Term
| Bataille was the editor of which dissident Surrealist magazine? |
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Definition
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Term
| In relation to the 'formless' Bataille addressed writings on what what psychological concept? Who originated this? |
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Definition
| 'L'Art Primitif (Primitive Art) by French psychologist Georges Luquet |
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Term
| What did Primitivism have to do with Bataille and Luquet's interest in the origins of art and the development of the human species? |
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Definition
| The caves of our ancestors contain our earliest painting, described as 'primitive' while as children our development is at a 'primitive level' and all feel a natural urge to draw |
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Term
| What did Luquet argue in relation to children's urge to draw? |
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Definition
"empowered by the need to find form in the world the scribbler starts to recognise the shapes of objects with this marking."
This eventually leads to an urge to create drawings aiming at realism. |
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Term
| How did Bataille's definition differ from Luquet's version of childhood drawing? |
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Definition
| The child marks not out constructive impulses but out of the joy of destruction, the pleasure of dirtying. This does not disappear but continues to be reflected in the the drawing of the draughtsman himself as a form of self-mutilation. Differences between animal and human renderings in cave painting is directly referred to |
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Term
| Define Bataille's concept of 'auto-mutilation' in art |
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Definition
| The drive toward lowering or debasing the human form, which is at the very core of art. This is a necessary pull towards the 'informe' - the formless |
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Term
| Documents contained a section which amongst other topics, dealt with the 'informe'. What was it called? |
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Definition
| Dictionary - this addressed the very definitions of words |
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Term
| In 'Dictionary' the 'Documents' writers argued that words should be assigned 'jobs' not 'meanings'. What was the job of the word 'formless? |
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Definition
| To undo the whole system of meaning (itself a matter of form or classification). By declassifying 'formless' would 'de-class' or bring things down in the world. |
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Term
| What was Bataille's famous quote on the universe's 'formlessness'? |
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Definition
| "To assert that the universe does not resemble anything and is merely formless amounts to saying that the universe is something like a spider or spit" |
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Term
| What did the ethnographers of 'Documents' believe about placing tribalism in context? |
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Definition
| That removing it from its context destroyed it because such material concerned a pattern of ritual and daily experience. A gallery or vitrine could not freeze this |
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Term
| Bataille's 'Documents' group was an alternative form of which art movement? Who lead this movement at the time? |
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Definition
| Surrealism, lead by Andre Breton |
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Term
| What did the ethnographers of 'Documents' ignore or leave out of their investigations, or at least in the principles of their investigations |
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Definition
| Nothing, according to a law of no exclusions, "everything---even the most formless" - should enter the world of ethnographic classification |
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Term
| Why did Document's ethnographers consider themselves shocking? |
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Definition
| They attended equally to high and low |
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Term
| What is the great weakness of Document's ethnographers embrace of formlessness? |
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Definition
| By attending equally to high and low, their very act of attention strips the low of its power to shock, because they are 'classifying', submitting "even the most formless" to work of resemblance. |
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Term
| How did Bataille's theory of the formless separate him from the ethonographers of 'Documents'? |
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Definition
| Bataille defined the formless as undefinable - it declassified by being unplaceable. Whereas the ethnographers tried to represent it, and in effect classify it. |
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Term
| Name an important sculptor who developed a fascination with the 'informe', and one very important work of his also |
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Definition
| Alberto Giacommeti, 'Suspended Ball'. It's gender and genital ambiguity, constantly swinging between the two sexes renders it a "round phallacism" according to Bataille, or an "absolute exception" according to Hollier. |
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Term
| What did Bataille say of the formless's relation to the pedestal? |
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Definition
| That it will knock form from the pedestal, and bring it down in the world |
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