ART 1B Lecture Notes - Lecture 4: Thomas Elsaesser, Keystone Cops, Francis Picabia
Document Summary
The combination of dada/cinema is thus interlaced with the more general history of inventions and apparati, and with the crises provoked in the arts when it became impossible to separate technology from technique or scientific from artistic experiment. It had also cruelly exposed the delicate relationship between crafted object and art object in respect to labor , skill, and value. pg 17. In the decline of the middle-class society contemplation became a school for asocial behavior, it was countered by distraction as a variant of social conduct. From an alluring appearancethe work of art of the dadaists became an instrument of ballistics, it happened to him, thus acquiring a tactile quality. The dadaism [] sacrificed the market values which are so characteristic of the cinema in favor of higher ambitions The dadaists attached much less importance to the sale value of their work than to its uselessness for contemplative immersion.