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.