Depersonalization (art)
As depersonalization tendencies in art, literature and theater are referred to that abstract, given the uncertainty about the centrality of the subject in 1900 radically from the individual, let the individual appear as a mere object, distort it aggressive or parody , in which people view only the Typical emphasize, deform anthropomorphic figures geometrically, technically-mechanically or construct them from objects such as machine parts.
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Early examples
Forerunners can be found in Mannerist art, for example in the portraits of Giuseppe Arcimboldo composed of plants or other objects or in Jacopo da Pontormo , who draws branches in the form of women's bodies. This reflects the idea of the close connection between the elements of nature and the unity of man with the cosmos, the animal and plant world.
By contrast design the tropics of petrarkistisch -manieristischen poetry in the description, especially the female body a virtual art body to exceed the natural original. By overemphasizing the artificiality of these artificial bodies, which reaches a climax in the stylistic hyperbolism of Hoffmannswaldau's body poems, modern art's hostility to nature is anticipated. The depersonalization and denaturation of the female body mediated it completely and made it “writing”.
Modern and avant-garde
These natural hostility is reflected in the decided tendency to depersonalization in the art and literature of Expressionism , Futurism , the synthetic Cubism , Dadaism and other currents of the avant-garde who turn away from naturalism and impressionism. While pre-impressionist realistic and naturalistic art endeavored to let the subjectivity of the artist and his method of processing take a back seat to the person depicted, expressionism paradoxically emphasizes the personality and subjectivity of the artist by decomposing and depersonalizing the objects. However, in the reification of what is represented and in the predominance of the constructive, in which the objectification and de-individualization of human manners in industrial society is expressed, there is already a tendency towards New Objectivity , a form of design primarily for factory-made objects that do not belong to the individual People, but are intended for use by the public.
James Noyes has perturbations like Italian futurism for an iconoclastic movement that symbolically destroys classic idols.
theatre
For the plurimedial theater of the avant-garde in particular, the actor's body, which was becoming more and more important compared to the dramatic text or the setting, proved to be a particularly problematic medium. Unlike the painter or writer, the actor does not work with detached material, but with his body, which overlays the intended expression ( multicoding ). This resulted in the compulsion to reduce, abstraction or masking, as in the no- play or kabuki (there through mask-like make-up), in puppet or marionette theater. The actor should become the perfect carrier of characters, the pure medium. Depersonalization was supposed to contribute to the development of theater towards plurimedial art. The first impulses came from the Belgian playwright Maurice Maeterlinck around 1890 . Beginning with Alfred Jarry's King Ubu , the actor was radically depersonalized, his phenomenal body being replaced by an artificial, purely semiotic figure. He thus became an anthropomorphic bearer of symbols and the audience became an imaginative co-creator through abstraction and reduction in stage design and actors. In many expressionist dramas or Brecht's didactic plays, depersonalization is supported by avoiding individual names (“Der Erste”, “Second”, “Third” etc.). The decomposition metaphors in Gottfried Benn's poetry or in Reinhard Goering's tragedy Sea Battle are also a sign of expressionist depersonalization.
Depersonalization is also accelerated by stylized voice guidance and mechanization in Max Reinhardt's theater or by techniques such as Wsewolod Meyerhold's biomechanics , which should initiate the emotions to be shown through precisely defined movements and postures. The dance of the 1920s was also characterized by geometric, machine-like movements (e.g. Oskar Schlemmer's Triadic Ballet ).
music
Depersonalization and denaturalization tendencies are more difficult to describe in music, since music is more abstract and constructed than art or literature that tries to describe reality. In music, the tendency is expressed, for example, by mathematizing the composition (e.g. twelve-tone music ), rejecting a melodic voice that is perceived as "natural" (e.g. through extreme intervals as in Arnold Schönberg ), by emphasizing the noisy as in Filippo Tommaso Marinetti or by complicated, "constructed", machine-like polyrhythmics as in Arthur Honegger's Pacific 231 .
Further meaning
In literary studies and literary criticism, depersonalization also means the endeavor of the author or literary critic to divert the reader's attention away from the author's personality to the poetic text, the activity of writing or the literary tradition in which the author stands. TS Eliot demanded : "A poet's progress means constantly sacrificing oneself, obliterating one's own personality." Eliot's epic poem The Waste Land (1922) can serve as an example .
criticism
The depersonalization and denaturalization tendencies of the avant-garde have often been criticized by conservative, religious and right-wing critics as a loss of human substance or emotional values, as noted by José Ortega y Gasset in his book La deshumanización del arte , which primarily describes the literature of the Generación del 27 had in mind, by the National Socialists as part of the actions against degenerate art , but also after the Second World War by Hans Sedlmayr and others.
literature
- Anke Bosse : abstraction stage and depersonalization. In: Primus-Heinz Kucher: Displaced Modernism - Forgotten Avant-garde: Discourse Constellations between Literature, Theater, Art and Music in Austria 1918–1938. Göttingen 2015, pp. 65–78.
- Richard Hamann , Jost Hermand : Expressionism (= epochs of German culture from 1870 to the present. Volume 5), Frankfurt 1977, p. 123 ff.
Individual evidence
- ↑ Pavel Preiss: On anthropomorphism in mannerist art. Dissertation, University of Brno 1964 online
- ↑ Torsten Voss: The destruction of the body through the birth of the work of art in Petrarkist mannerist poetry. In: Deutsche Vierteljahrsschrift für Literaturwissenschaft und Geistesgeschichte 83 (2009) 1, pp. 103–127.
- ↑ James Noyes: The Politics of Iconoclasm: Religion, Violence and the Culture of Image-Breaking in Christianity and Islam. London 2013.
- ↑ Anke Bosse: Depersonalization of the actor Zentrales Movens of a plurimedial theater in modern and avant-garde. In: Etudes Germaniques No. 264, 2011/4, pp. 875-890.
- ↑ TS Eliot; Tradition and the Individual Talent (1919), cit. after Katharina Maier: TS Eliot , in: The great writers of the world: America and Asia. Wiesbaden 2007.
- ^ Madrid 1925, new edition 1991; German The Expulsion of Man from Art , Munich 1964.
- ↑ Loss of the center , Salzburg 1948.