Bruce Elder. Cubism and Futurism: Spiritual Machines and the Cinematic Effect. Film and Media Studies Series. Waterloo: Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 2018. 591 pp. $85.00 (cloth), ISBN 978-1-77112-245-0.
Reviewed by Jennifer Boivin (University of Sudbury)
Published on H-SHERA (April, 2019)
Commissioned by Hanna Chuchvaha (University of Calgary)
New Perspectives on Cubism and Futurism
Cubism and Futurism: Spiritual Machines and the Cinematic Effect is the last born of a series of three volumes written by Bruce Elder. The reading of each of these three publications can be undertaken individually or out of order. The first volume, Harmony and Dissent: Film and Avant-garde Art Movements in the Early Twentieth Century (2010), deals with artists’ attempts to reach pure abstract art during the 1910s and 1920s and explains how cinema significantly influenced art movements of the time. DADA, Surrealism, and the Cinematic Effect (2013), the second volume, examines how cinema was received by cubist and futurist artists and thinkers. In Cubism and Futurism, Elder returns with another study of these art movements and once more impresses with complex, careful thoughts, presenting a very ambitious work.
In this publication, the author compares cubism and futurism in order to establish their similarities, for example, in their exploration of the spiritual (hermetic) meaning of new technologies, and their differences, for example, in their levels of aesthetical and philosophical radicalization. Throughout the book, Elder demonstrates how they were closely related movements, especially with regard to issues of perception, dynamism, and the dynamism of perception. As the author shows, both movements were influenced by the advent of cinema, which developed out of the same climate of ideas: a profound change in the eighteenth-century worldview in which the Cartesian theory based on Euclidean geometry left space for a Newtonian worldview and later, an electromagnetic conception of reality. In other words, the science of electromagnetism supplanted Newtonian physics, marking a profound cultural transformation and the beginning of a contemporary worldview in which the orientation switched from a mechanic to an electromagnetic conception of reality. According to Elder, this affected the way people perceived human cognition, reason, nature, time, and movement. Cubism and futurism were born on the cusp of this change to technological shifts and were highly influenced by a new art form: cinema.
Cinema was perceived as an electric art form similar to X-rays or colored light and as the highest form of electromagnetic energies because it transformed light into a material product (film). Therefore, cinema generated both thought and the appearances of objects of the everyday world and was thought to be the best way to show the ultimate (new electromagnetic) reality. In this work, Elder argues that cubism was a transitional movement between the Cartesian (mechanical) and an electromagnetic (energy) world of continuities and flows. Futurism, on the other hand, completely embraced the emerging electromagnetic view of reality through its exploration of speed and movement. While most scholarship analyzes the influence cubism and futurism had on cinema, Elder challenges this approach and examines the influence that film had on these movements. In doing so, he demonstrates how artists borrowed from cinema’s characteristics to create their visual artworks or to write their literature. Elder’s research is not purely a film study but is based on a contribution between media studies and art history scholarship, an especially ingenious and original choice of methodology.
This publication is organized in three major parts. In part 1, “Modernism and the Visual Arts,” the author highlights the key aspects of the avant-garde, and more specifically cubism and futurism. This first part sets the basis for his analysis by clearly exposing their aesthetical and philosophical implications, but more importantly their relationship to cinema and electromagnetism. Part 2, “Dudley Murphy, Fernand Léger, and Ballet Mécanique: Vorticism, Cubism, Collage, and Léger’s New Realism,” focuses on cubism’s philosophy and worldview. The author shows how cubism reconciled with the Cartesian and the new electromagnetic reality. In addition to this chapter, the monograph features a 137-page appendix containing a detailed analysis (with analytical commentary) of Fernand Léger’s film, Ballet Mécanique (1924), supported by a 46-page bibliography on this topic. These companions to the book are available on the Wilfrid Laurier University Press’s website in a downloadable PDF form. The third part of the book, titled simply “Futurism,” focuses on the latter movement. Like the previous section, it shows how cinema and electromagnetism influenced futurism. Elder demonstrates in this section not only that this was a matter of aesthetics but that futurism was also the result of a development in the collective consciousness. While it might seem that these chapters focus uniquely on film, Elder surprises his readers by connecting to his argument the work of writers and painters as well as the work of filmmakers, initiating his analysis of, for example, the famous postimpressionist painter Paul Cézanne (1839–1906) and his artworks. With this approach and text organization, the author certainly demonstrates that the electromagnetic conception of the world was a long-going evolving process.
In Cubism and Futurism, Elder offers a rare and original scientific insight in the study of both movements. He truly walks away from traditional ways of interpreting the movements and explores a completely new venue by linking philosophy, science, and phenomenology. The extensive research and impressive endnotes for each chapter as well as Elder’s considerable knowledge on his subject are notable. The depth and complexity of his analysis are equally impressive and deserve praise. Unfortunately, while this is probably one of the book’s best assets, it is also its worst as an unexperienced reader could get lost in the number of concepts that the author provides and in the multiple goals he sets for this research. This publication is definitely not aimed for nonspecialists or general readers but is addressed to a highly specialized reader, well versed in film studies, philosophy, and the sciences.
Cubism and Futurism is not an easy read and should not be done hastily, taking into account its complexity. Considering its subject matter, it is somewhat interesting to note that one should pause several times throughout the reading to fully grasp Elder’s point, to let it sink in. In other words, although this publication is about artistic and philosophical movements inspired by speed and energy, one should simply learn to slow down while reading it. But in doing so, the reader will certainly be able to fully appreciate Elder’s enterprise and profound originality.
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Citation:
Jennifer Boivin. Review of Elder, Bruce, Cubism and Futurism: Spiritual Machines and the Cinematic Effect.
H-SHERA, H-Net Reviews.
April, 2019.
URL: http://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.php?id=53060
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