Now, it’s not easy to picture an orthodox art history, so it is also not
easy to argue against it. If we, however, think of the 20th century’s art
history, the visual images surrounding “Surrealism” occupy a great part in it. This
thesis concerns a surrealist painter Yves Tanguy (1900-1955).
Though not as famous as Ernst, Miró, Magritte and Dalí, Tanguy is also
a representative painter of Surrealism. For a long time Tanguy was a member of the
surrealist group led by André Breton and his painting are in most books about
surrealist art. Although art hitorians have not paid much attention to him, we
can obtain a thorough view of his life and paintings through catalogues of
retrospective exhibitions, his catalogue raisonné, edited by his second wife, Kay
Sage, or a biography by one of his friends Patrick Waldberg.
Discussions concerning Tanguy until now, however, are in effect
limited to biographical or general remarks. Although useful references, they
don’t attempt any critical review of his works. The purpose of this thesis is
not to make general remarks concerning Tanguy or to give more biographical data
but to attempt a critical review of Tanguy’s works.
In
the introduction, I attempt to provide an overview of the dissertation. Chapter
I serves to give a biographical overview of Tanguy’s life. It also summarizes
discussions concerning him up untill now. Finally it feeds into my thesis. In chapter
II, I discuss the particularity of Tanguy’s images within the contexst of Surrealism.
This particularity is the inexchangeability with words, in other words, silence. After chapter II, I will
demonstrate some historical contexts of this silence.
Chapter III discusses the possibility of Giorgio de Chirico’s theory
concerning his Metaphysical paintings as an origin of Tanguy’s images. Chapter
IV examines the process of formation of Tanguy’s fundamental images from the
point of view of painting method. Chapter V discusses the ressemblance of
Tanguy’s images with the “Ectoplasm,” phenomenon from psychical research. In
chapter VI, I examine the relationship between Tanguy’s images and Biomorphism
in modern art. Chapter VII discusses the great respect for Tanguy held by the young
painters who participated in the surrealist group in the late 1930s. Chapter
VIII discusses the relationship between Tanguy and his second wife, the painter
Kay Sage.
Throughout chapters III to VIII, I apply a point of view, presented
in chapter II, to each problem. Of course the discussion in chapter II and
those in chapters III to VIII support each other. In other words, the discussions
after chapter II show the validity of chapter II’s point of view and the
problems after chapter II are linked through chapter II’s point of view.
Although in this essay I will attempt to describe Tanguy’s works
through words, my purpose is to show precisely that they cannot be exchanged
with words.
My standpoint can be explained by the tried and true proposition by
Susan Sontag.
The function of criticism should be to show how it is what it is, even that it is what it is, rather than to show what it means[1].
[1] Susan Sontag, Against Interpretation and Other Essays, Picador
/ Farrar, Straus and Giroux ,
New York
0 件のコメント:
コメントを投稿