Papers by Matthew S Witkovsky
In a suite of approximately twenty abstract still lifes from the late 1920s, Czech photographer J... more In a suite of approximately twenty abstract still lifes from the late 1920s, Czech photographer Jaromı´r Funke boldly took shadow and mat board as his primary compositional elements. Amateur and avant-garde aesthetic stances balance in these self-reflexive works in a way that is paradigmatic for the era of high modernism in central European photography. Funke emulated here formal devices explored in cubism and the photogram, whereby phenomenal reality is converted into a fragmentary sign system. In good amateur fashion, however, he refused to abandon mastery, to accept ready-made elements as in cubist collage, or cultivate chance as Man Ray did in his camera-less images. Indeed, in an article on Man Ray published near the start of this series, Funke suggested by implication his greatest
ambition with Abstract Photo: to shape a history of the photographic medium and to indicate where that history is headed.
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Caa Reviews, 2006
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Caa Reviews, 2003
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Celebrated in histories of Czech modernism, the 1926 book Alphabet has received little sustained ... more Celebrated in histories of Czech modernism, the 1926 book Alphabet has received little sustained attention. Structured as a mock syllabary, Alphabet thematizes the pedagogical zeal of the historical avant-gardes and simultaneously discloses the avant-garde resistance to legibility through its emphasis on “letters as such.” Milča Mayerová enacted that exemplary paradox forcefully with her impersonation of letters in dance. Yet her poses failed to read as letters except when printed photographically alongside the book's text and typography. That insufficiency is theorized here as a critique of autonomous language, the masculinist ideal that motivated Mayerová's mentor and coauthors.
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History of Photography, 2005
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History of Photography, 2015
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Black American Literature Forum, 1989
... Page 17. Romare Bearden and Abstract Expressionism 273 |~~~~cl I i. . ... Fig. 8. Hans Hofami... more ... Page 17. Romare Bearden and Abstract Expressionism 273 |~~~~cl I i. . ... Fig. 8. Hans Hofami, Effervescence, 1944. Oil, India ink, casemn, and enamel on plywood, 54 3/8 x 35 7/8". University Art Museum, University of Calfri at Berkeley. Page 18. ...
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October, 1998
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The Art Bulletin, 2004
Celebrated in histories of Czech modernism, the 1926 book Alphabet has received little sustained ... more Celebrated in histories of Czech modernism, the 1926 book Alphabet has received little sustained attention. Structured as a mock syllabary, Alphabet thematizes the pedagogical zeal of the historical avant-gardes and simultaneously discloses the avant-garde resistance to legibility through its emphasis on “letters as such.” Milča Mayerová enacted that exemplary paradox forcefully with her impersonation of letters in dance. Yet her poses failed to read as letters except when printed photographically alongside the book's text and typography. That insufficiency is theorized here as a critique of autonomous language, the masculinist ideal that motivated Mayerová's mentor and coauthors.
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While the most memorable Dada photographs show groups of members together, the movement developed... more While the most memorable Dada photographs show groups of members together, the movement developed in fact over great and isolating distances. Dadaists seized on distance, separation, and isolation, and used those difficulties productively to concentrate attention on the very character of community and communications in a world at war.
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October, 2003
... Stacy Diamond (New York: Citadel Press, 1996), pp. ... In Zurich, it served as a rationale fo... more ... Stacy Diamond (New York: Citadel Press, 1996), pp. ... In Zurich, it served as a rationale for the Post-Expressionist abstractions of Hans Arp, Sophie Taeuber, and Marcel Janco, as well as the disparate poems by Tzara, Arp, and others printed on the pages of Dada: Don't look for ...
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The Comparatist, 2007
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Papers by Matthew S Witkovsky
ambition with Abstract Photo: to shape a history of the photographic medium and to indicate where that history is headed.
ambition with Abstract Photo: to shape a history of the photographic medium and to indicate where that history is headed.