the university of collective feeling. Suzanne Lenglen’s cancellation of a match disappoints hundreds of thousands, Breitensträter’s defeat sends a shiver through hundreds of thousands. Hundreds of thousands follow Nurmi’s race over 10,000 meters on the running track. The standardization of our requirements is shown by: the bowler hat, bobbed hair, the tango, jazz, the Co-op product, the DIN standard size, and Liebig’s meat extract. The standardization of mental fare is illustrated by the crowds going to see Harold Lloyd, Douglas Fairbanks, and Jackie Coogan. Grock and the three Fratellini weld the masses — irrespective of class and racial differences — into a community with a common fate. Trade union, co-operative, Lt., Inc., cartel, trust, and the League of Nations are the forms in which today’s social conglomerations find expression, and the radio and the rotary press are their media of communication. Co-operation rules the world. The community rules the individual.

Each age demands its own form. It is our mission to give our new world a new shape with the means of today. But our knowledge of the past is a burden that weighs upon us, and inherent in our advanced education are impediments tragically barring our new paths. The unqualified affirmation of the present age presupposes the ruthless denial of the past. The ancient institutions of the old — the classical grammar schools and the academies — are growing obsolete. The municipal theaters and the museums are deserted. The jittery helplessness of the applied arts is proverbial. In their place, unburdened by classical airs and graces, by an artistic confusion of ideas or the trimmings of applied art, the witnesses of a new era are arising: industrial fairs, grain silos, music halls, airports, office chairs, standard goods. All these things are the product of a formula: function multiplied by economics. They are not works of art. Art is composition, purpose is function. The composition of a dock seems to us a nonsensical idea, but the composition of a town plan, a block of flats…?? Building is a technical not an aesthetic process, artistic composition does not rhyme with the function of a house matched to its purpose. Ideally and in its elementary design our house is a living machine. Retention of heat, insolation, natural and artificial lighting, hygiene, weather protection, car maintenance, cooking, radio, maximum possible relief for the housewife, sexual and family life, etc. are the determining lines of force. The house is their component. (Snugness and prestige are not leitmotifs of the dwelling house: the first resides in the human heart and not in the Persian carpet, the second in the attitude of the house-owner and not on the wall of a room!) Today we have new building materials at our disposal for building a house: aluminium and duralumin in plates, rods, and bars, Euboölith, Ruberoid, Forfoleum, Eternit, rolled glass, Triplex sheets, reinforced concrete, glass bricks, faience, steel frames, concrete frame slabs and pillars, Trolith, Galalith, Cellon, Goudron, Ripoliin, indanthrene paints, etc. We organize these building elements into a constructive unity in accordance with the purpose of the building and economic principles. Architecture has ceased to be an agency continuing the growth of tradition or an embodiment of emotion. Individual form, building mass, natural color of material, and surface texture come into being automatically and this functional conception of building in all its aspects leads to pure construction [Konstruktion]. Pure construction is the characteristic feature of the new world of forms. Constructive form is not peculiar to any country; it is cosmopolitan and the expression of an international philosophy of building. Internationalism is the prerogative of our time.

Today every phase of our culture of expression is predominantly constructive. Human inertia being what it is, it is not surprising that such an approach is to be found most clearly at first where the Greeks and Louis XIV have never set foot: in advertising, in typographical mechanical composition, in the cinema, in photographic processes. The modern poster presents lettering and product or trademark conspicuously arranged. It is not a poster work of art but a piece of visual sensationalism. In the display window of today psychological capital is made of the tensions between modern materials with the aid of lighting. It is display window organization rather than window dressing. It appeals to the finely distinguishing sense of materials found in modern man and covers the gamut of its expressive power: fortissimo = tennis shoes to Havana cigarettes to scouring soap to nut chocolate! Mezzo-forte = glass (as a bottle) to wood (as a packing case) to pasteboard (as packing) to tin (as a can)! Pianissimo = silk pajamas to cambric shirts to Valenciennes lace to “L’Origan de Coty”! Continue reading →

Mondrian: Order and randomness in abstract painting

Posted by Ross Wolfe

Meyer Schapiro
Modern Art
(Nov. 1978)
.

1

.
Mondrian’s abstract paintings appeared to certain of his contemporaries extremely rigid, more a product of theory than of feeling. One thought of the painter as narrow, doctrinaire, in his inflexible commitment to the right angle and the unmixed primary colors. We learn that he broke with a fellow-artist and friend who had ventured to insert a diagonal in that fixed system of vertical and horizontal lines. “After your arbitrary correction of Neo-Plasticism,” he wrote to van Doesburg, “any collaboration, of no matter what kind, has become impossible for me,” and withdrew from the board of the magazine De Stijl, the organ of their advanced ideas.¹

Yet in the large comprehensive shows of his art one discovers an astonishing range of qualities, a continuous growth from his twenties to his last years in fertile response to the new art of others and to a new milieu. Even while holding strictly to the horizontal and vertical in the painted lines, Mondrian brought back the abhorred diagonal in the frequent diamond shape of a square canvas. Diagonal axes are implicit too in his placing of paired colors. And in his late work he deviated from his long-held principle of the single plane by interlacing the lines to suggest a layered grid in depth. If his abstract paintings of the 1920s and 1930s seem dogmatically limited in their straight forms, these constant elements, through carefully pondered variation of length, thickness, and interval, compose a scale of forces that he deploys in always individual combinations. When studied closely, the barest works, with only a few units, reveal his canny finesse in shaping a balanced order; that variety in the sparse and straight is a ground of their continuing fascination. One need not analyze that structure, however, to sense its precision and strength. These qualities come to the eye directly like the harmony of a Greek temple. His gravely serious art unites in its forms the large regularities of architecture as a canonical constructed order with a complexity of relations inherited from the painting of nature and the city scene. The persisting white field, in heightened contrast to the black lines, is a luminous ground — it has what may be called after Keats: “the power of white Simplicity” — and, in its division by those lines, provides a measure of the rhythm of the enclosing rectangles.

Like Picasso’s art, Mondrian’s would have to be characterized very differently according to one’s choice of a particular phase as typical. Before the constructive abstract art by which he is best known, his works had been in turn impressionistic, romantic, lyrical, visionary, and symbolic; and in his last years, at seventy, after that severely intellectual style, his paintings became surprisingly sensuous and elated. In assimilating before 1914 the most advanced art of his time, he stood out unmistakably as a painter with his own qualities and powers. Moving from Holland to Paris and later to London and New York, this ascetic artist reacted to each new environment with a quiet enthusiasm, inventing new features that transformed the face of his art. When he worked in the style of Picasso and Braque in 1911 to 1913, he was not far behind them, having absorbed the most recent stage of their rapidly evolving art, and was soon able to move on to more strictly abstract forms of his own invention. Mondrian’s warm embrace of Cubism was the more surprising since he was forty then, with a long-matured practice that would have seemed to discourage the change to a style so different in principle from his own. Even more remarkable is that in adopting this challenging art from painters younger than himself, he derived from it conclusions still more radical, which were to stimulate and guide painters in Europe and America in the following decades. His later work was an outcome of reflection and a firm will to rigor, in keeping with a philosophizing habit and long meditated ideals. Few artists in our century have displayed so ardent a growth.

2

.
Mondrian wrote in more than one article that his goal was to achieve an art of “pure relations.” These, he believed, had been “veiled” in older painting by the particulars of nature which could only distract the viewer from the universal and absolute in art, the true ground of aesthetic harmony.

I wish in this essay to explore closely several of his abstract works in order to bring into clearer sight the character of those “pure relations” and to show their continuity with structures of representation in the preceding art. For this a minute analysis is necessary. It may be tedious or seem superfluous to one who grasps with feeling the order of a work of Mondrian on immediate view. I shall risk it in the belief that it will also bring us nearer to his sensibility and thought.

In a painting of 1926 in the Museum of Modern Art labeled Composition in White and Black, what seems at first glance a square set within a diamond square — a banal motif of decorators and doodlers — becomes to the probing eye a complex design with a subtly balanced asymmetry of unequal lines. We see the square as partly covered and extending into an imaginary field beyond the diamond canvas. If modeling and perspective have been given up, another cue for depth comes into play in this flat painting on the impenetrable plane of the canvas: the overlapping of forms. The intercepting edge advances and the intercepted square recedes as if passing underneath the edge. The whole appears then as a cropped representation of an object in a three-dimensional space. The missing parts are cut off from view at the limits of the diamond field. Only at the upper left corner of the square is the angle closed; but its vertical and horizontal lines cross at that point and are prolonged just enough for us to suppose that what we first perceived as a partly masked square belongs to a larger whole, a lattice or grid formed by bars of varied thickness.² We are induced by that single crossing to imagine a similar completion of the other bars and their continuity beyond the square. The black grid seems to exist in a space between the plane of the diamond and the white voids enclosed by the painted bars.

Even if we fix our attention on the canvas as a limited plane surface with a painted set of flat marks complete in themselves as a balanced asymmetric design, another mode of spatial intuition is soon aroused: our habitual response to recognizably incomplete forms. The black bars are envisioned unreflectively as parts of a whole continuing beyond the limits of the overlapping diamond field, although no familiar object has been depicted (unless we regard the thick lines of the “abstract” square as a concrete object like the surface of the canvas itself). Each black line is seen then as an intercepted side of a complete square, just as in a perspective view we identify a partly covered object with its whole. The diamond form of Mondrian’s canvas reinforces this effect by the strong contrast of its diagonal edges with the painted lines of the square and by providing between the angles, and especially those above and below, a much greater span than between the parallel lines of the inscribed form. The latter stands out even more decidedly from a larger field in which two lines of the square cross and four triangles are marked as opposing shapes.

Continue reading →

Ivan Leonidov: Artist, dreamer, poet

Posted by Ross Wolfe

Andrei Gozak
Complete Works
January 1988
.

The greatest poet is not the one who wrote best but the one who suggested most.

— Walt Whitman

.
Since he first emerged on the architectural scene in the twenties, the name of Ivan Leonidov has acquired legendary status. The reason for this is simply the uniqueness of his work. Its power and originality have been attested by the deep and fruitful influence which it exerted, and continues to exert, on worldwide architectural thinking — despite the fact that the vast majority of his projects remained on paper and unbuilt.

For all the complexities of his life, Leonidov produced a great deal of work. Till the very end of his life he preserved his sharpness of eye and steadiness of hand. But more important he also preserved a total faithfulness to the central ideas of his architecture and to his own aesthetic principles. Thus those commentators are profoundly mistaken, and indeed inaccurate, who say that he was only fully able to display his talent in those brief avant-garde years of the late twenties and early thirties during which he first became known. Notable here has been the writing of P. Aleksandrov and S.O. Khan-Magomedov.¹ The triumphant success of Leonidov’s projects in those years is obvious, but what he did later is neither architecturally nor artistically inferior to it. His capabilities in no way diminished with time, but only now, when we can see the fullest possible range of his sketches and designs, such as is assembled here, can we really appreciate the inexhaustible quality of his talent. Naturally his work underwent a process of evolution, as on one hand it reflected the beating of his own internal artistic pulse, and on the other it reacted to external influences and circumstances. But through all the modifications it was characterized by an enviable stability, both in aesthetic and ethical dimensions of his worldview, and in its style of graphic representation.

Ivan Il’ich Leonidov was born into a peasant family on the 9th of February 1902 in the village of Vlasikh, in what was then the Stantskii district of the Tverskoi gubemia, or province. His childhood was spent in the village of Babino, and when he had completed four years at the local parish school he went at the age of twelve to earn his living in Petrograd.² It is known that Leonidov first received training in painting and drawing in Tver, at the Free Art Studios which were organized in 1920.³ In 1921 he was sent to continue his study in Moscow at the Painting Faculty of the VKhUTEMAS, from which he later transferred to the architecture faculty and the studio of Aleksandr Vesnin.

The atmosphere of the VKhUTEMAS and his personal contacts with Aleksandr Vesnin played an important role in the shaping of Leonidov’s creative personality. Aleksandr Vesnin contributed a great deal to drawing out every side of his gifted pupil’s talents. While still a student, Leonidov took part in numerous open architectural competitions, and often achieved success. There were for example third prizes for an improved peasant hut and for a housing development in Ivanovo-Voznesensk, as well as a “recommendation for acquisition and adoption” for his Byelorussian State University project for Minsk. None of the original drawings done during his training have survived, but several publications from those years give a relatively full idea of his highly individual manner of composition and his graphic skills, as a young architect who had already mastered the language of early constructivism. There are manifestly close links between these Leonidov works and the projects of the Vesnin brothers and other founders of the constructivist architectural association, OSA.⁴

Leonidov’s final diploma project, for the Lenin Institute of Librarianship, must be regarded not only as his first truly independent work, but also as the distinctive credo of an architect setting out on his professional life. Displayed publicly at the First Exhibition of Modern Architecture in Moscow in 1927, it was received as the opening up of a whole new architectural direction.⁵ Alongside Tatlin’s tower of 1919 and Melnikov’s Paris Pavilion of 1925, the Lenin Institute has remained to this day one of the great symbols of the revolutionary, innovative spirit of the first decade of Soviet architecture.

The beginning of Leonidov’s professional activity is marked by his active participation in competitions. From 1927 to 1930 he was himself teaching at the somewhat reorganized version of VKhUTEMAS known as VKhUTEIN. Competitions were very numerous in Soviet architecture in those years, and they gave the young architect an opportunity to express himself in the various typological genres of current practice. Leonidov’s works of those years are universally characterized by the coherence of the synthesis he achieved between the constructivist functional method and his own compositional approach, but they are equally characterized by the consistency of his representational technique in exploiting the restrained language of black-and-white graphics.

In 1928 Leonidov took part for the first time in international architectural competitions, for the headquarters of the Tsentrosoiuz in Moscow, and for the monument to Christopher Columbus in Santo Domingo. Many well-known Soviet architects participated in both competitions, as well as Westerners. Corbusier of course was eventually to build the Tsentrosoiuz, which was completed in 1935; it is well known that he met Leonidov on related visits to Moscow during 1929-1930, as he did other leading constructivists, and that he had a very high opinion of Leonidov’s scheme for that building.

The finale to this series of competition designs was the project for the new socialist town around the Magnitogorsk Metallurgical Combine in the Urals executed at the end of 1929. Leonidov headed an OSA design team composed of students from his own class in the VKhUTEIN.

The next year, 1930, was to be a fateful one in Leonidov’s biography. He took part in a competition for the design of a Palace of Culture in the Proletarskii district of southern Moscow, around the old Simonov Monastery. The plan which he submitted for the first round diverged significantly from the brief, and proposed not a building, but a model for the “cultural organization” of a whole area of the city. Even in the first round of the competition Leonidov’s project therefore provoked sharp criticism. Discussion of the results of the second round took place in even more complex circumstances, revealing acute disagreements between the various groupings and philosophies now becoming consolidated in and around Soviet architecture. Although this time his proposal was in complete accordance with the terms of the brief, Leonidov’s scheme once again became the focal point of heated debate and discussions of larger architectural issues. Continue reading →

László Moholy-Nagy and his vision

Posted by Ross Wolfe

.
You can download the 1969 translation of László Moholy-Nagy’s Painting, Photography, Film (1927) by clicking on the embedded link. A while ago I posted some of Moholy’s work, but this is much more comprehensive. Otto Stelzer’s postscript to the 1967 reissue of the classic Bauhausbuch release appears below along with some examples of his films, photographs, and paintings.

Nearly out of space on my WordPress account. So I might have to set up a Paypal account and start soliciting donations. For now, though, enjoy.

Painting

Pressebild der Stiftung Bauhaus Dessau zur Ausstellung “Mensch Raum Maschine. Bühnenexperimente am Bauhaus” Bei Veröffentlichung geben Sie bitte den Bildnachweis wie oben aufgeführt an und beachten Sie bitte, dass die Verwendung der Fotos nur zur einmaligen Verwendung im Zusammenhang mit der Berichterstattung gestattet ist. Um ein Belegexemplar wird gebeten. Stiftung Bauhaus Dessau Gropiusallee 38 06846 Dessau-Roßlau Tel. +49-(0)340-6508-250 Fax +49-(0)340-6508-226 www.bauhaus-dessau.de E-Mail: service@bauhaus-dessau.de

Otto Stelzer
Janet Seligman
(March 1969)
.

László Moholy-Nagy saw photography not only as a means of reproducing reality and relieving the painter of this function. He recognized its power of discovering reality. “The nature which speaks to the camera is a different nature from the one which speaks to the eye,” wrote Walter Benjamin years after Moholy had developed the experimental conditions for Benjamin’s theory. The other nature discovered by the camera influenced what Moholy, after he had emigrated, was to call The New Vision. It alters our insight into the real world. Much has happened in the meantime in this field and on a broader basis than Moholy could have foreseen. Painting, Photography, Film today exists as a new entity even in areas to which Moholy’s own creative desire could scarcely have led: for example, in the Neo-Realism of Bacon, Rivers, Warhol, Vostell and many others whose reality is no more than a second actuality produced by photography.

Moholy is one of those artists whose reputation continues to grow steadily after their death because their works have a prophetic action. Moholy always saw himself as a Constructivist but he passed quickly through the static Constructivism of his own time. In a few moves he opened a game which is being won today. His light-modulators, his “composition in moving colored light,” his leaf-paintings of the forties, represent the beginnings of a “kinetic art” — even the term is his — which is flourishing today. Op Art? Moholy did the essential spade-work of this school (the old expression is in order here) in 1942, even including the objective, important for Op artists, of a “use”: with his pupils in Chicago he had evolved studies for military camouflage. The display of these things, later mounted in the school of design by his collaborator and fellow Hungarian György Kepes, was at once the first Op exhibition, “Trompe l’oeil,” and its theoretical constituent. New materials? Moholy had been using celluloid, aluminium, plexiglass, and gallalith as early as the Bauhaus days. Modern typography? Moholy has influenced two generations of typographers. Even in the field of aesthetic theory Moholy found a new approach; its aim was a theory of information in art. Moholy enlisted pioneers of this now much discussed theory as long as twenty-five years ago, nominating Charles Morris, the authority on semantics, to a professorship at the New Bauhaus, Chicago and inviting Hayakawa, another semanticist to speak at his institute. In 1925, when the Bauhaus book now being re-issued first appeared, Moholy was regarded as a Utopian. That Moholy, this youthful radical, with his fanaticism and his boundless energy, radiated terror too, even among his colleagues at the Bauhaus, is understandable. “Only optics, mechanics, and the desire to put the old static painting out of action,” wrote Feininger to his wife at the time: “There is incessant talk of cinema, optics, mechanics, projection and continuous motion and even of mechanically produced optical transparencies, multicolored, in the finest colors of the spectrum, which can be stored in the same way as gramophone records” (Moholy’s “Domestic Pinacotheca,” p. 25). Is this the atmosphere in which painters like Klee and some others of us can go on developing? Klee was quite depressed yesterday when talking about Moholy.” Yet Feininger’s own transparent picture-space seems not wholly disconnected from Moholy’s light “displays.”

Pascal discovered in human behavior two attitudes of mind: “One is the geometric, the other that of finesse.” Gottfried Benn took this up and made the word “finesse,” difficult enough to translate already, even more obscure. “The separation, therefore, of the scientific from the sublime world…the world which can be verified to the point of confirmatory neurosis and the world of isolation which nothing can make certain.” The attitudes which Pascal conceived of as being complementary and connected are now separated. The harmonization of the two attitudes of mind to which the art of classical periods aspired is abandoned. The conflict between the Poussinistes and the followers of Rubens, conducted flexibly from the 17th to the 19th century, became a war of positions with frozen fronts.

Photography 1

The Bauhaus carried on the conflict until the parties retired: on the one side the sublime: Klee, Feininger, Itten, and Kandinsky too, whose “nearly” Constructivist paintings still reminded Moholy of “underwater landscapes’; on the other “geometricians” with Moholy at their head (“forms of the simplest geometry as a step towards objectivity’), his pupils and the combatants, Malevich, El Lissitzky, Mondrian, Van Doesburg, all closely connected with the Bauhaus. On the one side the “lyrical I” (in Benn’s sense), on the other the collectivists, “one in the spirit” with science, social system and architecture, as Moholy formulated it in a Bauhaus lecture in 1923.

Continue reading →

Return to the Horrorhaus: Hans Poelzig’s nightmare expressionism, 1908-1935

Posted by Ross Wolfe

.
Two years ago, I introduced my readers to the work of the German expressionist architect Hans Poelzig. Many were doubtless familiar with his buildings already. What I sought to highlight, though, was the sheer scariness of his architecture. Hence “scary architecture.” SOCKS Studio, always excellent and often operating on the same wavelength, also put up a post on Poelzig around the same time.

In the time that has passed, I have amassed hundreds more high-quality images of plans, sketches, and period photographs of Poelzig’s built work. Needless to say, they aren’t any less scary than before. One could easily imagine Max Schreck’s Nosferatu lurking in the corridors of these structures, with Caligari’s hypnotized somnambulist dashing madly over their rooftops. Alfred Kubin’s monsters threaten to burst forth at any minute.

Flights of fancy aside, these really are stunning images. Dark, peculiar, and unexpected. I’m not sure what lends them this eerie quality, especially as a range of different building types are depicted, delineated, or photographed. Yet all of Poelzig’s structures share this tenebrous aspect, whether one takes his elegant cinema palaces, ominous monuments, or frightening industrial complexes (see the acid factory and gas works). Great stuff.

Click any of the following thumbnails to see the images in higher resolution, and scroll through to see more. Enjoy!

Hans Poelzig (1869-1936) Geschäftshaus S. Adam, Leipziger Straße_ Friedrichstraße, Berlin (1928)z

Hans Poelzig _ Albert Vennemann Deli-Lichtspiele, Breslau (1926-1927)

Hans Poelzig (1869-1936) Geschäftshaus S. Adam, Leipziger Straße_ Friedrichstraße, Berlin (1928)

Continue reading →

“¡Que viva Mexico!” Eisenstein in North America (1931)

Posted by Ross Wolfe

For anyone who’s interested in this sort of thing, Experimental Cinema was basically an organ of Soviet avant-garde movie-making published in English. It includes articles written by Sergei Eisenstein, Béla Balázs, Dziga Vertov, Vsevolod Pudovkin, and numerous others from that milieu. El Lissitzky and Aleksandr Rodchenko were employed as photographers for the journal. You can download a few issues published between 1930 and 1934 courtesy of the Internet Archive. Movie posters for some of the films discussed in its pages can be found in my post from a few days ago on the Stenberg brothers.

The following review of Eisenstein’s unfinished masterpiece, Que viva México!, was written by the American filmmaker and studio producer Morris Helprin. At the time, both he and his wife were committed communists. Later, Helprin became president of London Films in Hollywood (one article in Experimental Cinema called Hollywood “the sales agent of American imperialism”). Still, quite a neat summary and some behind-the-scenes details. If you’re interested in reading more about it, you can download the following texts or watch the full-length movie below.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TBTdUD0UOl8

Funeral ceremony of the Mayan Indians

Mexican women mourning over the coffin of a dead boy, during the “Maguey” episode

Eisenstein and Aleksandrov on the ruins of Chichenita in Yucatan, Mexco (1931)

This still and the shorts illustrating the synopsis of the scenario for “Que Viva Mexico!” were taken by Eduard Tisse

The dwellers of Yucatan, land of ruins and huge pyramids, have still conserved in feature and forms the character of their ancestors, the great race of ancient Mayas

Martin Hernandez, 21-year-old Mexican-Indian peasant and native of Apam, the principal character of the “Maguey” episode

Still from “Que viva Mexico!”

Eisenstein and Tisse preparing a shot on the pyramids of Teotihuacan, Mexico (1932)

Daily ceremony at dawn

On the Hacienda Tetlapayac, work hymn of the Mexican proletariat

Mexican peasants, watching from a hilltop the passing funeral

Girl from the Isthmus of Tehuantepec

Maria is forgotten

Production still showing Eisenstein, Aleksandrov, and Tisse at work on “Que viva Mexico!” Here Eisenstein’s collective production company is at work, Eisentein on the right

Angle closeup from the bull-fight sequence in the “Romance” episode

Closeup of Martin Hernandez, the Mexican-Indian

In the country of the magueys

Death comes along dancing

Youthful beauty blossoms on the screen

Martin Hernandez in the Maguey episode

The film is a poem of a sociological character. Rather an interpretive essay of Mexico’s evolution – Agustin Aragon Leiva

Eisenstein looking into the finder to gauge an angle closeup of a Mexican woman

Still from Eisenstein’s “Que viva Mexico!”

Eisenstein in Mexico

Morris Helprin
Experimental Cinema
September 1932

.
.
“Que Viva Mexico!”

It is the first film made in the Western hemisphere to assume the mantle of maturity. The furthest step yet from the idiocies of corn-fed Hollywood. It turns its tail up at the banal; thumbs its nose at the benign. It is pictorial rhetoric of such vital force that it thunders and roars. Yet it contains every aspect of the popular cinema.

“QUE VIVA MEXICO!”

That day at Los Remedios, when we walked over the hills in search of a suitable location, served as an indication of Eisenstein’s preciseness, his exciting demands that his subject be even in quality. All Mexico around us was “beautiful enough to swoon in.” Here was no prettiness of the postcard cinema, none of your oak-paneled pictures that need but sprinklings of chemical brilliants to turn them into revolting chromes. The top of a mountain and an ancient aqueduct jutting at a seven-thousand foot height into a stilled canopy of swan-white clouds. You could set your camera down at almost any spot and grind. And have a beautiful scenic.

But the Russian, followed hastily by Tisse, his cameraman, Aragon, a young Mexican intellectual who serves as a guide, interpreter, and go-between, a camera boy, and myself, trailed by five peons who were the day’s actors at a peso each, led a frantic chase to find the spot. Following which were at least a dozen of the spots. Continue reading →

The golden age of bourgeois portraiture, before the rise of photography

Posted by Ross Wolfe

.
What follows is an assortment of extremely high-resolution portraits of famous figures gleaned from various sources around the web, along with a short text by the French photographer and media critic Gisèle Freund. Almost 175 portraits are included, featuring well-known philosophers, political economists, and revolutionaries such as Thomas Münzer, Stepan Razin, René Descartes, Adam Smith, Adam Ferguson, David Ricardo, G.W.F. Hegel, Immanuel Kant, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Toussaint Louverture, Maximilien Robespierre, Camille Desmoulins, Baruch Spinoza, Georges Danton, and numerous others who I’m forgetting. Included also, as mentioned, is an extract from Freund’s Photography and Society (1970), a book more than thirty years in the making.

Freund’s close friend and theoretical influence Walter Benjamin commented on an earlier draft of this chapter:

Study of the history of photography began about eight or ten years ago. We have a number of publications, mostly illustrated, on its infancy and its early masters. But only this most recent study has treated the subject in conjunction with the history of painting. Gisèle Freund’s study describes the rise of photography as conditioned by that of the bourgeoisie, successfully illustrating the causal connection by examining the history of the portrait. Starting from the expensive ivory miniature (the portrait technique most widely used under the ancien régime), the author describes the various procedures which contributed to making portrait production quicker and cheaper, and therefore more widespread, around 1780, sixty years before the invention of photography. Her description of the “physiognotrace” as an intermediate form between the portrait miniature and the photograph shows in exemplary fashion how technical factors can be made socially transparent. The author then explains how, with photography, technical development in art converged with the general technical standard of society, bringing the portrait within the means of wider bourgeois strata. She shows that the miniaturists were the first painters to fall victim to photography.

Besides Freund’s masterful study, I would also recommend Aby Warburg’s longish essay on “The Art of Portraiture and the Florentine Bourgeoisie” (1902). Less obviously Marxist than the remarks by Freund and Benjamin in this post — Warburg was a self-professed follower of Burckhardt — but quite complementary to them. Feel free to browse and enlarge any of the images below.

Portraits

Bildnis des Francis Bacon John Chapman (1792) – Verlagsort- London – 1798 – Münster, LWL-Museum für Kunst und Kultur

Bildnis des Mr. Bayle Johann Ulrich Kraus – 1715 – Halberstadt, Gleimhaus

Théroigne de Méricourt, Anne Josephe Wien, Österreichische Nationalbibliothek, Bildarchiv und Grafiksammlung

Bildnis Johann Wolfgang Goethe (1782 von) Georg Friedrich Schmoll – Wolfenbüttel, Herzog August Bibliothek

Jacobi, Friedrich Heinrich Wien, Österreichische Nationalbibliothek

Bildnis des D. Diderot Friedrich Wilhelm Bollinger – Gebrüder Schumann – Verlagsort- Zwickau – 1818_1832 – Halberstadt, Gleimhaus

Louverture, Toussaint Wien, Österreichische Nationalbibliothek, Bildarchiv und Grafiksammlung

Bildnis des Johann Gottfried von Herder – Halberstadt, Gleimhaus

Bildnis des Johann Wolfgang von Goethe Anton Tepplar – 1819_1849 – Münster, LWL-Museum für Kunst und Kultur

Bildnis Johann Gottlieb Fichte Bonini, ? – um 1810? – Münster, LWL-Museum für Kunst und Kultur

Bildnis Johann Wolfgang Goethe (1782 von) George Dawe – Wolfenbüttel, Herzog August Bibliothek

Constant de Rebecque, Benjamin Wien, Österreichische Nationalbibliothek, Bildarchiv und Grafiksammlung

Johann Gottfried von Herder – – – – Universitätsbibliothek Heidelberg

Bildnis des Thomas Hobbes – Nürnberg, Germanisches Nationalmuseum, Graphische Sammlung

Bildnis des Thomas Paine Albert Schule – Gebrüder Schumann – Verlagsort- Zwickau – 1822 – Berlin, Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin

Bildnis des Johann Gottfried von Herder – Berlin, Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin – Preußischer Kulturbesitz, Handschriftenabteilung 3

Bildnis des Camille Desmoulins François Joseph Etienne Beisson – Verlagsort- Paris – 1793 – Münster, LWL-Museum für Kunst und Kultur

Saint-Just, Antoine Louis Wien, Österreichische Nationalbibliothek, Bildarchiv und Grafiksammlung

Constant de Rebecque, Benjamin Wien, Österreichische Nationalbibliothek, Bildarchiv und Grafiksammlung 1

Bildnis Maximilien (-François-Marie-Isidore-Joseph) Robespierre Wolfenbüttel, Herzog August Bibliothek

Danton, Georges Wien, Österreichische Nationalbibliothek

Diderot, Denis Wien, Österreichische Nationalbibliothek, Bildarchiv und Grafiksammlung

Saint-Just, Antoine Louis Wien, Österreichische Nationalbibliothek, Bildarchiv und Grafiksammlung 2

Bildnis des Stephanvs Razinvs – Berlin, Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin

Bildnis des Lessing Golbs – um 1800 – Halberstadt, Gleimhaus

Danton, Georges Wien, Österreichische Nationalbibliothek, Bildarchiv und Grafiksammlung

Bildnis Jean le Rond d’Alembert Pierre Michel Alix – um 1800 – Münster, LWL-Museum für Kunst und Kultur

Bildnis des Benedictus Spinoza Karl Traugott Riedel – 1818_1832 – Halberstadt, Gleimhaus

Bildnis des Johann Gottfried Herder Johann Heinrich Lips – 1773_1817 – Coburg, Kunstsammlungen der Veste Coburg

Puschkin, Alexander Sergejewitsch Wien, Österreichische Nationalbibliothek, Bildarchiv und Grafiksammlung

Lucas, Margaret Wien, Österreichische Nationalbibliothek, Bildarchiv und Grafiksammlung

Bildnis des Voltaire – Berlin, Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin – Preußischer Kulturbesitz, Handschriftenabteilung

Bildnis des Pierre Bayle Martin Esslinger – Gebrüder Schumann – faktischer Entstehungsort- Zwickau – 1818_1832 – Halberstadt, Gleimhaus

Lessing, Gotthold Ephraim Wien, Österreichische Nationalbibliothek, Bildarchiv und Grafiksammlung

Rousseau, Jean Jacques Wien, Österreichische Nationalbibliothek

Bildnis des René Descartes – Berlin, Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin – Preußischer Kulturbesitz, Handschriftenabteilung

Bildnis des Jean Locke unbekannter Künstler – 1676_1750 – Leipzig, Universitätsbibliothek Leipzig, Porträtstichsammlung

Lessing, Gotthold Ephraim Wien, Österreichische Nationalbibliothek

Bildnis des Pierre Bayle Etienne Desrochers – faktischer Entstehungsort- Paris – 1706_1741 – Halberstadt, Gleimhaus

Bildnis des Iean Racine Monogrammist G E – 1690_1741 – Leipzig, Universitätsbibliothek Leipzig, Porträtstichsammlung

Bildnis des Thomas Paine Auguste Sandoz – 1786_1802 – Coburg, Kunstsammlungen der Veste Coburg

Bildnis des Immanuel Kant Johann Friedrich Bause – Verlagsort- Leipzig – 1791 – Berlin, Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin

Fichte, Johann Gottlieb (Universitätsrektor 1811-1812; Vater von Immanuel Hermann von F.; Jena, Berlin, Zürich, Königsberg (Wirkungsorte); Dt. Philosoph, 1762-1814) Friedrich Wilhelm Bollinger, Stecher Verlagsort- Zwickau vor 1825

Bildnis des D. Diderot François Guillaume Lardy – 1764_1812 – Berlin, Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin

Bildnis des Petrvs Bayle Joh. Friedrich Schmidt (1730) – 1730_1785 – Berlin, Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin

Bildnis Maximilien (-François-Marie-Isidore-Joseph) Robespierre Adolf Friedrich Teichs – Wolfenbüttel, Herzog August Bibliothek

Bildnis des Moses Mendelssohn Peter Haas – 1786_1804 – Berlin, Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin

Bildnis Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz Johann Gottfried Renger – Verlagsort- Halle (Saale) – 1718 – Wolfenbüttel, Herzog August Bibliothek

Bildnis des Joh. Locke Christian Gottlieb Geyser – 1767_1800 – Leipzig, Universitätsbibliothek Leipzig, Porträtstichsammlung

Petty, William Wien, Österreichische Nationalbibliothek, Bildarchiv und Grafiksammlung

Bildnis des Thomas Hobbes Wenzel Hollar – 1665 – Coburg, Kunstsammlungen der Veste Coburg

Bildnis des Moses Mendelssohn – Berlin, Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin

Bildnis des David Hume Page (1825) (ungesichert) – Jones and Company – Verlagsort- London – 1825 – Berlin, Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin

Ricardo, David Wien, Österreichische Nationalbibliothek, Bildarchiv und Grafiksammlung

Bildnis des Thomas Hobbes Jean-Charles François (zugeschrieben) – 1773 – Berlin, Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin

Johann Joachim Winckelmann Anton von Maron – – – 1768_1822 – Universitätsbibliothek Heidelberg

Bildnis des Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra Pascal, Jacques – 1826_1880 – Berlin, Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin

Bildnis des John Locke – Berlin, Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin – Preußischer Kulturbesitz, Handschriftenabteilung

Bildnis des Thomas Muntzer Romeyn de Hooghe – 1701 – Coburg, Kunstsammlungen der Veste Coburg

Bildnis des D. Hvme Christian Gottlieb Geyser – 1766_1803 – Coburg, Kunstsammlungen der Veste Coburg

Bildnis des Gottfried Wilhelm von Leibniz Jean-Charles François (zugeschrieben) – 1761_1765 – Berlin, Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin

Bildnis des Johann Georg Hamann Monogrammist J. B. (1801) – 1801_1866 – Berlin, Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin

Bildnis des Camille Desmoulins – Berlin, Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin – Preußischer Kulturbesitz, Handschriftenabteilung

Danton, Georges Wien, Österreichische Nationalbibliothek 1

Saint-Just, Antoine Louis Wien, Österreichische Nationalbibliothek, Bildarchiv und Grafiksammlung 4

Puschkin, Alexander Sergejewitsch Wien, Österreichische Nationalbibliothek, Bildarchiv und Grafiksammlung 2

Bildnis des Pierre Bayle Johann Martin Bernigeroth – faktischer Entstehungsort- Leipzig – 1741 – Berlin, Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin

Desmoulins, Camille Wien, Österreichische Nationalbibliothek, Bildarchiv und Grafiksammlung 1

Bildnis Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel Julius Ludwig Sebbers – Wolfenbüttel, Herzog August Bibliothek

Babeuf, Francois Noel Wien, Österreichische Nationalbibliothek, Bildarchiv und Grafiksammlung

Bildnis des F. W. J. v. Schelling Albrecht Fürchtegott Schultheiß – 1840_1900 – Leipzig, Universitätsbibliothek Leipzig

Bildnis des Benedictus de Spinoza – Berlin, Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin – Preußischer Kulturbesitz, Handschriftenabteilung

Bildnis des Jean Le Rond d’Alembert unbekannter Künstler – 1801_1850 – Münster, LWL-Museum für Kunst und Kultur

Bildnis des Moses Mendelssohn Johann Conrad Krüger – 1768 – Berlin, Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin

Hegel, Friedrich Wien, Österreichische Nationalbibliothek, Bildarchiv und Grafiksammlung

Bildnis des Johann Georg Hamann August Weger – 1838_1892 – Berlin, Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin – Preußischer Kulturbesitz, Handschriftenabteilung

Bildnis des Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel Friedrich Wilhelm Bollinger – Verlagsort- Berlin – 1801_1825 – Nürnberg, Germanisches Nationalmuseum

Danton, Georges Wien, Österreichische Nationalbibliothek, Bildarchiv und Grafiksammlung 1

Bildnis des Johann George Hamann – Nürnberg, Germanisches Nationalmuseum, Graphische Sammlung

Kant, Immanuel (Prof. für Logik und Metaphysik; Rektor; zunächst Hauslehrer und Bibliothekar) Karl Robert Schindelmeyer, Stecher um 1795

Desmoulins, Camille Wien, Österreichische Nationalbibliothek, Bildarchiv und Grafiksammlung

Bildnis des René Descartes Jacques Lubin – 1674_1703 – Berlin, Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin – Preußischer Kulturbesitz, Handschriftenabteilung

Bildnis des Immanuel Kant Johann Heinrich Lips – 1791_1817 – Berlin, Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin

Bildnis des Marie François Arouet Voltaire Jacob Folkema – 1738 – Halberstadt, Gleimhaus

Bildnis des Denis Diderot Augustin de Saint-Aubin – 1776_1807 – Berlin, Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin

Bildnis des Guillaume Thomas François Raynal E. Henne – um 1780 – Halberstadt, Gleimhaus

Condorcet, Antoine Marquis Wien, Österreichische Nationalbibliothek, Bildarchiv und Grafiksammlung 2

Bildnis des Condorcet – Halberstadt, Gleimhaus

Bildnis Francis Bacon, 1618 baron Verulam, 1620 viscount St. Albans François Bonneville (1793) – Wolfenbüttel, Herzog August Bibliothek

Piranesi, Giovanni Battista Wien, Österreichische Nationalbibliothek, Bildarchiv und Grafiksammlung

Bildnis des Denis Diderot Daniel Nikolaus Chodowiecki – 1777 – Berlin, Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin

Bildnis des Fr. Bacon De Vervlam Johann Joachim Bockenhoffer – Verlagsort- Straßburg – 1654 – Berlin, Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin

Bildnis des Guillaume Thomas François Raynal Delarue – faktischer Entstehungsort- Brüssel – um 1800 – Halberstadt, Gleimhaus

Bildnis des Voltaire Jean-Joseph Balechou – 1752 – Halberstadt, Gleimhaus

Bildnis des Thomas Hobbesivs – Nürnberg, Germanisches Nationalmuseum, Graphische Sammlung

Bildnis des Johann Gottfried von Herder – Berlin, Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin – Preußischer Kulturbesitz, Handschriftenabteilung 1

Bildnis des Franciscus Quesnay Jean-Charles François – 1769 – Berlin, Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin

Bildnis des Diderot Antoine Benoist (1721) (ungesichert) – Verlagsort- Paris – 1762_1785 – Berlin, Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin

Benedictus de Spinoza Desrochers, Étienne Jehandier – – – – Universitätsbibliothek Heidelberg

Bildnis des John Locke Anker Smith – um 1800 – Halberstadt, Gleimhaus

Bildnis des Carl Leonhard Reinhold – Halberstadt, Gleimhaus

Bildnis des Leibnitz Georg Christian Schule – 1796 – Berlin, Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin

Puschkin, Alexander Sergejewitsch Wien, Österreichische Nationalbibliothek, Bildarchiv und Grafiksammlung 1

Bildnis Jemeljan Iwanowitsch Pugatschew Hans Andreas Joachim Hillers – Wolfenbüttel, Herzog August Bibliothek

Bildnis Denis Diderot im Profil (1713-1784) Gottlob August Liebe – um 1760 – Münster, LWL-Museum für Kunst und Kultur

Bildnis des Goethe Christian Friedr. Traugott Uhlemann – 1792 – Leipzig, Universitätsbibliothek Leipzig, Porträtstichsammlung

Bildnis des Voltaire – Berlin, Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin – Preußischer Kulturbesitz, Handschriftenabteilung

Bildnis des M. M. I. Robespierre Andreas Stöttrup – um 1790 – Coburg, Kunstsammlungen der Veste Coburg

Bildnis des Friedrich Leopold von Hardenberg Eduard Eichens – 1845 – Berlin, Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin

Marat, Jean Paul Wien, Österreichische Nationalbibliothek, Bildarchiv und Grafiksammlung

Bildnis des Camille Desmoulins Alexandre Lacauchie – 1833_1900 – Berlin, Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin – Preußischer Kulturbesitz, Handschriftenabteilung

Paine, Thomas Wien, Österreichische Nationalbibliothek, Bildarchiv und Grafiksammlung

Bildnis des J. D’ Alembert André Pujos – Esnauts et Rapilly – Verlagsort- Paris – 1774_1797 – Berlin, Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin

Bildnis des I. G. v. Herder Johann Christian Benjamin Gottschick – 1791_1844 – Halberstadt, Gleimhaus

Bildnis des Johann Wolfgang Goethe Martin Matthias Carl Darnmann – Verlagsort- Sulechów – 1803_1823 – Coburg, Kunstsammlungen der Veste Coburg

Louverture, Toussaint Wien, Österreichische Nationalbibliothek, Bildarchiv und Grafiksammlung 2

Bildnis des Joh. Georg Hamann Winckelmann & Söhne – Druckort- Berlin – 1840_1850 – Berlin, Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin – Preußischer Kulturbesitz, Handschriftenabteilung

Bildnis des Jean Racine François Robert Ingouf (1747) – um 1770 – München, Staatliche Graphische Sammlung

Bildnis des I. D ‘ Alembert Gottlob August Liebe – nach 1775 – Münster, LWL-Museum für Kunst und Kultur

Bildnis des Benedictvs de Spinoza – Berlin, Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin – Preußischer Kulturbesitz, Handschriftenabteilung

Bildnis des Diderot Augustin de Saint-Aubin – um 1800 – Halberstadt, Gleimhaus

Hume, David Wien, Österreichische Nationalbibliothek, Bildarchiv und Grafiksammlung 1

Bildnis Johann Wolfgang Goethe (1782 von) Ferdinand Jagemann – Wolfenbüttel, Herzog August Bibliothek

Bildnis François-Dominique Toussaint Louverture Wolfenbüttel, Herzog August Bibliothek 3

Locke, John Wien, Österreichische Nationalbibliothek, Bildarchiv und Grafiksammlung

Bildnis des Marie François Arouet Voltaire Friedrich Christian Carstens – um 1780 – Halberstadt, Gleimhaus

Bildnis des David Hume David Martin (1736) – Verlagsort- London – 1767 – Coburg, Kunstsammlungen der Veste Coburg

Bildnis des Diderot Jean-Pierre-Julien Dupin – Esnauts et Rapilly – 1770_1797 – Halberstadt, Gleimhaus

Bildnis des Renatus Descartes Peter Aubry (2) – 1634_1666 – Berlin, Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin – Preußischer Kulturbesitz, Handschriftenabteilung

Bildnis des Voltaire Johann Christian Benjamin Gottschick – Gebrüder Schumann – Verlagsort- Zwickau – 1818_1832 – Berlin, Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin

Bildnis des Sam. Maimon Wilhelm Arndt (1750) – 1767_1813 – Leipzig, Universitätsbibliothek Leipzig, Porträtstichsammlung

Bildnis des Francis Bacon – Leipzig, Universitätsbibliothek Leipzig, Porträtstichsammlung

Bildnis des Camille Desmoulins – Berlin, Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin – Preußischer Kulturbesitz, Handschriftenabteilung 1

Bildnis des Jokob Friedrich Fries Müller, H. (1830) – Königliches Lithographisches Institut – 1830 – Leipzig, Universitätsbibliothek Leipzig

Bildnis des Goethe Lazarus Gottlieb Sichling – Breitkopf & Härtel – Verlagsort- Leipzig – 1840_1860 – Halberstadt, Gleimhaus

Louverture, Toussaint Wien, Österreichische Nationalbibliothek, Bildarchiv und Grafiksammlung 1

Bildnis des Thomas More Renold Elstrack – 1585_1622 – Coburg, Kunstsammlungen der Veste Coburg

Bildnis des C. L. Reinhold Johann Heinrich Lips – um 1800 – Leipzig, Universitätsbibliothek Leipzig

Bildnis des Condorcet – Leipzig, Universitätsbibliothek Leipzig, Porträtstichsammlung

Bildnis des Gottfried Wilhelm von Leibniz Daniel Berger (1744) – 1769 – Berlin, Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin

Condorcet, Antoine Marquis – Wien, Österreichische Nationalbibliothek, Bildarchiv und Grafiksammlung

Bildnis Johann Wolfgang Goethe (1782 von) Ernst Ludwig Riepenhausen – Wolfenbüttel, Herzog August Bibliothek

Rasin, Stepan Timofejewitsch Wien, Österreichische Nationalbibliothek, Bildarchiv und Grafiksammlung

Bildnis des J. G. Fichte Friedrich Bury – F. A. Brockhaus – Verlagsort- Leipzig – nach 1850 – Leipzig, Universitätsbibliothek Leipzig

Bildnis des v. Schelling – Leipzig, Universitätsbibliothek Leipzig, Porträtstichsammlung

Lessing, Gotthold Ephraim Wien, Österreichische Nationalbibliothek 1

Bildnis des Göthe Anton Graff (1736) – Bibliographisches Institut – faktischer Entstehungsort- Hildburghausen – 1857_1861 – Münster, LWL-Museum für Kunst und Kultur

Bildnis des M. F. Arouet de Voltaire – Berlin, Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin – Preußischer Kulturbesitz, Handschriftenabteilung

Bildnis des Friedrich Ernst Daniel Schleiermacher – Halberstadt, Gleimhaus

Diderot, Denis Wien, Österreichische Nationalbibliothek, Bildarchiv und Grafiksammlung 1

Lucas, Margaret Wien, Österreichische Nationalbibliothek, Bildarchiv und Grafiksammlung 1

Bildnis des Renatus Descartes S. Bosch (1651) – 1651_1700 – Halberstadt, Gleimhaus

Bildnis des Thomas Münzer – Coburg, Kunstsammlungen der Veste Coburg

Bildnis des Renatus Cartesius Wolfgang Philipp Kilian (ungesichert) – 1721_1732 – Halberstadt, Gleimhaus

Bildnis des Johann Gottfried von Herder – Berlin, Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin – Preußischer Kulturbesitz, Handschriftenabteilung

Bildnis des Jean Racine Carl Christian Glassbach – 1766_1789 – Halberstadt, Gleimhaus

Bildnis des Guillaume Thomas François Raynal Pierre Michel Alix – Verlagsort- Paris – 1791_1797 – Berlin, Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin

Bildnis des Hobbes – Nürnberg, Germanisches Nationalmuseum, Graphische Sammlung

Bildnis des Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel Friedrich Wilhelm Bollinger – Verlagsort- Berlin – 1801_1825 – Nürnberg, Germanisches Nationalmuseum, Graphische Sammlung

Bildnis Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel Julius Ludwig Sebbers – Sachse, L., & Co. – Verlagsort- Berlin – Wolfenbüttel, Herzog August Bibliothek

Saint-Just, Antoine Louis Wien, Österreichische Nationalbibliothek, Bildarchiv und Grafiksammlung 1

Bildnis des Henry St. John Bolingbroke Thomas Holloway (ungesichert) – nach 1760 – Münster, LWL-Museum für Kunst und Kultur

Bildnis des Toussaint Louverture Unbekannt – München, Staatliche Graphische Sammlung

Bildnis des Franciscvs Bacon de Vervlam Wenzel Hollar – 1670 – Coburg, Kunstsammlungen der Veste Coburg

Bildnis des Francois-Marie Arouet de Voltaire Jacopo Bernardi (1808) – 1823_1847 – Berlin, Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin

Bildnis des Franciscus Baconus de Verulam unbekannter Künstler – 1627_1666 – Coburg, Kunstsammlungen der Veste Coburg

Bildnis des Voltaire Joseph Friedrich Rein – faktischer Entstehungsort- Augsburg – 1778_1785 – Nürnberg, Germanisches Nationalmuseum, Graphische Sammlung

Thomas Jefferson Carl Mayer – – – – Universitätsbibliothek Heidelberg

Bildnis des Fichte Johann Friedrich Bolt – 1812 – Leipzig, Universitätsbibliothek Leipzig, Porträtstichsammlung

Bildnis des Leibnitz Friedrich Wilhelm Nettling – 1800 – Berlin, Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin

Bildnis des J. W. v. Göthe Antoine-Jean-Baptiste Coupé – 1799_1852 – Münster, LWL-Museum für Kunst und Kultur

Saint-Just, Antoine Louis Wien, Österreichische Nationalbibliothek, Bildarchiv und Grafiksammlung 3

Bildnis des Iemelka Pugatscew – Berlin, Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin

Bildnis des Leibnitz Johann Heinrich Lips – 1773_1817 – Berlin, Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin

Bildnis des Denis Diderot François Jacques Dequevauviller – 1817_1848 – Berlin, Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin

Hume, David Wien, Österreichische Nationalbibliothek, Bildarchiv und Grafiksammlung

Precursors of the photographic portrait

Gisèle Freund
Photography &
Society (1970)
.

The development of the photographic portrait corresponds to an important phase in the social development of Western Europe: the rise of the middle classes when for the first time, fairly large segments of the population attained political and economic power. To meet their resulting demand for goods, nearly everything had to be produced in greater quantities. The portrait was no exception: By having one’s portrait done an individual of the ascending classes could visually affirm his new social status both to himself and to the world at large. To meet the increased demand for portraits, the art became more and more mechanized. The photographic portrait was the final stage in this trend toward mechanization.

Around 1750 the nascent middle classes began pushing into areas that were formerly the sole domain of the aristocracy. For centuries the privilege of aristocratic circles, the portrait began to yield to democratization. Even before the French Revolution the bourgeoisie had already manifested its profound need for self-glorification, a need which provoked the development of new forms and techniques of portraiture. Photography, which entered the public domain in 1839, owes much of its popularity and rapid social development to the continuing vogue of the portrait. Continue reading →

The mind and face of Bolshevism (1926)

Posted by Ross Wolfe

.
You can download an illustrated full-text PDF of The Mind and Face of Bolshevism by clicking on the embedded link. What follows is an introduction to it and some thoughts on an all-too-familiar claim that Marxism is merely a form of secular religion.

René Fülöp-Miller’s 1926 book, The Mind and Face of Bolshevism: An Examination of Cultural Life in the Soviet Union, offers a unique window into the profound transformations underwent during the first decade of communism in the USSR. Fülöp-Miller sets out to capture the psychology and physiognomy of the October Revolution, and largely succeeds in this task. The picture he paints of the period is unforgettable, covering a great deal of ground without boring his readers. He accomplishes this by including some of the more bizarre phenomena associated with the Bolshevik regime, its most eccentric and utopian elements. Notably, Fülöp-Miller goes over Aleksei Gastev’s Institute for Labor in Moscow, Platon Kerzhentsev’s League of Time, the militant godless movement, God-building [богостроительство], and the Commissariat of Enlightenment. But he also manages to fit in some of his own analysis, which is admittedly hit-or-miss. Upton Sinclair, whose 1927 review from New Masses follows below, is right to say that Fülöp-Miller is better at reading the surface features of Bolshevism’s “face” than he is at discerning the deeper aspects of its “mind.”

It should be stated from the outset that Fülöp-Miller was not a Bolshevik. As Bertrand Russell put it: “Fülöp-Miller is himself a socialist, but of the Western kind.” However, he was not unsympathetic to the Soviet project. Despite serious reservations about the fervor and rapidity with which the Bolsheviks were looking to implement reforms, and revolutionize everyday life, Fülöp-Miller endorsed their efforts insofar as they represented an extension of Enlightenment to the masses. Some tendentiousness can nevertheless be detected in his ham-handed dismissal of Bolshevism as a form of surrogate religion. Many have leveled this criticism, or some version of it, against Marxism as a whole. On this, a few thoughts: An overview of the major proponents of Marxism after Marx’s death in 1883 reveals that they understood themselves in terms of their “faithfulness” to the tradition first established by Marx. The various stances adopted toward this tradition were often couched in explicitly religious language: in terms like heresy, orthodoxy, schism, sectarianism, and dogmatism. Could it be that Marxism’s critics are right to say that it merely secularizes spiritual impulses?

René Fülöp-Miller, age 14

René Fülöp-Miller in military uniform during the war (he later joined in opposition to the war effort)

René Fülöp-Miller and his wife

René Fülöp-Miller in his study in Vienna

René Fülöp-Miller with the Tolstoys

My former mentor, Chris Cutrone, handles this charge in a characteristic manner. Rather than challenge its validity, he seeks to divest the criticism of its power by “owning it” — i.e., consciously admitting that it is in fact true. Supposedly this softens the blow, since it’s true of everyone and at least Cutrone is transparent about it. I would like to resist this gesture, as I consider it empty. He states in his otherwise brilliant critique of Badiou, “The Marxist Hypothesis”:

It is significant that they themselves sought to justify their own political thought and action in such terms — and were regarded for this by their political opponents as sectarian dogmatists, disciples of Marxism as a religion. But how did they think that they were following Marx? What are we to make of the most significant and profound political movement of the last two centuries, calling itself “Marxist,” and led by people who, in debate, never ceased to quote Marx at each other? What has been puzzled over in such disputes, and what were — and are still, potentially — the political consequences of such disagreement over the meaning of Marx?

Certainly, Marxism has been disparaged as a religion, and Marx as a prophet…Marxism cannot help today (after its failure) but become something like a religion, involving exegesis of “sacred texts,” etc.

Of course, this runs directly counter to some of the statements in the “sacred texts” Cutrone seeks to excavate. For example, Lukács in his article on “Orthodox Marxism”: “Orthodox Marxism…does not imply the uncritical acceptance of the results of Marx’s investigations. It is not the ‘belief’ in this or that thesis, nor the exegesis of a ‘sacred’ book.” A quandary, it would seem, which cannot be done away with simply by pointing to changed historical conditions. Even avowed opponents of Marxism and psychoanalysis such as Michel Foucault will these discourses against charges of crypto-religiosity: “It goes without saying that it would be completely wrong to identify [forms of knowledge like Marxism or psychoanalysis] with religion. This is meaningless and contributes nothing.” Religious analogies only go so far, anyway. Marxists today are forced to reflect on classic texts, to be sure — if they are to educate themselves at all — because there is no living practice worthy of the name that would allow theorists today to build upon the insights of the past. Without such a practice, the best Marxists can do is look back upon works written at a time when communism as a “real movement” had not yet ground to a halt.

THE CUPOLA OF A LENINGRAD CHURCH

THE “THEATRICALISED” STORMING OF THE WINTER PALACE

PORTRAIT OF ZAMIATIN (by I. Annenkov)

THE STORMING OF THE KREMLIN (drawing by Krinski)

STALIN AND KALININ

THE “CONSTRUCTIVIST” STAGE IN THE MAYER HOLD THEATRE

STANISLAVSKI

SCHOOL FOR ILLITERATES

THE “CENTRAL EXECUTIVE OF ALL THE RUSSIAN PROLETARIAT” HOLDS A SESSION IN THE FORMER CORONATION ROOM OF THE MOSCOW KREMLIN.

TROTSKI IN HIS STUDY

PROPAGANDA CHINA PLATE FROM THE FORMER IMPERIAL FACTORY

TAIROV

THE GIANT TOYS OF THE COLLECTIVE MAN- figures of Lloyd George, Millerand, Kerenski and Milinkov in front of the Kremlin

THE USPENSKI CATHEDRAL

THE PRIVATE CHAPEL OF THE “TROITSKOE PODVORE” (Church of the Trinity) TRANSFORMED INTO AN ATHEIST’S CLUB

Beyond superficial similarities, however, this has nothing in common with patristics. This does not prevent the charge from being periodically recycled. Chris Taylor of the blog Of CLR James has had occasion to mock my “hot combo of flat-materialist anti-clericalism and religiously inflected hermeneutical/exegetical approach to Marxist-Leninist holy writ.” My only reply would be that it is quite all right to disagree with Marx, Lenin, or any other figure from the history of Marxism. In doing so, though, one should be quite clear how and why one is departing from Marx’s (or Lenin’s, or anyone else’s) conclusions. None of them were infallible figures, but as Marxists and followers of Lenin or whoever they ought to be taken seriously. Such was Walter Benjamin’s attitude toward the claim made by Fülöp-Miller in The Mind and Face of Bolshevism, as expressed in a 1927 letter written to Kracauer. He recommended the book but disagreed sharply with its portrayal of Bolshevism as a form of religious sectarianism. Oskar Negt and Alexander Kluge also rely heavily on the book in their own work on the Public Sphere and Experience: Toward an Analysis of the Bourgeois and Proletarian Public Sphere (1972).

Upton Sinclair’s review appears below. His points about Bolshevism being a positive outcome of Western civilization and about collective freedom being the key to unlock individual freedom are as relevant today as ever. Enjoy.

Review of The Mind and Face of Bolshevism, by René Fülöp-Miller

Upton Sinclair
The New Masses
November 1927
.

There comes in my mail a large and costly volume from England, The Mind and Face of Bolshevism, by René Fülöp-Miller. Inside I find a card, informing me that the book is sent with the author’s compliments, and giving me his address in Vienna — which I understand to mean that he wishes me to tell him what I think of his book. So I send him what as children we used to call “my private opinion publicly expressed.”

Mr. Fülöp-Miller has visited Soviet Russia for a long time, and collected a mass of information, and presented it accurately, with many illustrations, and not too much prejudice; so he gives us the face of Bolshevism very acceptably. But when he comes to interpret the mind of Bolshevism, his class prejudices inevitably get in the way, and he misses the point completely.

I, who have never been to Soviet Russia, but who have managed to free myself from class prejudices, venture to tell Mr. Fülöp-Miller a few things about the mind of Bolshevism, as follows:

Bolshevism is neither incompatible with nor destructive of Western civilization. It is a product and evolution of Western civilization.
Bolshevism’s setting up and glorifying of the masses is not a denial and destruction of individuality, but an effort to make individuality possible to those persons who have hitherto been denied it. Mr. Fülöp-Miller’s class prejudice is manifested in the fact that the beginnings of individuality in a hundred million peasants and workers mean so little to him, in comparison with the limitations of individuality in the case of a million or so aristocrats and intellectuals. Under Russian Tsarism all individuality was denied to the workers and peasants; and the gentlemen who wrote large and costly books were as a rule quite untroubled by this fact. The same condition prevails now to a great extent in Austria, where Mr. Fülöp-Miller’s book was written, and in England where it is published, and in America, where I am reviewing it; and for the most part the intellectual class remains quite untroubled.
If the masses are to have individuality, they must first gain political and economic power; and to get that, and hold it, they must have solidarity and discipline. That means temporarily a certain amount of surrender of individuality — as when men enlist in an army to fight for a cause. In the late unhappy disagreement among the capitalist masters of the world, some twenty or thirty million men were forced to enter armies and risk agony and death; but this loss of individuality did not as a rule trouble the gentlemen who wrote large and costly books, whether in Russia, Austria, England, or America.
It is quite true that Bolshevism represses its internal enemies. Mr. Fülöp-Miller tells us at some length how it does this, and he is much distressed thereby. But reading his book I found myself desiring to ask him this one simple question: what does he think would happen to Bolshevism if it let its internal enemies alone? What would happen to any state which suddenly declared complete freedom of conspiracy and assassination? Will Mr. Fülöp-Miller tell us in another volume what did happen to Bolshevism in Hungary, where it failed to be stern enough? Will he write a book telling us about the White Terror in Finland, and Poland, and Romania, and Hungary — yes, and Austria, and England, and Boston? Will he give us the best estimate he can make as to the number of lives taken by the “reds” in Finland, and then by the “whites” when they came back into power?
In short, what I want Mr. Fülöp-Miller to do is to write me another volume, equally large and costly, entitled, The Mind and Face of Fascism. Now that I have been told about the “G.P.U.” in Russia, I surely ought to be told about Mannerheim and Petlura, and Denekin and Kolchak and Judenich and Horthy; yes, and about the Hakenkreutzler and their murders in Austria, and about the New Fascist organizations in England, and about the American Legion, and the Centralia massacre, and the “deportations of delirium” and the Sacco-Vanzetti case — If my Austrian confrere will prepare such a book, he won’t have to send it to me free — I will agree to pay the full retail price, and tell him of some other persons who will do the same. But I fear that, in spite of such inducements, the book will never be published by the patriotic Major Putnam!

Continue reading →

Toward a materialist approach to the question of race: A response to the Indigènes de la République

Posted by Ross Wolfe

.
The Charnel-House introduction

.
A few months ago, I wrote up a critique of the “decolonial dead end” arrived at by groups like the Indigènes de la République. Despite being welcomed in some quarters of the Left, wearied by the controversy stirred up after the Charlie Hebdo massacre, it was not well received by others. Last month, however, a French comrade alerted me to the publication of a similar, but much more detailed and carefully argued, piece criticizing Bouteldja & co. in Vacarne. I even asked a friend to translate it for the new left communist publication Ritual. But before he could complete it, someone describing himself as “a long-time reader/appreciator of The Charnel-House” contacted me to let me know he’d just finished rendering it into English.

The authors of the original piece — Malika Amaouche, Yasmine Kateb, and Léa Nicolas-Teboul — all belong to the French ultraleft, militant feminists and communists active in different groups. I am grateful they brought up the PIR’s execrable position opposing intermarriage and submitted it to ruthless criticism, offering a Wertkritik-inspired analysis of some antisemitic tropes reproduced by the self-proclaimed Indigènes. Regarding the provenance of “philosemitism,” a concept employed by Bouteldja which the authors critique: the term was invented by antisemites during the nineteenth century, as a reproach to supposed “Jew-lovers.” Not a title that would be claimed by those who were themselves sympathetic to the plight of Jews in Europe and elsewhere.

Translator’s introduction

.
The following text, a critique of the Parti des Indigènes de la République by three of its former members, originally appeared in the French journal Vacarme. A radical anti-colonial party, Parti des Indigènes came to wide attention among the English-speaking Left for their sharp critiques of secularism and racism on the French Left following the Charlie Hebdo attacks of 2015. While they seem to enjoy great respect in certain sectors of the Left, the translator of this document believes such respect is mistaken; that PIR’s identitarian politics seeks an alliance with the identitarian far right of Le Pen, Dieudonné, and Soral; and that such an approach to politics poses a great threat to the Left.

Secondly, this document provides a much-needed insight into the problem of antisemitism. Following the Charlie Hebdo attacks, the media hysterically speculated that Europe was on the verge of a pogrom, to be carried out by its numerous Muslim immigrants; Israeli Prime Minister Benyamin Netanyahu took up the hysteria, calling for French Jews to emigrate. The backlash among certain leftists, whom the present translator otherwise respects, was perhaps equally hysterical. Some questioned whether antisemitism was even extant in contemporary Europe; others seemed to blame antisemitic acts on crimes of the Israeli state, rather than the perpetrators. As this document’s analysis shows, antisemitism is not only a threat against Jews, but against any movement of the working class.

Toward a materialist approach to the racial question: A response to the Indigènes de la République

Malika Amaouche, Yasmine
Kateb, & Léa Nicolas-Teboul
Vacarme (June 25, 2015)
.
.

.
.
Les Indigènes de la République have helped to shed light on racism within the Left, supported by the racism of French society at large. But are they also prisoners of racism? We propose a systematic analysis of the forces exercised upon the most precarious: a critique of the erasure of race and gender; while escaping the identitarian project of the extreme right; remaining anchored in critique of political economy.

…
From the dead refugees of the Mediterranean, to the Baltimore riots, to the events of everyday metropolitan life, we are constantly drawn back to the question of race. It seems necessary to propose an analysis of the foundations of racism, which will not be merely a shallow response to current events.

Today, we observe mounting Islamophobia and antisemitism. These two are a pair: in a context where social segregation is becoming stronger, and the logic of all-against-all becomes uncontrollable, we must work to think of these things in conjunction. That means to reject the logic of competition between different racial oppressions; but also to examine Islamophobia and antisemitism together in all their specificity. And in all this, the general context — growing social violence, a hardening of class segmentation, and effects of structural racism (in housing, work, and so on). It is harder and harder for the poor, and for those who are the most precarious (racial minorities and women).

With the [Charlie Hebdo] attacks in January, the left was hit with its own denial of the issue of racism. It made a specialty of denouncing the victimization, and of dismissing racism as a massive structural phenomenon. Institutional feminists’ obsession with the veil functioned as a spotlight on the racism of a Left clinging to an abstract, ahistorical, and highly aggressive universalism.

This was why we were enthusiasts of the great work of exposing the racism of the Republican left — a project in which the Parti des Indigènes de la République has participated since 2004. There are many of us who worked to undermine this “respectable” racism, under which the indigènes were never truly equal.¹ If the Left was never explicitly against racialized people, its arguments were dismissive of the great values meant to emancipate them. An entire history of the condescension and paternalism of the French Left remains to be written. Such a history would note the way the discourse of class was used to stratify the hierarchies of the workers’ movement itself.

Nevertheless, it seems to us that PIR is slipping. Riding the gathering wave of identitarianism, it proposes a systematic cultural, almost ethnocentric, reading of social phenomena. This leads to the adoption of dangerous positions on antisemitism, gender, and homosexuality. It essentializes the famous “Indigènes sociaux,” the subaltern it aims to represent. It is as if the racialized working class, who face the most violent racism, are being instrumentalized in a political strategy which basically plays in the arena of the white left and à la mode radical intellectuals.

For us, descendants of Muslim and Jewish Algerians, to lead the critique of the PIR, just as we led the critique of the Left, is a matter of self-defense. We believe we have nothing to win from a political operation which subsumes all questions under those of race. For us, not only the question of race, but also those of political economy, and the social relations of sex, are the order of the day.

Political economy and Islamophobia

.
Anyone who has taken the RER to Gare du Nord in the morning knows that those who look Arab, black, or Roma, face a constant pressure. “Face control,” police killings, housing in only the most distant banlieues — racial minorities face geographical, social, and symbolic segregation. This integral racism (to take up a phrase of Frantz Fanon), consubstantial with French society, begins with orientation in the fourth grade, or with the search for an internship, or the first job… and extends to all the dimensions of existence. In its multiple appearances, it extends from the streets of rich towns where ethnic men are turned away from nightclubs, to the edges of seas where they are let drown with all the indifference that attends to those who dare cross borders.

In France, Islamophobia — i.e., anti-Muslim racism — is to be understood not merely as a secular opposition to religion, but as a form of racism directed against all who are black or Arab. Its presence is seen in the public space, whether against veiled women, or young people loitering against a wall. The events of January only accentuated this process of stigmatization. From the attacks on mosques to the assaults on veiled women, to the police summons given to eight-year-olds who preferred not to say “Je suis Charlie,” it has become almost impossible for an Arab to speak politically without first prefacing that they are not an Islamist.

But it does not only operate through discriminations or prejudices. Islamophobia returns to a more central issue, the issue of race. This issue functions by assigning a place in the division of labor to certain sections of the population based on their origin or skin color. One need only observe a construction site to note that the heavy labor is performed by blacks, the technical work by Arabs, and that the overseers are white.² Racism is the regime of material exploitation which has organized the development of European capitalism.

In effect, capitalism promotes market competition not only between capitalists, but between workers as well. This competition takes the form of a process of “naturalization,” which allows a specific devaluation of labor power. Certain sociohistoric traits of the immigrant workforce (for example, qualification, disposition, specialization) are “essentialized”: they are stretched, “typecast.” And this permits employers to bring down cost of labor.

But this process cannot be simply reduced to a “racial premium” of exploitation. It is a total social phenomenon. One may therefore submit that racialization is an essential dynamic under capitalism, which always needs greater labor power, and produces, at the same time, a “surplus” of labor power, always too much.³

Insufficiency of the “colonial” framework

.
This racism marks, materially and symbolically, the European metropolitan space. Nevertheless, the strict decolonial framework proposed by PIR prevents us from comprehending the actual dynamics of racism, which exist only in conjunction with the development of global capitalism.

The history of colonialism as such is behind us, but it has left traces. The West — that is, the historical center of accumulation now threatened by crisis — perpetuates, through its “War on Terror,” the continuation of structural exploitation on the world scale. Take, for example, the wars over access to natural resources (oil or “strategic” minerals). But equally at play is the intensification of exploitation in all class segments, beginning with the most fragile. This process of immiseration and marginalization ends by engulfing those subjects who are not black, Arab, or the descendants of the colonized. Continue reading →

Under artificial skies: Planetaria and modernism

Posted by Ross Wolfe

A couple years ago or so, I posted a number of photos of the Moscow planetarium designed by Mikhail Siniavskii and Mikhail Barshch. The planetarium was built in 1929, and still stands today — albeit in an awful state of disrepair. I included the wonderful fragment “To the Planetarium” by Walter Benjamin, from his 1928 work One-Way Street. You can read more about the planetarium and its preservation here.

Recently I’ve found a bunch of new images to post, however, from the same cache as the Dom Narkomfin photos I posted the other day. So I thought I’d put them up for everyone to see, along with another fragment by the theorist of modernity Hans Blumenberg. Not too familiar with Blumenberg’s work, admittedly, but from what I can tell he’s less hostile to Weber than his rejection of the “secularization thesis” (what Weber called “the disenchantment of the world”) would suggest. Anyway, this bit from The Genesis of the Copernican World is quite nice. Enjoy.

The ambiguous meaning of the heavens

Hans Blumenberg
The genesis of the
Copernican world
West Berlin, 1975

The planetarium is the mausoleum of the starry heavens as the ideal of pure intuition. As a technical phenomenon it is deeply rooted in the nineteenth century’s longings for a popular knowledge of the starry heavens, longings that expressed themselves in “people’s astronomers” and “people’s observatories.” They retrieved the reserved property of science as a relic for a “natural” mass religion of the solved “riddles of the universe” and of ersatz emotions. To that extent the planetarium too is an end, an end of what Ernst Haeckel wrote in his Welträtsel [Riddles of the Universe] (a book that was distributed in many hundreds of thousands of copies): “The astonishment with which we gaze upon the starry heavens and the microscopic life in a drop of water, the awe with which we trace the marvelous working of energy in the motion of matter, the reverence with which we grasp the universal dominance of the law of substance throughout the universe-all these are part of our emotional life, falling under the heading of ‘natural religion.'” Modern man, Haeckel went on, does not need the narrow enclosed space of a special church in order to live in this religion; he finds his church “through the length and breadth of free nature, wherever he turns his gaze, to the whole universe or to any single part of it…” It is harsh, but indispensable in order to display the arc of this theme’s development, to quote immediately after the enthusiasms of this certainly important zoologist and theoretician of “family trees,” from 1899, what Hitler said on the subject in conversation during the noon meal in his headquarters on 5 June 1942: He had “directed that every town of any importance shall have an observatory, for astronomy has been shown by experience to be one of the best means at man’s disposal for expanding his view of the world and thus saving him from any tendency towards mental aberration.”

Under the artificial skies of the planetariums, the upright carriage of the observer of the heavens can be practiced sitting down, with the gentlest constraint to adopting the attitude of the onlooker in repose. Here, if anywhere, one should inevitably expect the demonization of the technical surrogate for the most sublime object — of the projected heavens as the false heavens. If one disregards the context of the [particular] concept of reality, into which this simulation fits as one of its logically most consistent elements, it is easy to make sarcastic fun of the false starlight and the false salvations that are sought under it. Nevertheless, this marvel has seldom been so little marveled at as in the work of Joseph Roth, who had his “first encounter with Antichrist” under this technical backdrop.

Roth writes a book of unmaskings. He follows the old pattern of the Platonic discovery that the realities with which we deal are only shadows and imitations; but he goes a step further beyond this schema when he establishes that everything that is even capable of being imitated is thereby lowered in its rank in reality. It is an attempt to oppose even the concept of reality that allows imitations to be real [wirklich] because they are efficacious [wirksam], without prejudice to what they may be derived from. Not only the shadows of the Platonic cave are convicted of their existential weakness, but the Ideas themselves are too, because it is still possible for those shadows to be their final derivative and the extreme indicator of their origin. What we have before us is a mirror-image reversal of Platonism: If in it the null grade of reality, in the shadows, was only possible because as images they were subordinate to the essentially imageable Ideas, now the unreality of the projections is only possible because their “originals” already suffer from unreality, so that “the reality that they imitate so deceivingly was not at all difficult to imitate, because it is not real.” This description of the cinema could in its turn be an imitation of the classic of this sort of cultural criticism, Max Picard’s Das Menschengesicht [The Human Face] of 1929: “Indeed, the real human beings, the living ones, had already become so shadowlike that the shadows on the screen had to seem real.” The unreality of reality is responsible for the artificial reality of unreality.

What Joseph Roth calls “the Antichrist” is the sum of the false realities. The boy encountered them for the first time at the beginning of his paideia [ education], in his Platonic cave: Not only the shadows but the cave itself was, so as to make the shadows possible, an artifact.

In those days a great wagon came along, drawn by invisible powers, and remained standing on an open space before the city. To begin with it sent a great machine forward, which was covered with a little tent made of linen, and on this a great tent, also made of linen, was spread out and set up like a dome, and if one went inside, the inside of the dome was a blue sky with many gold and silver stars…The dome was blue, and the stars were just as inaccessible and just as close as real stars are. For since a human being is not even tall enough to reach the roof of a circus tent erected by others of his kind, it did not matter to the person who sat beneath the dome whether it was the genuine sky or a copy of it. He could grasp neither the one nor the other with his hands. Consequently he was glad to believe that the one was the other, or vice versa. And since it became quite dark beneath and inside this dome made of tent linen, he was convinced that he sat in the midst of a clear, starry summer night…

Of course, under false heavens one can encounter false salvations. But they come from false expectations of an “authentic” and ultimate reality, of the genuine substance of nature that, because it is genuine, is at the same time not ready to hand. The demand for an authentic reality presupposes that one could tell by looking at the real that it is not the unreal-as long as one does not have to deal exclusively with the latter. But the production of this exclusiveness is what the Platonic cave and its technical successors imply.

The modern age added to this premise a further one. In Descartes’s consideration of doubt, the possibility is accepted that all the characteristics of the real could be imitated without the production of these characteristics having to generate, at the same time, the objective equivalent of reality. Leibniz was the first to urge, against Descartes, that the complete simulation of reality would in the end no longer be deception, because a deception requires both the implication of an assertion of what does not exist and that the person affected could suffer from being disillusioned, neither of which is the case here. The Baroque idea that life could be a dream has no terrors for Leibniz because expectation is determined by a new concept of reality in which the internal consistency of everything that is given is identical with all the ‘reliability’ of reality that is still possible.

There is something questionable and productive of misgivings in the demand for ultimate authenticity in all experiences, for an unmediated relation to the original, in a world that is characterized by overcrowding and can no longer keep open all paths to everything. This is no longer and not only a matter of the sincerity of one’s desire, not least of all because simulation surpasses artificially unaided [naturwüchsig] intuition. The starry heavens of intuition in the life-world are motionless for their viewer; if one also assumes that the everyday opportunity to view the heavens occurs at about the same time of day, there remain only the gradual seasonal displacement of the constellations, the Moon’s changes of phase, and the (even more difficult to perceive) motion of the planets. It is just not true that the natural heavens rotate soundlessly around the viewer; only the herdsmen of Chaldea were credited with having this experience without having any professional interest in having it. In contrast to this, the planetarium is a short of temporal telescope, which puts the static heavens in motion and by means of technical projection makes visible things that were never seen, that were really only disclosed by comparison of observations. Here it is a question not of duplicating experience that, with some effort, would also be possible ‘in the original’ for anyone at any time, but rather of augmenting what can be seen at all.

“Comrades!

The twin fires of war and revolution have devastated both our souls and our cities. The palaces of yesterday’s grandeur stand as burnt-out skeletons. The ruined cities await new builders[…]

To you who accept the legacy of Russia, to you who will (I believe!) tomorrow become masters of the whole world, I address the question: with what fantastic structures will you cover the fires of yesterday?” ⎯ Vladimir Maiakovskii, “An Open Letter to the Workers” (1918)

“Utopia transforms itself into actuality. The fairy tale becomes a reality. The contours of socialism will become overgrown with iron flesh, filled with electric blood, and begin to dwell full of life. The speed of socialist building outstrips the most audacious daring. In this lies the distinctive character and essence of the epoch.” ⎯ I. Chernia,“The Cities of Socialism” (1929)

“The idea of the conquest of the substructure, the earthbound, can be extended even further and calls for the conquest of gravity as such. It demands floating structures, a physical-dynamic architecture.” ⎯ El Lissitzky, The Reconstruction of Architecture in the Soviet Union (1929)

With lightning telegrams:

Like this:

Meyer Schapiro Modern Art (Nov. 1978) .

1

2

With lightning telegrams:

Like this:

Andrei Gozak Complete Works January 1988 .

With lightning telegrams:

Like this:

Painting

Otto Stelzer Janet Seligman (March 1969) .

Photography 1

With lightning telegrams:

Like this:

With lightning telegrams:

Like this:

Eisenstein in Mexico

Morris Helprin Experimental Cinema September 1932

With lightning telegrams:

Like this:

Portraits

Gisèle Freund Photography & Society (1970) .

With lightning telegrams:

Like this:

Review of The Mind and Face of Bolshevism, by René Fülöp-Miller

Upton Sinclair The New Masses November 1927 .

With lightning telegrams:

Like this:

. The Charnel-House introduction

Translator’s introduction

Malika Amaouche, Yasmine Kateb, & Léa Nicolas-Teboul Vacarme (June 25, 2015) . .

Political economy and Islamophobia

Insufficiency of the “colonial” framework

With lightning telegrams:

Like this:

Hans Blumenberg The genesis of the Copernican world West Berlin, 1975

With lightning telegrams:

Like this:

Meyer Schapiro
Modern Art
(Nov. 1978)
.

Andrei Gozak
Complete Works
January 1988
.

Otto Stelzer
Janet Seligman
(March 1969)
.

Morris Helprin
Experimental Cinema
September 1932

Gisèle Freund
Photography &
Society (1970)
.

Upton Sinclair
The New Masses
November 1927
.

.
The Charnel-House introduction

Malika Amaouche, Yasmine
Kateb, & Léa Nicolas-Teboul
Vacarme (June 25, 2015)
.
.

Hans Blumenberg
The genesis of the
Copernican world
West Berlin, 1975