Research Presentation

The Practitioners

Picasso (1881-1973)

Olia Lialina (1971-)

Picasso:

• Key theorist: Clement Greenberg

• Key essay: "The Pasted-Paper Revolution" of 1958

• In his sophisticated formalist reading of the work he argued that the various elements, the lettering, the charcoal lines and the coloured papers:

"begin to change places in depth with one another, and a process is set up in which every part of the picture takes its turn at occupying every plane, whether real or imagined, in it".

 Guitar, Sheet Music,
and Wine Glass 1912
Pasted paper, gouache,
and charcoal on paper.

• Pictorial allusion gave way to what he called an optical illusion.

• This is reading the collages and purely autonomous decorative objects.

Glass and Bottle of Suze 1912
Pasted paper, gouache,
and charcoal on paper.

• The collage is a still life

• But what does type represent?

• Patricia Leighton (art historian) suggests that there is a relationship between the two pieces of newsprint in this collage

• The collage represents a café- in which ‘we’ are drinking Suze

• The newsprint cut up and arranged, may represent conversation or thoughts regarding the Balkan War

• Collage: a modern idea of a painting of the absolute now

Baudillaire: Modernism/the modern describes what is new in one’s own culture and implied an obligation to be of one’s own time.

"You read handbills, catalogues, posters that shout out loud: Here’s this morning’s poetry, and for prose you’ve got the newspapers… Lettering on billboards and walls, Doorplates and posters squawk like parrots” – Apollinaire, Zone  1912

Violin  1912
Pasted paper and charcoal on
paper

Other readings are possible: Rosalind Krauss (art historian and critic)

• Type can represent light reflected on dust moats

• Type/newsprint can represent the broken surfaces created by stumbling, like those in paintings: Impressionism, Constable and Turner.

Olia Lialina

Key work:

My Boyfiend Came Back from the War  (1996)

The story of two lovers reunited after an unspecified military conflict

http://www.teleportacia.org/war/war.html

Fragments of disjunctive dialogue convey the profound difficulty the couple has reconnecting.

Olia Lialina was born 1971 in Moscow. Finished Moscow State University in 1993 as
a journalist and film critic. In mid 90s one of the organizers of Moscow experimental film club CINE FANTOM. Net Artist, one of net.art pioneers. Lialina writes on New Media, Digital Folklore and Vernacular Web.

Conclusions

Both artists are linked by conflict: Picasso the Balkan War and Lialina a conflict in the late 20th Century. Both works suggest multiple narratives and multiple meanings.

The Icebook at Illuminate Bath and Illuminating York

The Icebook - A Miniature Theatre Show



The Icebook is a pop-up book that comes to life in front of an audience's eyes as if by magic. It could possibly be the smallest show in the world - a 3D cinema made from sheets of paper and light. Each page unfolds an animated miniature world, telling the story of a princess who lures a boy into the forest in order to warm her heart of ice. The Icebook is an intimate and immersive experience of film, theatre, dance, mime and animation designed for an audience of 8 people lasting 20 min.
www.illuminatebath.org







Location Bath: St. James Square, Bath, BA1 2TW (map)






Date/Time:Sat 6 November, Sun 7 November and Sat 13 November. Shows every 30 min from 12:00 – 17:00






www.illuminatingyork.org.uk






Location York: Deans Park, York, North Yorkshire YO1 (map)






Date/Time:Wed 27 October – Sat 30 October. Shows every 30 min from 19:00 – 22:00


 
 
 

 
The Icebook is a production by Davy & Kristin McGuire.

Gertrude Stein and Picasso: The Autobiography of Alice B Toklas

"All of a. sudden down the street came some big cannon, the first any of us had seen painted, that is camouflaged. Pablo stopped, he was spell-bound. C'est nous qui avons fait a, he said, it is we that have created that, he said. And he was right, he had" (Stein 1962, 84-85).