The Civilization of Illiteracy Part 59

Leon Battista Alberti (15th century) wrote extensively on painting and sculpture: De pictura and De Statua were translated by Cecil Grayson (London: Phaidon, 1972). Alberti's writings on the art of building, De re aedificatoria, was translated by Joseph Rykwert, Neil Leach, and Robert Tavernor (10 volumes, Cambridge MA: MIT Press, 1988).

Marcel Duchamp (1887-1968). Intently against those who were "intoxicated by turpentine," he pursued a "dry art." From the Nu descendant un escalier, considered "an explosion in a fireworks factory" to his celebrated ready-mades, Duchamp pursued the call to "de-artify" art. Selection became the major operation in offering objects taken out of context and appropriating them as aesthetic icons. He argued that "Art is a path to regions where neither time nor s.p.a.ce dominate."

Happening: An artistic movement based on the interaction among different forms of expression. Allan Kaprow (at Douglas College in 1958) and the group a.s.sociated with the Reuben gallery in New York (Kaprow, Jim Dine, Claes Oldenburg, Whitman, Hausen) brought the movement to the borderline where distinctions between the artist and the public are erased. Later, the movement expanded to Europe.

Andy Warhol. The Philosophy of Andy Warhol: from A to B and Back Again. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1975.

-. Strong Opinions. New York: McGraw Hill, 1973.

Andy Warhol is remembered for saying that in the future, everyone will be a celebrity for 15 minutes.

Vladimir (Vladimirovich) Nabokov. Lectures on Literature. Edited by Fredson Bowers, introduction by John Updike. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1980-1981.

"A rose is a rose is a rose...," now quite an ill.u.s.trious (if not trite) line, originated in Gertrude Stein's poem Sacred Emily.

But "...A rose by any other name/would smell as sweet." from Shakespeares Romeo and Juliet can be seen as a precursor.

Symbolism is a neo-romantic art movement of the end of the 19th century, in reaction to the Industrial Revolution and positivist att.i.tudes permeating art and existence. Writers such as Beaudelaire, Rimbaud, Maeterlinck, Huysmans, composers (Wagner, in the first place), painters such as Gauguin, Ensor, Puvis de Chavannes, Moreau, and Odilon Redon created in the spirit of symbolism. At the beginning of the 20th century, symbolism attempted to submit a unified alphabet of images. Jung went so far as to identify its psychological basis.

James Joyce (1882-1941). Ulysses. A critical and synoptic (though very controviersial) edition, prepared by Hans Walter Gabler with Wolfgang Steppe and Claus Melchior. New York: Garland Publishers, 1984.

Antoine Furetire. Essais d'un Dictionnaire Universel. Geneva: Slatkine Reprints, 1968 (reprint of the original published in 1687 in Amsterdam under the same t.i.tle).

Antonio Gramsci (1891-1937). 2000 Pagine de Gramsci. A cura di Giansiro Ferrata e Niccolo Gallo. Milano: Il Saggiatore, 1971.

-. Gramsci: Selections from Cultural Writings. (Edited by David Forgacs and Geoffrey Newell-Smith; translated by William Boelhower). Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press, 1985.

-. Le Ceneri di Gramsci. Milano: Garzanti, 1976.

Pier Paolo Pasolini (1922-1975). Turc al Friul. Traduzione e introduzione di Giancarlo Bocotti. Munich: Inst.i.tuto Italian di Cultura, 1980. Ken Kesey. The Further Inquiry. Photographs by Ron Bevirt. New York: Viking Penguin, 1990.

Gustave Flaubert (1821-1880). Madame Bovary. Paris: Gallimard, 1986.

-. Madame Bovary. Patterns of provincial life. (Translated, with a new introduction by Francis Steegmuller). New York: Modern Library, 1982.

Donald Barthelme. Amateurs. New York: Farrar, Strauss, Giroux, 1976.

-. The King. New York: Harper & Row, 1990.

-. The Slightly Irregular Fire Engine or The Hithering Thithering Djinn. New York: Farrar, Strauss, Giroux, 1971.

Kurt Vonnegut. Breakfast of Champions or, Goodbye Blue Monday!

New York: Delacorte Press, 1973.

-. Galapagos. A Novel. New York: Delacorte Press, 1985.

-. Fates Worse than Death. An Autobiographical Collage of the 1980's. New York: G.P. Putnam's, 1991.

John Barth. Chimera. New York: Random House, 1972.

-. The Literature of Exhaustion and the Literature of Replenishment. Northridge CA: Lord John Press, 1982.

-. Sabbatical. A Romance. New York: Putnam, 1982.

William H. Ga.s.s. Fiction and the Figures of Life. New York: Knopf, 1970.

-. Habitations of the Word: Essays. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1985.

-. In the Heart of the Heart of the Country and Other Stories.

New York: Harper & Row, 1968.

Gary Percesepe. What's Eating William Ga.s.s?, in Mississippi Review, 1995.

Gertrude Stein's writing technique is probably best exemplified by her own writing. How to Write, initially published in 1931 in Paris (Plain Editions), states provocatively that "Clarity is of no importance because n.o.body listens and n.o.body knows what you mean no matter what you mean nor how clearly you mean what you mean." In an interview with Robert Haas, 1946) in Afterword, Gertrude Stein stated that "Any human being putting down words had to make sense out of them," (p. 101). "I write with my eyes not with my ears or mouth," (p. 103). Moreover: "My writing is as clear as mud, but mud settles and clear streams run on and disappear."

Gertrude Stein. How to Write (with a new preface by Patricia Meyerowitz). New York: Dover Publications, 1975.

The author shows that "the innovative works of an artist are explorations" (p.vi).

-. Useful Knowledge. Barrytown NY: Station Hill Press, 1988.

-. What are Masterpieces? New York: Pitman Publis.h.i.+ng Corp., 1970 (reprint of 1940 edition).

Edmund Carpenter. They Became What They Beheld. New York: Outerbridge and Dienstfrey/Ballentine, 1970.

The author maintains that the book became the organizing principle for all existence, a model for achieving bureaucracy.

It seems that the first comic strip in America was The Yellow Kid, by Richard F. Outcault, in the New York World, 1896. Among the early comic strips: George Harriman's Krazy Kat (held as an example of American Dadaism); Windsor McKay's Little Nemo in Slumberland; Milton Caniff's Terry and the Pirated.

Filippo Tommaso Marinetti (1876-1944). Il Futurismo was written in 1908 as the preface to a volume of his poetry and was published in 1909. Its manifesto was set forth in the words "We declare that the splendor of the world has been increased by a new beauty: the beauty of speed." Breaking with the livresque past, the Italian Futurism took it upon itself to "liberate this land from the fetid cancer of professors, archaeologists, guides, and antiquarians." The break with the past was a break with its values as these were rooted in literate culture.

Dziga Vertov (born Denis Arkadievich Kaufman,1986-1954). Became known through his innovative montage juxtaposition, about which he wrote in Kino-Glas (Kino-Eye). The film We (1922) is a fantasy of movement. Kino-Pravda (1922-1925) were doc.u.mentaries of extreme expressionism, with very rich visual a.s.sociations.

Experiments in simultaneity are also experiments in the understanding of the need to rethink art as a representation of dynamic events.

Michail Fyodorovich Larionov (1881-1964). Russian-born French painter and designer, a pioneer in abstract painting, after many experiences in figurative art and with a declared obsession with the aesthetic experience of simultaneity. Founder of the Rayonist movement-together with his wife, Natalia Goncharova (1881-1962), painter, stage designer, and sculptor-Larionov went from a neo-primitive painting style to cubism and futurism in order to finally synthesize them in a style reflecting the understanding of the role of light (in particular, as rays). His Portrait of Tatline (1911) is witness to the synthesis that Rayonism represented.

Fernand Lger (1881-1955). Machine Aesthetics, 1923.

"La vitesse est la loi de la vie moderne." (Speed is the modern law of life.)

Libraries, Books, Readers

In his Introduction to A Carlyle Reader, (Cambridge University Press, 1984), G.B. Tennyson is unequivocal in his appreciation: "No one who hopes to understand the nineteenth century in England can dispense with Carlyle," (p. xiv). Since nineteenth century England is of such relevance to major developments in the civilization of literacy, one can infer that Tennyson's thought applies to persons trying to understand the emergence and consolidation of literacy. Thomas Carlyle (1795-1881) wrote Signs of Times. (He took the t.i.tle from the New Testament, Matthew 16:3, "O ye hypocrites, ye can discern the face of the sky, but can ye not discern the sign of the times?") He condemns his age in the following terms: "Were we required to characterize this age of ours by any single epithet, we should be tempted to call it, not a Heroical, Devotional, Philosophical, or Moral Age. It is the Age of Machinery, in every outward and inward sense of that word; the age which, with its whole undivided might, forwards, teaches and practises the great art of adapting means to ends. Nothing is done directly, or by hand; all is by rule and calculated contrivance. For the simplest operation, some helps and accompaniments, some cunning abbreviating process is in readiness. Our old modes of exertion are all discredited, and thrown aside. On every hand, the living artisan is driven from his workshop to make room for a speedier, inanimate one," (cf.

Reader, p. 34). Parallels to the reactions to new technology in our age are more than obvious.

New Worlds, Ancient Texts. The Cultural Impact of an Encounter, a major public doc.u.mentary exhibit at the New York Public Library, September 1992-January 1992, curated by Anthony Grafton, a.s.sisted by April G. Shelford.