VPHB68H3 Chapter Notes - Chapter 9: Marcel Duchamp, Neurasthenia, Electric Light
Document Summary
Picabia- machines are "the very soul" of human life. This characterizes the 18th c search for perfect automaton & late 20th c towards utopian cyborg. The machine"s gender isn"t about who they are intersected, labored, & generated by. Sex is defined by 20th c"s cultural imagery. Western society sees technology as male while others are fantasized as women. One from 1917-1918 named l"homme, & the another from 1920 named la femme. They"re the same image under same negative but seen as different works of art. One is torn, folded, heavily shadowed & the other is less toned, & its title & signature aren"t the same as the first one. This female machine contrasts all of the other male ones from the early 20th c modernism. This male body expresses itself in literature, art, film, theatre, & war. Individual, art historical, & sociocultural are levels of explanation are divisive camps disciplining art history today.
