Etiquette Dinner Guest Asked To Pay For The Meal

The modern city: the contribution of German philosophers of the early twentieth century


A nice introduction to the problem of the city as a symbol of modernity, from the examples of Paris and Berlin in the early twentieth century.

For everyone that the theme of city life and urban interests, both directed by Philippe Simay books recently published by Editions de L'shine, stand out as a must.

These books are an introduction to the tremendous work done by the German Jewish philosophers and sociologists Georg Simmel, Walter Benjamin, Siegfried Kracauer to grasp and understand what the city lifestyle changes of the human experience, how the town changes the " device sensitive "human being.

amazed at the rapid expansion of a city like Berlin in the early twentieth century, and fascinated by the constitution of the first cities, they developed a vocabulary that could best describe the experience of the modern city, as experience the shock (sensory stimulation of neon lights, streetcars, film and the crowd) as dislocation of the experience (Erfahrung ) for the benefit of actual experience (Erlebnis ), with all mechanisms of self-defense on the part of the urban (Blaser, restraint, intellectualization, entertainment as a means to escape the continual excitement, etc.). To rejuvenate an alienating urban modernity, shocking and mindless , Simmel is a resource in the southern cities: Florence, Venice, Rome .

If "Clash of megacities , also an excellent introduction, a collection of articles rather mixed, however the Capitals of modernity " are a treat, especially with a very nice article on the theme of the flâneur in Benjamin. The behavior of the flâneur, ostensibly detached from utilitarian values of the bourgeoisie and mercantile cities, becomes an emblem of a peaceful protest at the rise of capitalist modernity, along with a writing style. Also read: description of the bourgeois interior of the late nineteenth century, extremely heavy, decorated where every trinket is saturated with traces of a complete story, as opposed to the brilliant, glass, functional of the German capital. Or the question of the barricades in Paris in the nineteenth century as a way to turn against the ruling classes of the symbols of their domestication of the city.

These books will no doubt want to explore the constellation of the writings of Simmel, Kracauer and Benjamin and deepen their similarities and differences on a crucial question of modernity, while half the world's population has recently become a city. All preferred form of the test, the fragment, the illusion of the monograph pompous and totalizing. Everyone wanted to dwell on small objects of everyday life, judging it's the little things that will house the most significant concepts and most illuminating of a culture: the windows, the big dipper, fashion, shopping arcades. The novel Police Siegfried Kracauer, described as the emblematic of the city as disenchanted space, is a good example.

Clash of the Metropolitan , Philippe and Stephane Simay Füzesséry (eds), Ed. the brightness, 2008
Capitals modernity Philippe Simay (eds) Editions de l'Eclat, 2007
Large Cities and the life of the mind , Georg Simmel, L'Herne, 2008
Florence, Venice, Rome , Georg Simmel, Editions Allia
Adornments and Other Essays (with a very fine article on the aesthetics of ruins, in the wake of what has been said here ) Georg Simmel House of Human Sciences.

Trane Xe80 Furnace Does Not Ignite

Jacques Villeglé Centre Beaubourg / Pompidou


Little poetry of urban communication: the example of the poster, by Jacques Villeglé.

The art of Jacques Villeglé is a singular art. Flaneur of the modern city, the artist looks and selects the posters on the walls torn, forgotten, damaged by intempérées, torn by passersby, covered by others, etc.. The torn poster, the reverse collage on canvas: here we removed successive layers of yarrow instead of add.

There is no question for the artist to make or model, but detect objects (the idea of core business for each artist, see here from Caesar). Although it is not readymade itself is still an approach quite similar to that of the transfiguration of the commonplace, which is to draw attention to everyday things to raise them at the artwork (on a close subject, see here ).

The poster - predominantly French artistic phenomenon - égalemet operates a series of movements of aesthetic categories. First, there is no longer a single author, but dozens of anonymous authors, occurred in various capacities and at different times on the poster to tear into pieces, cover it with graffiti, paste into other over, etc.. The final poster on display is the result of successive interventions. Then, far from being an art space, the poster is indeed an art of time a bit special, that is to say, it carries itself throughout its history, and throughout a compendium of stories of urban portion (on this also, see here , here and especially here , wonderful commentary on a painting by Poussin ). Finally, since the author left behind, it is a kind of "non-action painting, the artist is almost inactive.

Especially, Villeglé operates on the communication what others have done with the representation . The palimpsest of posters torn defuses the initial function of the poster as a tool for information or message. The meaning becomes confused, and ultimately perverted disappears while its intrinsic artistic value increases: the eye sees shapes, colors they do not perceive when they served as a vehicle of meaning. Here the political messages or comemrciaux lose their meaning when they are mostly seen and read outside their historical context and space, thirty or forty years apart on the wall stripped of a museum.

It is therefore quite another thing to marvel Villeglé as blissfully before the comedy of the city. It's a way to interrogate the notion of communication, particularly communication in absentia, by means of written and printed. Just as abstract painters saw the object represented as an obstacle to true understanding of painting as arrangement of lines and colors on a plane, even in Villeglé considers the meaning release as an obstacle to the perception the poster in its plasticity.










Villeglé also working on the type faces, as a result of literacy skills. He locates graffiti where the letters were distorted or stylized so that they are already in them a speech activist (Communist, Nazi, feminist, anarchist, religious, etc.). The speech is the most sophisticated and fused to the atomic scale alphabetically. Villeglé observed phenomena of condensation, expansion or contraction of the language beyond its everyday use.

In everyday use of language, we do not stop on every word we use, otherwise we would never say anything. The current language is neutral by definition, purely utilitarian, except when it is announced by a particular regional accent, or dyslexia. But there is an art that forces us to just pay attention to the plastic value and sound of words. This art is poetry. Jacques Villeglé does nothing but poetry with fliers and posters. And as the life of the city uses and abuses of the functional value and utility of the objects it contains, Villeglé makes their material value they have as well.

Jacques Villeglé The urban comedy, September 17, 2008 to January 5, 2009, Centre Pompidou, Gallery 2, Level 6

View route of exposure, very rich, with videos and comments on the website of the Centre Pompidou .
Illustration
Jacques Villeglé

Rue Desprez and Vercingetorix - "The Woman", March 12, 1966
torn posters pasted on canvas, 251 x 224 cm
Museum Ludwig, Cologne, Germany

Rue Grenier Saint-Lazare, Tuesday, February 18, 1975
torn posters pasted on canvas, 89 x 116 cm Collection
Regional Fund for Contemporary Art Britain

The Alphabet of the guerrillas in October 1983
Painting bomb on synthetic fabric, 126 x 166 cm
National Fund for Contemporary Art,
Ministry of Culture and Communication, Paris

memory insoluble June 1998-2008 (detail)
Series 237 slates
Corrector white on slate, wood Private Collection