Shock and the Senseless in Dada and Fluxus

by Brill, Dorothee

• ISBN13: 9781584659020
• ISBN10: 1584659025
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2010-11-09
• Publisher: Dartmouth College

Summary

In this thought-provoking work, Dorothee Brill examines notions of shock and the senseless in Dada and Fluxus, pairing two distinctly radical art movements that challenged the very notion and purpose of art. Laying out a genealogy of surrealisms, she addresses the senseless in artistic production as a strategy toward shock--generally considered to be characteristic of the historical avantgarde. Examining the changing correlation between the notions of shock and the senseless in their artistic use in prewar Europe and postwar America, Brill arrives at a new understanding of the overstrained and generally pejorative catch phrase of "shock for shock's sake." This is an important work that will appeal to all manner of art historians and scholars--not only students of modernism, but also those interested in the artistic recurrence of avant-garde manifestations in the second half of the twentieth century and beyond.

Author Biography

DOROTHEE BRILL obtained her Ph.D. from the University of London and now holds a position at the Staatliche Museen Preussischer Kulturbesitz in Berlin.

Table of Contents

Note on Translations	p. vii
Introduction: Shock of the Senseless	p. 1
The Notion of Shock in Early Twentieth-Century Europe	p. 17
Shock and Urbanity: Walter Benjamin and Georg Simmel	p. 20
Shock and World War I: Walter Benjamin and Sigmund Freud	p. 36
Shock and Tactility in Walter Benjamin	p. 48
Shock and the Senseless in Dada	p. 59
Dada's Notion of Art and Its Sociocultural Context	p. 62
Senselessness, the New, and the ôShock of the Unintelligibleö	p. 86
The Senseless in Walter Benjamin's Concept of Shock	p. 92
Shock and the Senseless in Fluxus	p. 98
The Sociocultural Context of Fluxus	p. 108
From Politics to a Worldview: Transforming the Senseless	p. 117
Art as Perception	p. 127
Shock and Boredom: Fluxus's ôSenseless Perceptionö	p. 138
Conclusion: Communicating the Void	p. 150
Acknowledgments	p. 161
Notes	p. 165
Bibliography	p. 207
Illustration Credits	p. 233
Index	p. 235
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