Gears, Clocks, Pipes, and Urinals: Art as the Psyche

          The generation of artists that were making art during the beginning of the 20^th century saw many drastic changes in society. The machine-like nature of modern life led to the machine-like nature of the first World War. The basis of this new oil and blood-soaked life caused several strong reactions in the art and general academic worlds. New theories about what was, and what should be abounded. Among this furore of new ideas, two artistic movements captured aspects of modernity in completely novel ways. Dadaism and Surrealism, while aesthetically different, share many commonalities, and are rather similar, even in their differences.

          As if a magazine had exploded and cutout images and words had floated down onto a canvas, Hannah Hoch's Cut With the Kitchen Knife Dada Through the Last Weimar Beer Belly Cultural Epoch of Germany first appears to be an eclectic photomontage that defies everything that art had traditionally been.¹ Rational explanation seems to fail this work as the bits of this and that seem to share little obvious relationships. In the top center of the frame a large cog sits beneath a picture of a row of buildings, a dancing couple, two letters “nf”, a man's head pasted onto a woman in a checkered bag dress. The cog overlaps and is overlapped by bits of people, machinery, elephants and things less identifiable. One might stare at this work for ages, and without a complete mastery of the culture and people contemporary to that age, one might never be able to identify the objects that make up the composition. Even when one is able to name the object, like “artist Kathe Kollwitz's head float[ing] above a dancer's body”, no rational reason as to why the elements were so composed might ever be forthcoming.²

          That might very well be the point. By embracing the “intuitive” and the “irrational” Dada artists were attempting to save themselves, and perhaps the world, from the “insane spectacle of collective homicide that was World War I”.³ Hoch, a Berlin Dadaist, used absurdly illogical … chaotic, contradictory and satiric compositions” in the politically rebellious style to make comment about the roles of women and print media in German society.⁴ By using literal snapshots of the culture at the time, the message of Dada pieces like Cut With the Kitchen Knife become very difficult to interpret. Beyond the fact that the words cut from print sources are in German, making it difficult for non-German speakers to understand, the non-lexical elements become equally foreign. The combination of the elements, and a sufficient cultural and linguistic knowledge shows that Hoch identifies the leading individuals of the Weimar Republic part of the anti-Dada movement by their placement with the words “Die anti Dadaistische” (“anti-Dada movement”).⁵ So as crazy and random as the piece first appears to be, closer inspection with the adequate knowledge shows that the piece is a politically charged work that taps into something more primal and basic than the reasoned compositions of previous periods.

          Dredging up some deeper “something” was not the exclusive domain of the Dadaists. Surrealists were also inspired by psychological theories, but focused on “the inner world of the psyche” where they could use “fantasy” to activate “the unconscious forces deep within every human being” in an attempt to merge the “outer and inner 'reality' together”.⁶ This goal also made works that defied easy formal visual analysis. For instance, Salvador Dali's famous oil painting, The Persistence of Memory, puts the viewer into a kind of naturalistic landscape, but with dream-like elements.⁷ In the deep background, cool pastel blues lighten to warm tones as the colorful sky meets the glassy water.⁸ The thin line of the horizon is broken by rocky cliffs rising above the beach. Clear reflections of both the sky and the cliffs carry the eye toward the foreground beach. While all of those elements seem to be faithful renditions of sublime elements one might expect in any landscape with a setting sun, where the shadows fall upon the beach, the familiarity of the expected gives way to a something that is difficult to put into words. While the elements are mundane, a dead branch, a collection of pocket watches, ants, a table, and a slab, the way they are represented confuses the continuity of expectations. The watches seem to drape and melt over the other objects, the ant madly swarm on the back of one watch, and the proportions of every thing seems off. The inclusion of an oddly shaped creature, presumably dead (although others see it is sleeping), on which one watch seems to melt, further draws the viewer into the dreamscape.⁹

          Beyond the obvious different medium, there is an interesting similarity in that both Dadaism and Surrealism made use of and were inspired by notions contained in the works of psychologists like Carl Jung and Sigmund Freud.¹⁰ In Hoch's work that can be seen in the improvisational manner of the composition and seeming lack of use of line or any other clear traditional aspects of art. In Dali's work it is best expressed in his statement that he wished “to make the irrational concrete.”¹¹ While the photomontage is comprised of literal representations ripped out of their original context and intuitively manipulated into something different, the oil painting is an original creation straight from the psyche. The irrationality of both challenge perceptions of the content and the iconography, but require different modes of thinking to attempt to understand them. Hoch forces the viewer to see the disconnected elements of the external world as connected in mad ways, while Dali inspires the viewer to feel “the persistence of memories”. The exact nature of what that means might be impossible to objectively say.

          Another interesting similarity that stems from this attempt to tap into that underlying “something”, is when both Dada and Surrealist artists inspired viewers to look at art, objects, and art objects in a different way. Marcel Duchamp and Rene Magritte were a pair that did just that. Duchamp's “readymade” artworks took everyday objects and “made” them art cheifly by the artist selecting them as art objects.¹² The work is a small porcelain fountain, with a triangular vertical peak and a rounded base and a circular front spout resembling a pipe-fitting.¹³ The spout remains unglazed and the body of the ceramic can be seen clearly. The rest of the piece is a pure white except where the artist has written “R. MUTT” and “1917” on the front. Four small holes in the back, inside of the fountain form a vertical cross. While the piece does not appear to be representational of anything other than a urinal, the organic features combine with the hard, unfinished spout to produce an evocative piece with the masculine and the feminine combined. Of course, it is just a urinal with “a witty pseudonym” scrawled on it.¹⁴

          Magritte elected to call a flat plane of canvas, complete with arrangements of oil-based pigment on its surface, a pipe.¹⁵ It would be more precise to say that he used that arrangement of pigments to make the canvas into a pipe. The pigments became a symbol of a pipe, under which he arranged a different set of black pigment into thick lines that can been seen as swirling, sweeping symbols of the French language. A competent interpreter of those symbols would say that they represent the English words “This is not a pipe.”¹⁶ A competent interpreter of visual symbols in art would say that the large central figure with a wooden bowl that rounds to a crook tapering to a tip is a pipe. Like Duchamp's Fountain, Magritte's The Treachery of Images plays with the notion of “what is”, and specifically, the fundamental notion of “what Art is”. Duchamp removes the artist's hands from the creation of the art object and dubs a urinal a fountain thereby making it art. Magritte paints a pipe and then declares that it is not a pipe.

          The intentional and surprising use of symbols and everyday objects, viewed through the lens of the two art movements produced works with radically different appearance, and a different focus. Dada forced people to see the world around them differently by using intuition to access common psychological elements, and presenting them in a completely unexpected and unfamiliar way. It requires a cultural literacy as it turns the absurd “out there” into reflective pieces of the artist's perception of the truth “in here”. Surrealists dug deep into their own dreams to present very similar concepts in a way the would induce the viewer to intuit the work with them. It focuses on the artist's personal experience “in here”, merging and forcing it to be the concrete “out there”. Surrealism is introspection that moves the viewer to see concepts differently. Dada is extrospection that inspires cultural revision. Either way, both reflective styles refuse easy categorization, analysis or understanding. Nothing is what it first appears, or perhaps it is. No two viewers could possibly have the same experience because no two viewers have the same psyche, or perhaps we all do. Perhaps the symbol of a pipe really is a type of pipe because deep down we all know it is not a pipe.

Bibliography

Dali, Salvador. “The Persistence of Memory.” Oil on canvas, 1931 (Museum of Modern Art, New York). In Gardner’s Art Through the Ages, 3^rd ed., by Fred Kleiner, Figure 14-23. Boston: Wadsworth Cengage Learning, 2013.

Duchamp, Marcel. “Fountain.” Glazed sanitary china with black print, (original version 1917) second version 1950 (Philadelphia Museum of Art, Philadelphia). In Gardner’s Art Through the Ages, 3^rd ed., by Fred Kleiner, Figure 14-15. Boston: Wadsworth Cengage Learning, 2013.

Hoch, Hannah. “Cut With The Kitchen Knife Dada Through The Last Weimar Beer Belly Cultural Epoch of Germany.” Photomontage, 1919-1920 (Neue Nationalgalerie, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Berlin). In Gardner’s Art Through the Ages, 3^rd ed., by Fred Kleiner, Figure 14-1. Boston: Wadsworth Cengage Learning, 2013.

Kleiner, Fred. Gardner's Art Through the Ages, 3^rd ed. Boston: Wadsworth Cengage Learning, 2013.

Magritte, Rene. “The Treachery (or Perfidy) of Images.” Oil on canvas, 1928-9 (Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles). In Gardner’s Art Through the Ages, 3^rd ed., by Fred Kleiner, Figure 14-24. Boston: Wadsworth Cengage Learning, 2013.

1 Hannah Hoch, “Cut With The Kitchen Knife Dada Through The Last Weimar Beer Belly Cultural Epoch of Germany,” photomontage, 1919-1920 (Neue Nationalgalerie, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Berlin). In Gardner’s Art Through the Ages, 3^rd ed., by Fred Kleiner, Figure 14-1. (Boston: Wadsworth Cengage Learning, 2013), 386.

2 Fred Kleiner, Gardner's Art Through the Ages, 3^rd ed., (Boston: Wadsworth Cengage Learning, 2013), 386.

3 Ibid., 387.

4 Ibid., 387.

5 Ibid., 386-7.

6 Ibid., 405.

7 Ibid., 406.

8 Salvador Dali, “The Persistence of Memory,” oil on canvas, 1931 (Museum of Modern Art, New York). In Gardner’s Art Through the Ages, 3^rd ed., by Fred Kleiner, Figure 14-23. (Boston: Wadsworth Cengage Learning, 2013), 406.

9 Kliner, 406.

10 Ibid., 399-405.

11 Ibid., 407.

12 Ibid., 400.

13 Marcel Duchamp, “Fountain,” glazed sanitary china with black print, (original version 1917) second version 1950 (Philadelphia Museum of Art, Philadelphia). In Gardner’s Art Through the Ages, 3^rd ed., by Fred Kleiner, Figure 14-15. (Boston: Wadsworth Cengage Learning, 2013), 400.

14 Kleiner, 400.

15 Rene Magritte, “The Treachery (or Perfidy) of Images,” oil on canvas, 1928-9 (Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles). In Gardner’s Art Through the Ages, 3^rd ed., by Fred Kleiner, Figure 14-24. (Boston: Wadsworth Cengage Learning, 2013), 407.

16 Kleiner, 407.