Fall 2002

Semiotic Approaches
to the Total Work of Art

The idea behind synthetic art--the Gesamtkunstwerk, art that combines a variety of media into a unified whole--is not new, despite the current popularity of multimedia events, exhibits, and publications. In fact, a synthetic approach to art was characteristic of the first half of the twentieth century and of artists including Skriabin, Eisenstein, Man Ray, Meyerhold, and Fellini. Even intellectuals and scholars outside the arts were influenced by this new approach: Lévi-Strauss, Victor Turner, and Olga Freidenberg adapted a synthetic approach to their own revolutionary works on anthropology, theater, and literature. In this seminar we will trace the total art movement from its pre-history (which can be seen in the works of Baudelaire, Nietzsche, Rimbaud, and Wagner) to the present day. Particular attention will be paid to the first decades of the twentieth century and the influence this period had on later music, theater, cinema, literature, and visual arts.

The “reading” list includes writings by and on Wagner, Eisenstein, Skriabin, Meyerhold, Craig. Works by Leger, Cage, Rauschenberg and other modern artists will be also discussed.

FILMS

• Jean Cocteau “Orpheus” (France, 1950)
• Federico Fellini “Satyricon” (Italy, 1969)
• Paolo Pasolini “Canterbury Tales” (Italy, 1971/1972)
• Bernardo Bertolucci “The Double” (Italy, 1968)
• Akira Kurosawa “Idiot” (Japan, 1951)
• Akira Kurosawa “Rashemon” (Japan, 1950)
• Andrzej Wajda “Ashes and Diamonds” (Poland, 1958)
• Luchino Visconti “Death in Venice” (Italy, 1971)
• Andrei A. Tarkovsky “Solyaris” (Russia, 1972)
• Andrei A. Tarkovsky “Stalker” (Russia, 1980)
• Stanley Kubrick “A Clockwork Orange” (UK, 1971)
• Sergei Eizenstein “Ivan the Terrible”
• Sergei Eizenstein “Alexander Nevsky”
• Michelangelo Antonioni “The Red Desert”
• Paradzhanov “The Pomegranate Blossom” (Russian “Cvet granata”)
• Sokurov “The Alt Sonata”
• F. Leger “Mechanical Balley” (“Ballet mechanique”, the French experimental film of 1924/1926)
• Luis Buñuel and Salvador Dali “Le chien andalou” (1929)
• Luis Buñuel and Salvador Dali “L’age d’or” (1931)
• Man Ray “Emak bakia” (1926)
• Man Ray “L’Étoile de mer” (1928)
• Marcel Duchamp “Anemic Cinema” (1925)
• Georges Hugnet “La perle” (1929)
• Bulat Galeev “Prometheus” (an experimental film based on Skriabin’s scores)

MUSIC

• G.Mahler, Symphony N8 (1907)
• G.Mahler, The Song of the Earth (1908)
• Skriabin “Prometheus”, op.60
• Skriabin Prelude op. 74
• Skriabin/Nemtin “Preliminary Action”
• Alban Berg “Vozzech” (opera)
• Shostakovich XIVth symphony
• Prokofiev “Ivan the Terrible” (music to Eisenstein’s film)
• Stravinsky “Wedding”
• Schoenberg “Die glückliche Hand”. Op. 18, 1913.
• Schoenberg “Pierrot lunaire”

WORKS TO BE CONSULTED

• E.T. Kirby (ed.) Total Theatre. A Critical Anthology. New York: E.P. Dutton & Co, 1969.
• Rudolf Bizanz, “The Romantic Synthesis of the Arts.” Konsthistorisk Tidskrift, B.44, No. 1-2, (1975): 38-47.
• Rosamund Bartlett, “The Embodiment of Myth: Eizenstein’s Production of Die Walküre.” Slavonic and East European Review, vol. 70, no. 1 (1992): 53-77.
• Peter Brook. “The influence of Gordon Craig in Theory and Practice.” Drama, XXXVIII, (Summer 1955).
• V. Turner The Anthropology of Performance. New York :PAJ Publications, 1992.
• V. Turner From Ritual to Theatre. The Human Seriousness of Play. New York :PAJ Publications, 1992.
• Olga M. Freidenberg Image and Concept: Mythopoetic Roots of Literature. Translated by C. Moss. Ed. V. Ivanov (Sign/Text/Culture: Studies in Slavic and Comparative Semiotics, vol.1) Amsterdam/ New York: Harwood Academic Publishers, 1997.
• Luis Buñuel My last Sigh. Translated by Abigal Israel. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1983.
• Sergei Eisenstein. Selected Works, vol.1-4. Ed. Richard Taylor. London and Calcutta, 1995.
• Sergei Eisenstein Immoral Memories. Transl. Herbert Marshall. Boston, 1983.
• Sergei Eisenstein Notes of a Film Director. Transl. X. Danko. New York, 1970.
• Ronald Bergan, Eisenstein. The Life in Conflict. New York: The Overlook Press, 1999 (1 ed. 1997).
• Jay Leida and Zina Voynow. Eizenstein at Work. New York: Museum of Modern Art (Pantheon Books). 1982.
• L. Kleberg, H. Lövgren (eds.) Eisenstein Revisited. Stockholm,: Almqvist & Wiksell, 1987.
• M. Bystrzycka. “Eisenstein as Precursor of Semantics in Film Art.” Sign, Language, Culture. The Hague-Paris: Mouton, 1970.
• Mary Seton. Sergei M. Eisenstein. A Biography. New York: The Grove Press, Inc., 1960.
• Vyacheslav Ivanov (Iwanow) Einführung in allgemeine Probleme der Semiotik. Tübingen, 1985 (revised German translation; the Russian original: Ocherki po istorii semiotiki v SSSR. Moscow, 1976, a revised Russian ed. IN: Vyacheslav Vs. Ivanov Izbrannye trudy po semiotike i istorii kul’tury. Vol.I, Moscow: Yazyki russkoy kul’tury, 1998)
• Vyacheslav Ivanov Estetika Eizebshtejna (in Russian: Eizenstein’s Aesthetics), in: Vyacheslav Vs. Ivanov Izbrannye trudy po semiotike i istorii kul’tury. Vol.I, Moscow: Yazyki russkoy kul’tury, 1998, pp. 143- 380.
• Danuta Mirka. “Colors of a Mystic Fire: Light and Sound in Skriabin’s Prometheus.”-IN: S. Bruhn (ed.) Signs in Musical Hermeneutics (The American Journal of Semiotics, vol. 13, No. 1-4), Fall 1996.