R. Bruce Elder argues that the authors of many of the manifestoes that announced in such lively ways the appearance of yet another artistic movement shared a common aspiration: they proposed to reformulate the visual, literary, and performing arts so that they might take on attributes of the cinema. The cinema, Elder argues, became, in the early decades of the twentieth century, a pivotal artistic force around which a remarkable variety and number of aesthetic forms took shape.
To demonstrate this, Elder begins with a wide-ranging discussion that opens up some broad topics concerning modernity’s cognitive (and perceptual) regime, with a view to establishing that a crisis within that regime engendered some peculiar, and highly questionable, epistemological beliefs and enthusiasms. Through this discussion, Elder advances the startling claim that a crisis of cognition precipitated by modernity engendered, by way of response, a peculiar sort of “pneumatic (spiritual) epistemology.” Elder then shows that early ideas of the cinema were strongly influenced by this pneumatic epistemology and uses this conception of the cinema to explain its pivotal role in shaping two key moments in early-twentieth-century art: the quest to bring forth a pure, “objectless” (non-representational) art and Russian Suprematism, Constructivism, and Productivism.
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motw/Harmony and Dissent_ Film and A - R. Bruce Elder.pdf

1554580285.pdf

R. Bruce Elder

Film and media studies, Waterloo, Ont, ©2008

1st Edition, First Edition, PT, 2008

Canada - English Language, Canada

2008-10-02

producers:
Acrobat Distiller 5.0 (Windows)

Memory of the World Librarian: outernationale

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Contents 6
Preface 10
Acknowledgements 32
PART 1 MODERNISM AND THE ABSOLUTE FILM: THE OVERCOMING OF REPRESENTATION 36
1 The Philosophical and Occult Background to the Absolute Film 38
Photography, Modernity, and the Crisis of Vision 38
The Analogy to Music 40
Absolute Film and Visibility: The Theories of Conrad Fiedler 43
Bergson and Intuition 49
Abstraction and the Occult 50
The Extraordinary Influence of Annie Besant and Charles Leadbeater’s Thought Forms 58
Vibratory Modernism: Rudolf Steiner, Anthroposophy, and Synaesthesia 66
2 Modernism and the Absolute Film 74
The Absolute Film: Precursors and Parallels 74
Precursors of the Absolute Cinema: Light Sculpture 74
Precursors of the Absolute Film: The Scroll 75
Precursors of the Absolute Cinema: The Colour Organ and the Lichtspiel 79
More on Vibratory Modernism: The Esoteric Background to the Absolute Film 116
Abstract Film and Its Earlier Occult Predecessors 121
A Possible Egyptian Connection for Kircher’s Steganographic Mirror 129
Huygens, Robertson, and Their Colleagues: Popular Magic 136
Spiritualism and the New Technology 141
Léopold Survage and the Origins of the Absolute Film 146
Walther Ruttmann and the Origins of the Absolute Film 151
Hans Richter and Viking Eggeling: The Absolute Film as the Fulfillment of Modern Art Movements 160
The Language of Art: Constructivism, Reason, and Magic 164
Eggeling’s Integrity 170
Toward a Generalbaβ der Malerei 172
Goethe as Precursor 184
Kandinsky, Eggeling, and Richter: Colour as Feeling, Rhythm as Form 195
Rhythmus 21 and the Generalbaβ der Malerei 197
The End of the Absolute Film 198
PART 2 MODERNISM AND REVOLUTION: CONSTRUCTIVISM BETWEEN MARXISM AND THEOLOGY 238
3 Spiritual Interests in Late Nineteenth-Century and Early Twentieth-Century Russia 240
Symbolism, Theology, and Occultism 240
Solovyov’s Influence 251
4 Symbolism and Its Legacies 260
Symbolism, the Spiritual Ideal, and the Avant-garde 260
Symbolism: The Crucible of the Russian Avant-garde 262
Malevich, or the Persistence of the Symbolist Ideal 270
Symbolism and Its Descendants: Suprematism 274
Zaum and Perlocutionary Poetics 275
Malevich and Higher Reality 283
Malevich, Suprematism, and Schopenhauer 284
Symbolism and Its Descendants: Cubo-Futurism 286
Vitebsk and Symbolism 287
Symbolism and Its Descendants: FEKS 289
5 Constructivism: Between Productivism and Suprematism 300
Symbolism and Its Descendants: Constructivism 300
6 Eisenstein, Constructivism, and the Dialectic 314
The Fact: Nature and Its Transformation 315
The Theory of the Dialectic and the Concept of Transformation 324
The Concept of Transformation in Earlier and Later Eisenstein 326
Eisenstein, Bely, Russia, and the Magic of Language 336
Rudolf Steiner’s Anthroposophy and the Avant-garde 339
Rosicrucianism and the Theory of Transformation 340
What Would Eisenstein Have Heard in a Rosicrucian Lodge? 343
Rosicrucianism and Eisenstein’s Aesthetic Theory 347
Constructivism and Counterscience 352
The Engineer of Human Souls 366
Fechner and the Science of Effects 368
The Cinema and Spiritual Technology 373
The Cinema and X-rays 375
Nikolai Fedorov’s Cosmism 381
The New Body 385
Mexico and Mallarmé 392
Eisenstein, the Monistic Ensemble, and Symbolism 399
Eisenstein, Symbolism, and the Fourth Dimension 404
Eisenstein’s Pangraphism and the Theory of Imitation 418
Mimesis, Pangraphism, and the Language of Adam 424
Eisenstein and Symbolist Colour Theory 432
Concluding Unscientific Postscript 474
Appendix: Viking Eggeling’s Diagonal-Symphonie: An Analysis 480
Shot Description/Analysis 485
Index 500
A 500
B 501
C 502
D 503
E 504
F 505
G 505
H 506
I 507
J 507
K 507
L 508
M 508
N 509
O 510
P 510
R 511
S 512
T 514
U 514
V 514
W 515
X 515
Y 515
Z 515

"R. Bruce Elder argues that the authors of many of the lively manifestos that announced the appearance of new artistic movements shared a common aspiration: they proposed to reformulate the visual, literary, and performing arts so that these arts might take on attributes of the cinema. In the early decades of the twentieth century, Elder argues, the cinema became a pivotal artistic force around which a remarkable variety and number of aesthetic forms took shape." "To demonstrate this, Elder begins with a wide-ranging discussion that opens up some broad topics concerning modernity's cognitive (and perceptual) regime, with a view to establishing that a crisis within that regime engendered some peculiar - and highly questionable - epistemological beliefs and enthusiasms. Through this discussion, Elder advances the startling claim that the crisis of cognition precipitated by modernity gave rise to a peculiar sort of "pneumatic (spiritual) epistemology.""--Jacket

2025-10-27