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Man Ray

        The most difficult part of writing about Man Ray is trying to decide which work to discuss. He was a master photographer, painter, and filmmaker. His photographic nudes somehow seem to be steeped in both classical tradition and modernist aesthetics. He captures the curves and shadows of the female form like the finest master painters, while providing shocking new ways of looking at the body that literally defined avant-garde photography. For me, twentieth-century photographic art begins with Man Ray, with apologies to Stieglitz, Strand, and others.

        Of all Man Ray's photographs, his macabre 1932 photographs on suicide, including his self-portraits, are the most fascinating. For me, these photos have always been strangely positive images—not morose meditations suicide, but Man Ray’s wry comment on the rather silly ways we trap ourselves in ruts or self-destructive rituals of our own design.

        Although all three have very different meanings for me, for the sake of this blog entry I’ll just examine one—the first photograph of Jacqueline Goddard. It is reminiscent of a cigarette advertisement, as if the model is blissfully unaware of her collection of vices. As in an ad, she invites the viewer to follow her lead, in this case down a path of oblivious folly, smiling all the while. She seems comically blind to her own self-destruction (I’m thinking of celebrities like Lindsay Lohan or Charlie Sheen as modern examples), even though we all see it quite clearly. Of course, the joke is on us: the implication is that each of us is largely blind to the causes of our own personal demons and hang-ups, which might be easily perceived by outside viewers. Yet, we all must persist with our metaphorical heads-in-the-noose. This idea is probably best summed by Beckett’s famous final line of The Unnamable: “You must go on. I can’t go on. I’ll go on.”

        I read in a biography of Man Ray that he decided to take these photos one day in his studio in Paris after going through one of the most challenging and depressing periods of his life up to that time. By staging these scenes with such obvious props, Man Ray seems to be expressing the absurdity of our own self-loathing. Photography, as a ritual staging of the death of a moment (to borrow an idea from Roland Barthes), is a cathartic moment of release that counteracts the self-loathing. It is the process of generating art that allows the artist to "go on" by ritualistically and metaphorically ending one phase of life and moving on to another.

Robert Desnos and Creative Awakenings

       The two most striking features of Robert Desnos’ poetry are his use of anaphoral language with wildly differing metaphors at the end of each line, and his use of traditional poetic images (especially flowers, stars, and  “kisses”) that often set-up or frame those surreal juxtapositions. I found myself frustrated at times by the second point, wondering just how many times Desnos was going to rely on stars and cosmic objects to describe mystical or dreamlike experiences. However, I was able to push beyond my mild annoyance to appreciate some of the truly odd and unique turns of phrase that emerged in each poem, due in part to his automatic writing method.

                                    Robert Desnos - Man Ray, 1928.

        I found his poem “Awakenings” (reprinted below) especially interesting for its mediation on the unknown side of the Self encountered in dreams. Desnos personifies this part of the psyche as “that night visitor with the unknown face” who is “trying to re-enter us,” only to discover the key no longer fits the lock of our bodies. Desnos links the dream world and the creative act as two ways to re-connect to the Shadow side of our psyche that often lies outside our awareness while awake. When this re-connection happens in dreams, we often experience “a reflection of ourselves in the mirror” that seems alien to us. Desnos writes of this stranger (in an example of anaphora): “Is it a poor man begging food and a place to sleep / Is it a thief a bird…Is he pain? Where will he go   next / Is this the origin of ghosts? / of dreams?” The Shadow side, as the storehouse of our unconscious desires or repressed memories, often appears as a dark or even evil figure in our dreams. Desnos suggests that upon waking (and in order to awaken), we must reconstruct the Self even as part of our identity will remain always an unknown but essential part of our inner lives.

        What is so striking at the end of the poem for me is Desnos’ declaration of renewal: “Never knock at my door again / There’s no place at my hearth or in my heart / For old images of myself.” Upon waking, we often tell ourselves that we never want to meet that Dark Stranger of our dreams ever again. Yet such encounters are essential for individuation, at least according psychoanalytic theory. The “old images” of our identity—the ones we wish to lock out—are often the ones most responsible for charting the course of our waking reality, and to “meet” them in a dream is to have an opportunity for self-knowledge. The "awakenings" (plural) of the title are two-fold: the moment in which the unconscious mind generates a new Self ("we've changed..."), and the moment in which the poet externalizes that change through his art. Both awakenings are acts of self-creation. As a poet who desires so strongly to connect to the unconscious mind, Desnos realizes that encounters with the dark side of the psyche can be dangerous, but also rewarding, for these moments ultimately lead to the construction of new images and ways of understanding the inner world, which also stands as an apt description of Desnos’ poetry.

 "Awakenings"

It's strange how sometimes you wake up in the middle of the night
Fast asleep someone knocked at your door
And in that extraordinary town of half-awake half-memory
iron gates ring heavily from street to street. 

Who is that night visitor with the unknown face?
what's he looking for is he spying
Is it a poor man begging food and a place to sleep
Is it a thief a bird
A reflection of ourselves in the mirror
Back from transparent depths
Trying to re-enter us 

Then he notices we've changed
his key no longer turns the lock
Of the mysterious door to our bodies
Even if he just left seconds ago
in that anxious moment when you turn out the light 

What happens to him then
Is he in pain? Where will he go next?
Is this the origin of ghosts?
of dreams?
the birthplace of regret? 

Never knock at my door again
There's no place at my hearth or in my heart
For old images of myself.
Perhaps you recognize me.
me, I'll never know if you recognize yourself.

Source:
Desnos, Robert. "Awakenings." The Voice of Robert Desnos: Selected Poems. Trans. William Kullick. Riverdale-on-Hudon: Sheep Meadow P, 2004. 37.

Raymond Roussel's Locus Solus

(Please note: Sorry for the length. This is a combination of what I wanted to say in my oral presentation last week and my response to Roussel, so it's a little long.)

Part 1: Roussel, Alchemy, and Jung

          When reading the opening chapters of Locus Solus, I wondered if Roussel had any familiarity with alchemy. By the time I reached the story near the end of the novel of the alchemist Paracelsus' experiments with white powders and skin, I was convinced he was. The opening myth--with its references to cabbalistic rituals, gold ancestral crowns, and the kingly signature of "Ego" (12-13)--sounded like the perfect Jungian alchemical tale. Jung himself believed that alchemists' search for transforming base metals into gold was a metaphor of the human search for a soul, or the process of individuation. Of course, Roussel was writing years before Jung began his interest in alchemy. However, Roussel's opening chapter leads to an interesting psychoanalytic reading that can be informed by Jung's ideas. If gold might be read as the soul, then Jouël's story becomes a metaphorical warning: if we lock the ideal self (the "Ideal I" of our fantasy) so tightly within, then we risk losing access to the very object of value. The Ego's over-protection of the soul (in this case, the cave marked "Ego" protecting the sacred gold with a dream-inspired password) renders the soul hidden forever, buried away, and useless. Although the "sacred gold was buried in a safe place" (13), it was nearly impossible to access, ironically placing it out-of-reach, as if the gold had not existed at all. Only when the dream-message overcomes the Ego (17) might we be allowed access to the gold buried beneath--that is to say, reach individuation. In the terms of Roussel's novel, we might say this is a merging of the mythic and the scientific, the imaginative and the real, and the past and the present.

          Roussel seems to suggest that this process happens through the artistic process. He begins his novel with a mythic tale of "Jouël" and ends with a performer named "Noël," linked to each other by similar-sounding names, but also connected to Canterel as mysterious men who transform fetish objects into art, but in opposite ways. Jouël turns his object (gold inside a cave) into myth, while Noël gives us the rational explanation for his parlor trick--the dice are literally loaded (214). Jouël was the "first to wear the Load" (9) in ancient times, becoming the earliest-living person in the narrative to have access to a fetish object, whereas Noël is the last to appear in the novel to show his metallic material to the visitors. It is interesting to note that Noël learned his trade from alchemist Count Ruolz-Montchal (210), again linking to alchemical themes in the opening chapter. (When I tried searching for connections to Roussel and alchemy, I stumbled upon the following passage from A Critical Bibliography of French Literature: "Breton suggests that at present we read R. with pleasure and little understanding; comprehension would increase our enjoyment. The key should be sought in traditions of alchemy and initiatory literature." (A Critical Bibliography of French Literature: The Twentieth Century, ed. David Clark Cabeen, Douglas William Alden, and Richard A. Brooks. Syracuse: Syracuse UP, 1979. 1104.) In a final connection, Jouël dies and appears as a mythic presence in the stars (11-12), while Noël begins his fortune-telling by offering a prayer to Saturn, "a dazzling star standing almost at zenith" (202). Noël finds a book with "a cabbalistic code whose secret he explained to us [the visitors to Locus Solus]" (204), which again links to the power of Jouël's "cabbalistic utterance" (11). Of course, Noël appears at the end to reveal the trickery behind his mystic objects, not to extend the myth surrounding an object, as Jouël's story achieves. But before explaining further how Roussel synthesizes the stories of Noël, Jouël, and Canterel, I must pause to show how I interpret the novel's structure and how certain important themes function in relation to each other within the narrative arc.

Part 2: The Narrative and Thematic Structure of Locus Solus

          In order to do this, I created the chart below to map the cyclical nature of Roussel’s narrative. An explanation follows the chart...

          Here we see the important themes of the novel arranged around the fetish object, which might be any number of various artifacts that appear in the text, from The Federal to Danton's head to the fatal revolver. The black arrows indicate the narrative arc, beginning with the Artist (Canterel being the prime example) and moving clockwise to a mystical reconstruction of a famous narrative or myth (such as found in the Locus Solus exhibits); then to a narrative of the myth itself; then to a Dream World that often appears within the mythic narrative (this might also be a reference to night, sleeping, or even the "Nocturnal wax"); then to the images of death that are very often closely associated with the dream or sometimes following the dream; then to the rational or "scientific" explanation that lies behind both the myth and the fantastic Locus Solus reconstructions; and then finally leading full circle to the Artist who is giving the rational explanation to assure us that neither trickery nor supernatural elements are involved. The fetish object links items next to each other on the narrative chart, as indicated by the dotted lines. (Therefore, the fetish object connects the Artist to the reconstruction; it also connects the reconstruction to the mythic narrative, and so on...) Notice that the Artist is suspended between the mystical on the right and the rational/scientific on the left (an important theme in the novel, as mentioned in class), but also mirrors the Dream World, which stands directly opposite the Artist. Opposite items on the chart are meant to have a direct correlation through the fetish object, indicated by the dotted lines connecting those items across the diameter of the circle. (Please excuse my poor skills as an artist/graphic designer, but yes, this is meant to be a circle!) Therefore, we can see a dotted line connecting Artist/Dream World, Rationality/Mythic Narrative, and Mystical Reconstruction/Death, pairings that I think are related in the novel through possession or placement of the fetish object.

          As with all such charts, the arrangement over-simplifies a dynamic that is quite complex. This is just a way for my mind to grapple with how these themes function in the novel within the narrative. Others might feel the need to add, swap, or re-arrange items. However, I wouldn’t remove any of these items, as I think each one is essential to understanding the novel.

          Finally, I want to take a moment to give my definition of "fetish object," which we discussed briefly in class. I see the fetish as a tangible artifact that gives access to a distant, unobtainable object of desire. The fetish functions as a substitute for what cannot be possessed. I'm basing this on my previous readings of Lacan's objet a, which was in turn developed from Freud's writing on the totem. As Freud writes, a totem can offer protection or be a communal item, whereas a fetish is always individual (Totem and Taboo. 2nd ed. Trans. James Strachey. London: Routledge, 2004. 120.). Henry Krips writes that the totem appears "lacking as a site of desire," whereas the fetish is the point at which desire is located (Fetish: An Erotics of Culture. Ithaca: Cornell UP, 1999. 66-67.). I would add to this that the fetish offers a point of access to desire, which I think is the key to understanding how the fetish objects function in Locus Solus.

Part 3: Artist-as-Trickster

          Although many of the artists' narratives in the novel tend to follow the same cyclical route mapped above, I think the three most important center on Jouël, Noël, and Canterel. I'm calling Jouël an "artist" because of his mythic ability to create a chamber/tomb in a mountain out of magic. Indeed, I think the "artist-as-magician" is an important idea in the novel. Whereas Jouël is the mythical artist and Noël is the "real life" example (i.e. explaining away his "magic" as tricks), Canterel walks a line between the two. He is constantly trying to prove no trickery is taking place ("Look: nothing up my sleeve!") while at the same time clearly engaging in imaginative play that mimics the mystical and mythical events from which he draws inspiration. By ending with Noël's loaded dice, Roussel is suggesting that the artist must be mystic, alchemist, performer, and trickster rolled into one. The novel portrays the act of generating art as cycles of creation and destruction, imaginative dreaming and real-world application of craft, and death and life. Like desire, art is a cycle that reproduces itself. It is no surprise that the figures represented at Locus Solus are a menagerie of artists: several poets, an actor, a writer, a sculptor, a weaver, fortune tellers/stage performers, orators, craftsworkers, etc.

          By the end of the novel, I was reminded of the opening scene of Orson Welles' documentary F for Fake (1973), which explores the art of fraud and trickery in film, painting, and writing. The first two minutes of the film have Welles performing a magic trick for a young boy as a film crew records the events:

          As we can see from the opening shot, the key functions here as the fetish object ("a small, personal object"): the tangible item in front of our eyes that is certainly real, but also has a story linking it to the imaginative and the seemingly unreal. “Hold it above your head," Welles commands the child, as if he were holding a sacred object. “TEN FEET over your head!” Here is the fetish object to be elevated and observed—a point of access to the magic soon to come. In transforming the key into a coin (from base metal into gold, no less!), Welles as the writer/poet/artist, like the metaphorical alchemist or magician, has created a work of art from the objet a. Something ethereal has taken place. But what then happens to the key, that all-important object offering access to the realm of dream/fantasy and prompting the artist to create in the first place? It doesn’t really “go” anywhere. It has never left. That twin desire--to possess both key and coin, imagination and reality--cycles back to the beginning, awaiting the next sleight of hand. As Welles intones with a coy smile, "What happened to the key? It's been returned to you...Look closely, sir. You’ll find the key…back in your pocket." The fetish object is “returned to us” through the transformative nature of the work of art (the novel, the painting, the wunderkammer, the parlor trick, etc.).  I say “transformative nature” because the work of art, in the act of its very creation, becomes a tangible replacement for the initial objet a. The artist has essentially transferred the power of the fetish from the original fetish object (which might still exist or be long lost—it ultimately doesn’t matter), to the work of art itself. (“As for the key,” Welles deadpans, “it wasn’t symbolic of anything. This isn’t that kind of movie.” Of course, Welles, as the self-proclaimed “charlatan,” is pulling our leg. He cuts to a shot of the film crew on the word “symbolic,” letting his audience know with a wink that this is exactly “that type of movie”…). 

          The prime example of the work of art taking the place of the fetish occurs in chapter six when Canterel elicits fear in Sileis, the Sudanese fortune teller, by showing her a painting of a Sudanese mythic sacrificial rite (197). Notice the arc of the narrative in terms of my chart, all linked by the painting titled Dancing girl with Fruit: Artist (Canterel/Vollon) --> a mystical reconstruction (the painting of the ritual) --> myth (the fruit tree predicting death) --> dream (the trance-state of Sileis) --> death (Sileis’ fear of death in seeing the mythic image in the painting) --> rational explanation (the process of inducing a chemical reaction to create a small explosion).  The painting as an access point to the power of the myth generates real emotion and fear from Sileis, bringing her too close to the myth. For her, there is no "rational explanation" (that is reserved for Canterel and the visitors). As seen in the chart above, when this step in the cycle is skipped, the only result can be an arrow linking death to the artist, which is precisely the fear felt by Sileis as she performs her fortune telling while staring at the painting. 

          To take the idea of artist-as-trickster to the extreme, one might suggest that the entire reason Canterel brought his visitors to Locus Solus was to get their signatures as witnesses to the transformation of globules to gunpowder. After all, the visitors were only more than willing to sign a legal document as witnesses to the extraordinary event after being prepped all day by a long string of amazing sights and tales. Perhaps Canterel was simply out to make money? But such a cynical reading would fly in face of everything Canterel had told us up to that point. Like the visitors to Locus Solus, we have to take Canterel's word that the final experiment was "based on a unrepeatable effect of surprise and illusion" (199). If this is true, then there would be no money to be made in the creation of something that can never be repeated. We can only conclude that the entire event was just a bit of imaginative fun, and that like any good magician, Canterel never repeats the same trick twice.

Pop Culture Dada Influence

Just for fun, here's a poster for the cult "rock'n'roll western" Zachariah (1971) that seems to be referencing Hausmann's Mechanical Head (circa 1920).

Art and the Political

      In The Shock of the New, Robert Hughes claims that the minimum freedom Dadaists and Expressionists took for granted—which was denied artists behind the Iron Curtain—was “the freedom to interpose one’s art between the official message and one’s audience.” The wording of the statement reminded me of Georg Lukács’ condemnation of Expressionists in “Realism in the Balance”: “What then of the Expressionists? They were ideologues. They stood between leaders and masses” (Aesthetics and Politics. New York: Verso, 2007. p. 51).  Of course, Lukács meant the statement to be highly critical. According to him, Expressionists were not revolutionary. Although they did “interpose” their art between “the official message” and the people, they did so in a way that was not grounded in the reality of present social issues. Lukács, arguing in favor of a type of social literary realism, famously concludes in that essay (and others) that Expressionism leads inevitably to Fascism. The Dadaists (far from the territory of Lukács’ realism) would agree in part, arguing that Expressionists were not subversive. Instead, they traded political revolution for a “tyrannical Ich,” leading Dadaists to proclaim in their manifesto, “Has expressionism fulfilled our expectations of such an [explosive] art, which should be an expression of our most vital concerns? NO, NO, NO” (Robert Hughes, The Shock of the New. New York: Knopf, 1991. p. 68) 

          So here we have both the realists and Dadaists arguing that Expressionism fails to meet their respective criteria for political art. But did Expressionism have any political impact at all? Absolutely. Both Lukács and the Dadaists take the position that art is not political if it isn’t actively engaged with current social crises or struggles. However, I would argue that even bourgeois art that upholds the status quo is performing a certain political function—even if the politics are at odds with the leftist views of the Dadaists or Lukács. Indeed, the very fact that Expressionism would lead early-twentieth century artists and theorists to have such strong reactions against it—and to put into practice conflicting “anti-art” movements—is proof that even the most personal and individual art can lead to concrete social and political responses. Art generates dialogue, and that is where it might have the most political impact

          Expressionist art between the wars, especially in Germany, revealed some of the most haunting and visceral images of fear, alienation, and anxiety of the Weimar period. The works express psychological and emotion truths that transcend individual experience and give insight into the collective experience of an entire culture during a particularly turbulent period. Take, for example, this poem by Georg Trakl from 1914, as translated by James Wright:

         “In Venice”

Silence in the rented room.

The candlestick flickers with silver light

Before the singing breath

Of the lonely man;

Enchanted rosecloud.

Black swarms of flies

Darken the stony space,

And the head of the man who has no home

Is numb from the agony

Of the golden day.

The motionless sea grows dark.

Star and black voyages

Vanished on the canal.

Child, your sickly smile

Followed me softly in my sleep.

          If we are to link “political” with subversive, then this expressionist poem is a prime example. The typical romantic setting of Venice—quiet streets with candlelight flickering over the water—is visualized as a place of death and sickness. The “darkened stony spaces” are more reminiscent of tombs or subterranean crypts. In this intensely personal vision of the city, Trakl inverts the typical depiction of Venice while mapping modern decay onto a city so often celebrated for the very traits the poet finds so disturbing. Like Europe itself in the years leading up to the first World War, the city masks its growing sickness in the myths of its past. The “child” of the poem might very well be the city itself, whose sickly images linger in the mind even in sleep, which brings no respite. The subversive element of the poem is Trakl’s seeing through the outer illusion of the city and revealing an inner truth (of both city and poet). The poem expresses much the same ominous tone as “Death in Venice” written two years earlier by Thomas Mann (championed by Lukács as one of the great of political writers). It presents one man’s immediate sense of self in a time and place where an individual’s identity was being shaped by a decaying culture on the verge of war. As art, it generates dialogue, raises awareness, and lends itself to counter viewpoints, which are certainly political moves, despite the overtly personal content of the poem.