Objects in Air: Artworks and Their Outside around 1900 PDF
Preview Objects in Air: Artworks and Their Outside around 1900
Objects in Air . . . Objects in Air . . . Artworks And their outside Around 1900 Margareta Ingrid Christian the university of ChiCAgo Press ChiCAgo And London The University of Chicago Press, Chicago 60637 The University of Chicago Press, Ltd., London © 2021 by The University of Chicago All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission, except in the case of brief quotations in critical articles and reviews. For more information, contact the University of Chicago Press, 1427 E. 60th St., Chicago, IL 60637. Published 2021 Printed in the United States of America 30 29 28 27 26 25 24 23 22 21 1 2 3 4 5 isBn- 13: 978- 0- 226- 76477- 1 (cloth) isBn- 13: 978- 0- 226- 76480- 1 (e- book) doi: https://doi.org/10.7208/chicago/9780226764801.0001 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Christian, Margareta Ingrid, author. Title: Objects in air : artworks and their outside around 1900 / Margareta Ingrid Christian. Description: Chicago : University of Chicago Press, 2021. | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCn 2020048863 | isBn 9780226764771 (cloth) | isBn 9780226764801 (ebook) Subjects: LCsh: Air in art. | Space and time in art. | Arts, Modern—20th century. Classification: LCC nX650. A37 C49 2021 | ddC 701/.8—dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020048863 ♾ This paper meets the requirements of Ansi/niso Z39.48- 1992 (Permanence of Paper). For my parents, and for Nora and Vera Do you understand the power of form, of expression, of pretense, the arbitrary tyranny imposed on a helpless block, and ruling it like its own tyrannical, despotic soul? You give a head of canvas and oakum an expression of anger and leave it with it, with the convulsion, the tension enclosed once and for all, with a blind fury for which there is no outlet. . . . Weep . . . when you see the misery of imprisoned matter. Bruno sChuLZ, Sklepy Cynamonowe (The Street of Crocodiles) Contents introduCtion Artworks and Their Modalities of Egress 1 The Air within and without Artworks · 1 Politics of Extravagation · 8 Mesologies of Form · 10 Medium and Milieu, or the Material Spaces of Air · 13 World Loss, Sitelessness, and the Artwork’s Environments · 18 Aurai and Aura (Form and Space) · 20 Empathetic Artworks, Extensive Subjects · 23 ChAPter 1 Aer, Aurae, Venti: Warburg’s Aerial Forms and Historical Milieus 25 Anima Fiorentina · 25 Inspiration · 29 Stimmung/Atmosphere · 34 Milieu as Air Ambiant · 36 The Accessories’ Milieu · 38 Botticelli’s Milieu · 39 The Physiology of Influence · 41 Disciplinary Milieus · 43 ChAPter 2 Luftraum: Riegl’s Vitalist Mesology of Form 45 Horror vacui · 45 Umgebung · 48 Indehiscent Forms · 51 Cubic Space (“Air- Filled Empty Space”) · 55 Air Space · 59 Respiración · 61 External Unity · 64 Kunstwollen · 67 ChAPter 3 Saturated Forms: Rilke’s and Rodin’s Sculpture of Environment 71 Reticence and Radiance · 71 Aesthetico- Biological Endeavors · 76 “Archaic Torso of Apollo” · 84 Aesthetic Metabolisms · 91 Absorbed Milieus · 94 Gravid Forms · 96 Forms Striving for Incompletion · 97 Temporal Ecstasis · 106 ChAPter 4 The “Kinesphere” and the Body’s Other Spatial Envelopes in Rudolf Laban’s Theory of Dance 110 Choreutics · 110 Spatiomaterial Radiance · 115 Psychophysiologically Saturated Space · 120 Anima, Air, Atmosphere: Laban and Kandinsky · 126 Luftkur, Plein Air · 129 Dance’s Biological and Architectural Lifeworlds · 134 CodA Space as Form · 143 Acknowledgments 149 Notes 153 Bibliography 211 Index 231 [ introduCtion ] Artworks and Their Modalities of Egress the Air within And without Artworks In his art writings, Rainer Maria Rilke observes that Rodin’s sculpture “exhales an atmosphere” and claims that Cézanne’s colors create “a calm, silken air” that pervades the empty rooms where the paintings are exhib- ited.1 Rilke suggests that sculpture and painting reach out to us, and in order to give weight to the idea that artworks “touch” us, he invokes the subtle materiality of air and atmosphere. He implies that when we perceive an art- work, we do not merely receive “forms without their matter,” as Aristotle suggests in De anima;2 instead, we perceive forms that convey to us some of their matter, albeit a very fine matter that is sensible the way the air is per- ceptible. Thus, in order to think the artwork’s ecstasis—its ability to “stand outside” of itself and affect us—Rilke posits air as the medium for its exter- nalism. Taking my cue from Rilke, in this book I argue that the artwork’s external space becomes an aesthetic category in its own right in art writing around 1900. I contend that artworks continue beyond their material con- fines and that air is the embodiment of their continuity. In this sense, this book explores air as the material space surrounding an artwork, its milieu, and its environment in order to ask, What would an intellectual history of the idea of environment look like when told from the perspective of art writing around 1900? In contradistinction to recent studies in environmental aesthetics, which deal with the beauty of natural environments,3 this book addresses the aerial environments of the beautiful. The fact that I begin with Rilke—the poet who was engaged with art more than any other German writer of the twentieth century—is signifi- cant because Objects in Air is a literary study of art- historical texts. It traces how Aby Warburg connects Botticelli’s representations of windblown acces- sories to the cultural “atmosphere” of the quattrocento; how Alois Riegl transgresses from the depicted “air space” (Luftraum) in a painting to the “palpable air circulation” around it; how Rilke mediates between what he 1
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